Unique Cultures in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Unique Cultures in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

There are a variety of cultures in this world and each culture is unique. Usually when one was born and raised in a certain culture, that person may adapt to that culture for a period of time. It is sometimes difficult to look into someone else’s culture, and understand their culture. Sometimes one must keep an open mind, study the culture, or live in another culture to understand the culture. When reading “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy, and “Things Fall Apart“, by Chinua Achebe one must look beyond their culture to understand how others live in a different culture. When I read Roy’s novel, I did not get a great understanding of the novel, because it was difficult to follow. I did not know a lot about the culture before I read novel. Both text discusses a particular cultural group, and as the narrator tells the story the narrator intertwines the cultural elements with the actual story being told. The differences between the text were the way the text was structured, and how the stories were told. Also, both texts contained different religions practiced by the particular cultural group.

In “The God of Small Things“, and “Things Fall Apart” both consist a particular cultural groups. In “The God of Small Things“, the people in the story were Pakistan Indian. The way Roy described the setting in the story, and how the people looked gave an idea of where the story took place. Plus she also mentioned some cities that are in India. Roy described the rivers as being unclean, but people would cleanse themselves in the river. The women wore saris. The immediate families and extended families seemed to live together also. I...

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...me language in the text also. The African clan and Pakistan Indians had different religions. The African clan believed in spirits, and the Pakistan Indians believed in the Muslim faith. Both novels were great novels to read, if one wants to learn more about a particular culture. “The God of Small Things” is a little difficult to understand. There were so many different meanings in the novel. I believe that people should get a better understanding of one’s culture before one reads a novel of a different culture. If one does not understand the culture, one can misinterpret the meanings in the story.

Work Cited

Achebe, Chinua. “Things Fall Apart”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H.

Abrams. 7th ed. vol. 2c. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. pp.2617-2703.

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Random House, Inc., 1997.