The God Of Small Things By Arundhati Roy

Chapter 4: Overview of the Novel The God Of Small Things

Arundhati Roy (24th November 1961) is one of the woman Indian English Novelists who took the world with a storm. She entered the literary sphere with The God Of Small Things published in 1997, and this novel won her the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The publication of The God of Small Things catapulted Roy to international fame. Her writings generally reflect man– woman relationship, human desire, longing, body, gender discrimination, marginalization, rebellion and protest. The characters in Arundhati Roy’s novels are caught in the continuous dichotomy between the personal needs and the institutional and social obligations and responsibilities. Such is the case with Ammu in The God Of

The present paper aims at studying the novel as a love story whose dimensions are touched by caste, creed and other socio-political realities existing in the regionally contextualised boundaries of the South Indian state of Kerala. The narrative of The God of Small Things hinges on or around the Ayemenem House and at times peeps into the misty atmosphere of the History House to delicately explore the big things lurked unsaid inside. This novel features the very worst sort of war, a war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. Altogether, the novel reiterates how it really began in the days when the love laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how, and how much. This manifests almost like the guiding motif of this novel. On the whole Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a major breakthrough in Indian fiction in English. Especially in typical Indian setting, the depiction of an engaging tale of cross caste forbidden love between a Paravan

Sometimes love breaks law and is guided by its own laws- the laws that inspire the individuals to move in the direction of truth, a similar kind of direction which was followed by Ammu and Velutha- the god of small things. As lovers they were the victim of the society’s evil and could not betray the truth. For Ammu, the risk is for both committing adultery and of making love to a Paravan; an Untouchable. For Velutha, the risk is in moving out of his place as Untouchable and invading a social order. Though being convinced that they do not have a future in a society deliberately hostile to individuals who violate the love laws and enter into a forbidden territory, they continued their fragile transient happiness for thirteen nights with their hope that things could change in a day. As their nightly trysts are disclosed by Velutha’s father, all hell breaks loose heavily on the lovers. The price that the lovers paid is decidedly high. Velutha becomes an easy victim which resulted in his death in the police lock-up of the Kottayam police station. The lover’s punishment further engineered the separation of the two-egg twins as well. To love, to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance, to respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch, to never get used to the unspeakable violence