Response to A God Of Small Things
One of the main themes in Arundhati Roy's A God Of Small Things is discrimination in the caste system. Roy tells the story of the hardships faced by the Untouchables, the lowest caste in the caste system. Technically, the Untouchables are not even in the caste system because to put them in the same system as the other four castes would be offensive to the rest of them. Another theme in this novel is forbidden love. These two themes, discrimination in the caste system and forbidden love, come together when Mammachi sneaks across the river "to love by night the man her children love by day", to meet Velutha. Mammachi is the mother of the two main characters, Estha and Rahel. She is a Touchable Christian woman and Velutha is an Untouchable Paravan. Mammachi tells her children about how Paravans were treated when she was young:
"Mammachi told Estha and Rahel that she could remember a time, in her girlhood, when Paravans were expected to crawl backwards with a broom, sweeping away their footprints so that Brahmins(highest caste in the Hindu caste system) or Syrian Christians would not defile themselves by accidentally stepping into a Paravan's footprint."(Roy 71)
Mammachi is fully aware of the magnitude of what she has done. The union of Mammachi and Velutha, Touchable and Untouchable is unthinkable. Mammachi defies what Arundhati Roy calls the "Love Laws" that are set by society. The "Love Laws" determine who can be loved, where and when they can be loved and how much they can be loved. When Mammachi and Velutha’s secret forbidden love was discovered, chaos ensued. Baby Kochamma, the twins’ grandaunt went to the police station and filed a report stating that Mammachi had been raped Velutha, by an U...
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...a Touchable woman. Nobody even questioned the report because it made sense to them. When they thought of Velutha, the community in Ayemenem did not think of a bright, young man who was always there to help them, making and fixing whatever they asked him to. No, all they could think of was he had been an Untouchable. He must have raped that Touchable woman. Velutha was simply a lowly person doing lowly deeds. Upon receiving the false report from Baby Kochamma, the police went out to search for Velutha. When they found him, he was not even given a chance to speak. The police beat Velutha to near-death, an innocent man nearly killed yet no questions asked. Sure enough, that night Velutha died and no justice was served. This is the depressing but unfortunate truth of the world and I can be grateful that I was born in Canada where I have all the opportunities I could want.
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among others besides the people in her community. As she makes friends with other Indians in other communities she realizes the common bonds they share, even down to the most basic such as what they eat, which comforts her and allows her to empathize with them.
“Theory of Marriage” is one of the poems in which Mark Doty read while visiting the students here at Ramapo College. After reading the title of the poem one expects that the content of this written work will focus on, well the theory of marriage; however, after reading the poem it is to some confusion to find out that the face value of the poem is actually about Doty and his friend at a massage parlor. It was only through Doty’s emphasis on certain words such as “oh” that I later realized his poem is not about the pain that the masseuse was giving to him but rather the pain that marriage caused. The way he read the lines, from the pauses to his facial expression really opened up my eyes to see that nothing is as it seems, especially when it comes to
Mariatu, at the age of eleven, was raped by a man she knew and feared. “Salieu lay down beside me. I didn’t believe he would do anything to me if I appeared to be sleeping, but he started touching me all over, fondling my breasts and my hair, making his way in between my legs,” (Kamara 69). The young girl was so innocent she had not even understood exactly what happened to her. Not only did she not understand what trauma she had been through, she was also unaware that pregnancy and a child could come from rape, which it did. At the same age, Mariatu was tortured by rebel boys her own age. They cut off both her hands gruesomely. “I had no energy left as a boy took my other arm and held it down on the boulder. It took three attempts to cut off my left hand. Even at that, some of the flesh remained and hung precariously loose,” (Kamara 41). Subjected to torture, she was a victim. One could argue Ishmael was no victim, in fact he was a perpetrator and a killer, however the underlying goodness of this young boy’s heart proves his true desires and regrets. He was brainwashed into killing and committing sins he could not bare. He lost his innocence, something he could not regain. However his morality and values never left his side. In Ishmael’s book he writes a story about a monkey. Summarized, this story states; “There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. When he was close enough to the monkey, he raised his rifle and aimed. Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: ‘if you shoot me your mother will die, and if you don’t, your father will die.’ So what would you choose?” (Beah 217). Beah never revealed his answer as a child, but he always knew he would choose to shoot the monkey, because although he loved his mother and did not wish for her demise, if he shot this monkey, no other hunter would
... and full of energy” (183). This is the first connection between Aminata and her first son Mamadu. It is a physical connection, between mother and son. Although Mamadu was sold from her, Aminata still feels connected to her son. “I looked again at the boy, and thought about how good it would have felt to have my own son alive and strong... I wondered what Mamadu would have looked like, if he had been allowed to stay with me” (327). Aminata thinks about him and his appearance and location. Aminata’s second child, May is born to her when Chekura is not with her. Nevertheless Aminata narrates, “I loved every inch of my daughter and worshipped every beat of her heart...” (345). This quote shows how Aminata loves and cares for May and has established a mother-daughter bond.
The love in ones heart is not always as noticeable as we would like it to be; yet it is always present if someone truly loves another. It is hard not to have such a strong and desirable love for someone you have missed in the past. Ma and Tom Joad had so much love for each other, and it is rather funny how no one really noticed it but them. They always looked out for one and other during the hard times, it was the helping hand of the other that made them survive. "She crawled close to his voice ` I wanta touch ya again, Tom. It's like I'm blin', It's so dark. I wanta remember, even if it's only my fingers that remember `..." (569). If that person that you love with all your heart has to leave you, it would be the worst feeling in the entire world because you would know just then that you might not make it without them during the tough times. Ma Joad feels that exact emotion toward her son Tom. Thought must run through both of there head about how they will ever live without the other. It is a hard thing to face and a hard thing to defeat. The relationship between Ma Joad and her beloved son Tom is more than just family love; during the trip their connection grew to dependence and need.
The article I picked to show the evil in the world today was about a man named Abner Louima. This man was arrested in 1997 and is suing the state of New York for being beaten in a restroom in the station while being questioned. The sole witness Conelle Lugg, 19, he heard loud screaming and banging noises against the wall of the bathroom while he was in his cell, he then saw a police officer push Louima into a cell pants down and blood rushing out of his open wounds. The officer then proceeded to tell Louima to get on his knees. After all this Lugg said, that Louima fell to the floor and screamed in pain and begged to be taken to a hospital.
Roy asserts that people’s fears of upsetting the power balance based in the caste system often leads to a blind acceptance of the status quo and a continuous sense of self-deprecation by individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy. When Velutha’s father fears that his son’s affair with a Touchable will have potentially disastrous consequences for him, he serves his own self-interest and is willing to endanger is son. He exposes the affair to the grandmother of the woman his son is having an affair with, revealing the extreme degree to which caste and conforming to societal norms drive the behaviors of individuals in Indian society; “So Vellya Paapen had come to tell Mamamachi himself. As a Paravan and a man with mortgaged body parts he considered it his duty…they had made the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible really happen…Offering to kill his son. To tear him limb from limb” (242). His fear of disrupting the status quo (i.e. the Indian social hierarchy) is so great that he is willing to sacrifice his own son’s life to protect his own. Rather than considering the genuine...
Domestic violence can come in various forms such as physical, mental, and verbal abuse. In the novel the most vulnerable victims to go through this experience was the women and children. The mother, Beatrice, first- hand experience this abuse from her husband and endures it in silence. In this type of culture the women become part of their husbands, their identities in society are their husbands (Fwangyil, 262). Beatrice undergoes several miscarriages at the hands of her husband. For example, one evening the children witnessed their mother hanging over their father’s shoulders and “trickle[s] of blood, which trailed away” (Adichie, 33). Even through all the abuse and miscarriage’s, she continues to defend her husband to the end. Women during
Sethe is an extremely devoted mother who is willing to go great lengths to protect her children. Although she cannot even recognize her own mother from anything besides a scar (72) she still understands the importance motherhood can play in a woman’s life. As a slave, Sethe is stripped of her rights to obtain an education, a career and so much more, however, she does not allow her rights to be a wife, a mother, and to bear children get taken from her because she knows these are a few things in life that are only granted to women. When she d...
An interesting aspect of reading Sunjata is that it allows the reader to get a glimpse into the past. An unmissable trait that the story brings up is the power and control that women hold within their marriages and families overall. Part of this power comes from the West African people carrying on their family through a matrilineal system. Familial ties are a significant motif in Sunjata with even the storyteller tracing his ancestry back to the strong women told about in the oral tale. The matrilineal system means that instead of children taking the name of their father, as seen in many European societies, they would take the name of their mother and hold closer to the ties of her ancestors. This system allows for a sense of feminism to sprinkle all over the story of Sunjata and, ultimately, on the
She begins talking about her childhood and who raised her until she was three years old. The woman who raised her was Thrupkaew’s “auntie”, a distant relative of the family. The speaker remembers “the thick, straight hair, and how it would come around [her] like a curtain when she bent to pick [her] up” (Thrupkaew). She remembers her soft Thai accent, the way she would cling to her auntie even if she just needed to go to the bathroom. But she also remembers that her auntie would be “beaten and slapped by another member of my family. [She] remembers screaming hysterically and wanting it to stop, as [she] did every single time it happened, for things as minor as…being a little late” (Thrupkaew). She couldn’t bear to see her beloved family member in so much pain, so she fought with the only tool she had: her voice. Instead of ceasing, her auntie was just beaten behind closed doors. It’s so heart-breaking for experiencing this as a little girl, her innocence stolen at such a young age. For those who have close family, how would it make you feel if someone you loved was beaten right in front of you? By sharing her story, Thrupkaew uses emotion to convey her feelings about human
Hess, Linda. Rejecting Sita: Indian Responses to the Ideal Man's Cruel Treatment of His Ideal Wife. Vol. 67. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
The nature of deity is a topic that has been debated and dickered over amongst religions the world over. Gods grand purpose, his will, divine reasoning, and expectations of the human race are a topic of hot debate among great learned men and the theological elite . These differences are glaringly apparent when Judas-Christian is compared with Hinduism.
To any religious person, hearing a command from the voice of their god is reason enough to carry out the proposed action, but in the case of Wieland, a third party must take a deeper look at such a command from a God whose known character does not line up with the order He supposedly gives. This makes Wieland’s motivation questionable, especially to those who believe that a man’s motive determines a man’s guilt. In his testimony to the court, Wieland, a pious man, reveals his motive in the murders as he recounts God as saying, “‘Thy prayers are heard. In proof of thy faith, render me thy wife. This is the victim I chuse. Call her hither and here let her fall’” (190). Being a devout Christian, it is very likely that Wieland would be familiar with the Ten Commandments listed in Deuteronomy 5, and specifically, verse 17 which states, “You shall not murder”. Though in Isaiah 55:8 the Lord tells Christians to ...
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy tells the story of the communist state of Kerala and the forbidden love between two castes, which changes the lives of everyone. In the novel an ‘Untouchable’, Velutha is a carpenter and works at Paradise Pickles and Preserves for much less than he deserves because of his status as an Untouchable in the caste system. Velutha falls into a forbidden love with a divorced woman, Ammu who is associated with an upper caste Syrian Christian Ipe family. Marriage was the only way that Ammu could have escaped this life, but she lost the chance when marrying the wrong man, as he was an alcoholic and this resulted in them getting a divorce. Ammu breaks the laws that state ‘who should be loved, and how and how much’, as their affair threatens the ‘caste system’ in India, which is a hierarchal structure and social practice in India in which your position in society is determined and can’t be changed. Arhundati Roy portrays the theme of forbidden love within the caste systems and shows how they are t...