Ashique S. Berry

Dr. Paul Gleason

English 303: Non-Western Literature

December 4, 2008

Darkness of Heart: The God of Small Things

I can only say that I am simultaneously captivated and sickened by the hideously beautiful poetry that forms this text. I am attracted to Roy's writing style, which I can best describe as a concoction of paradoxes. I find myself lost in a sea of thoughts. As I read this text, it is as thought I can see the faces of the characters and hear their thoughts. They walk through me like ghosts in a haunted house. There are so many proposals made in this text that beg for answers. I cannot imply that I have them. What I do know, is that “it's true... things can change in a day,” one small thing at a time (183).

This story forces me to think of my own story. It reminds me to acknowledge the small things that have whittled me into the creation that I am today. Laws were broken in this book. Crimes were committed that can never be absolved. Life is just this fragile. I am confronted with the things that I have seen, that I was too young to see. These are the things that nourish me, those which drive me. I know what it's like to want to freeze a happy moment for fear that it might be my last. This is the same manner of existence that would cause a person to appreciate the best, but expect the worst. This philosophy is the epitome of fractured logic. It is the evidence of a broken person.

This text is good in the worst way. It exposes the reader to the actual and perceived truths that life has to offer. The truth is that there are horrors in life that no fairytale can mask. I have often wondered why people have such a hard time accepting the unacceptable. In the short 24 year that I have been on this earth, I have come to the conclusion that I can only be me now. I am an amalgamation of my past and present. I am a product of the good as well as the bad. I live in the dream-like sequence that Roy outlines in the text. In this state, time becomes fluid and stoppable. Time becomes both the then and the now, together and controllable by the dreamer.

Roy has accomplished putting into words, what I have held captive in the darkest corners of my self. I had become resigned to social implications and conduct codes that insist that some stories aren't worth telling. There are some things that you shouldn't say because they might make people uncomfortable, or unhappy. What Roy shows the world through this novel, is that the small truths that we don't show are the authors of the larger false-realities the we cover them with. This doesn't mean that the glass is always half empty, it just means that validity and importance lie with both the “player and the piano, the killer and the corpse.” She manages to create something beautiful and honorable out of the ugliest story.

There were several moments in this story that were incredibly interesting to me. In pages 51-54, Chacko introduces to the twins the idea of history being comparable to a house, located in the Heart of Darkness. “He explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With a all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside” (51). He goes on to add that “to understand history, we have to go inside and listen to what they are saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.” What I appreciate about his assertion, is that it makes history very personal. It forces us to consider the biological and genealogical factors that are included in our own personal histories. It distinguishes each human experience as a random assignment of a thousand possibilities, of which it is impossible to duplicate. As Salman Rushdie put it, “this appeal to some essential cultural identity is doomed to failure, indeed, it misunderstands the heterogeneous nature of the human experience.” In this respect, one cannot assert to truly understand another without devaluing the others experience.

The “History House,” as it becomes labeled, becomes an eerie reminder of impending doom as the story unravels after this point. “And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves” (52). At this point, the History House not only owns the past, but it also owns the future. So this can only mean that the present is already determined, we just don't know it yet. Chacko also includes, “Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter” (52). Chacko plays the role of an omniscient narrator at this point. He is dissecting the tone of the entire story. The past seems to be the catalyst for the actions of every characters in the story. Each characters experienced directly affect the decisions that they make. Complimentary, each character is permanently altered by past perceptions of their own victimhood and/or victimization of others.

History becomes very complex in the text. History encompassed time and acts as the container for the chain of events that begin to unfold. Also implied within the history is the the hybridity of the characters. “Baby Kochamma disliked the twins, for she considered them doomed, fatherless waifs. Worse still, they were Half-Hindu Hybrids whom no self-respecting Syrian Christian would ever marry.” ( 45). This ties directly into the concept of “breaking the love laws” that is discussed in the text. The contribution of colonization is postcolonial hybridity on many levels. Sophie Mol is a biological hybrid because her mother is English and her father is Indian. Chacko is a cultural hybrid of the English and Indian cultures. There is also linguistic hybridity, which is evident in the way that the twins play with language. So where can authentic culture be found in the parts that form the whole of the hybrid? According to Rushdie:

It depends on the hybrid himself to define exactly what this Third Space looks like or where it is located, because he is left with two alternatives: Does he feel like somebody who is a part of both sides, for example the colonizer and the colonized, or does he feel like somebody who belongs to no side at all, which corresponds to a scenario that Chacko describes: 'We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore.'” (Roy 1997, 53).

For this reason the twins have no other identity apart from within eachother.

The closeness of Estha and Rahel is illustrated on many different levels. There are the obvious implications made by the fact that they are twins, but Roy also includes bonds of experience to solidify their connection. Roy writes:

Now, these years later, Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha's funny dream. She has other memories that she has no right to have. She remembers, for instance (thought she hadn't been there), what the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man did to Estha in Abhilash talkies. She remembers the taste of the tomato sandwiched—Estha's sandwiches, that Estha ate—on the Madras Mail to Madras” (5).

Estha and Rahel not only perceive each other as one person, but even go so far as to share the same experiences. This includes recapturing the physical proximity they had lost through their separation and longing for one another, by indulging in incest together. Throughout the book, they are often perceived as one person by others. Although they are dizygotic twins, they seem to have many of the same features that monozygotic twins are known to exhibit. They feed off of eachothers' energy as children, and this is what binds them. In Particular, Baby Kochamma makes no real distinctions between them throughout the book. It is as though Roy is asserting that original and authentic experience can only be had vicariously. Therefore, two people who have not physically experienced the same thing, cannot retrieve its validity through words. This is what makes the relationship between the twins so significant in the story. They truly are two parts of a whole. They come together, literally, to represent a hybrid.

As I reflect on the themes of this text, I am reminded of a song by Natalie Imbruglia. In this song, she sings: “

Illusion never changed into something real, I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn. You're a little late I'm already torn. It crawled beneath my veins and now, I don't care, I had not luck, I don't miss it all that much, there's just so many things I can't touch I'm torn. I'm all out of faith this is how I feel, I'm cold and I am 'shamed lying naked on the floor.

Roy uses frequent repetition of phrases and curt sentence structures, such as “Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze”, “The sound of passing trains. The light and shade and light and shade that falls on your face if you have a window seat”, “He sat straight”, “Toy watches with the time painted on them”, and “As lonely as a fox,” to indicate the fluidity and shifting of time in this story. The book, in its entirety, is as lyrical as a song. It gives the reader a sensation similar to deja vu. The reader is given glimpses of a building memory throughout the story. History becomes the past bleeding into the present. This repetition is also what make the story have such a poetic and lyrical appeal.

An overriding issue in the novel is the violation of the love laws. “The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much” (33). The forbidden love between Ammu and Velutha ultimately led to the destruction of all the characters. The “love laws,” in this instance, were indirectly governed by the Hindu Caste system. In the Caste system, people are defined and discriminated against based on their genealogy (if known) and appearance, which in tern dictates their occupation and religious practice. The attitudes taken in the story by the characters about the Caste system, closely mirror other historical attitudes concerning discrimination. For instance, during the Apartheid in south Africa, distinctions between Whites and Blacks were also made based on looks and educational level. In 1950, the Population Registration Act required that all South Africans be racially classified into one of three categories: white, black (African), or colored (of mixed decent). Classification were based on appearance, social acceptance, and descent. A white person was defined as ``in appearance obviously a white person or generally accepted as a white person.'' A person would not be considered white if one of their parents were not white. Also, a person would be considered ``obviously white'' based on ``his habits, education, and speech and deportment and demeanor.'' The Department of Home Affairs (a government bureau) was responsible for the classification of the citizens. Those who did not comply with the race laws were dealt with harshly (Chokshi). This can be seen with the way that the relationship between Velutha and Ammu was dealt with. It is the result of this affair, that affected Rahel and Estha for the rest of their lives.

The overall impression that I get from the text-world reading of my passages, is that all of the issues outlined here are ongoing. The past is eternal and unchangeable. Each persons identity and experiences are unique and specific. Throughout history there have been two roles. There is the dominant Colonizer and the subordinate Colonized. Hybridity occurs when the two mix and/or exchange and share cultures. This is what makes this text timeless. The issues may not be directly relatable, or even fathomable for that matter, but the context is definitely a by-product of human nature.

Works Cited

Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Chokshi, Monal. "The History of the Apartheid in South Africa." Computers and the Apartheid Regime in South Africa. 1995. 3 Dec 2008 .

Imbruglia, Natalie. “Torn.” Left of the Middle. LP. BMG Records, 1998.

Roy, Arundhati. 1997. The God of Small Things. London: Flamingo.

Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary Homelands. Essays and Criticism 1981 – 1991. London: Granta Books.

Persepolis

I am really enjoying this piece. As a visual learner, as well as someone who is strong linguistically, as far as Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences goes, I can see how using graphic novels in the classroom is not only effective, but also engaging. As far as my presentation goes in this area, I am definitely partial to those that make a distinction between comic books and graphic novels. Although I agree with this distinction, I don't privilege one over the other. I think that reading is the most important thing... and if you can get people to do that, let alone to enjoy it, then the seeds for the other "intellectual details" have already been planted. I was riveted by the idea of including film and directorial/authorial privilege in this conversation. I believe that as far as visual arts are concerned, the artist tends to have more control over what their audience sees. I don't think that this is a bad thing though. To some extent, what is the point of communicating something if you can't get your point across?

PEACE

Progreesion without progress

I truly believe that there can be progression without progress. One Hundred Years of Solitude is proof of that. Like the characters in the book, I have often lived my life just going through the motions. Wake up at 5:00, go to the Y for and hour and half, take a shower, change diapers, fill juice cups, eggs, pancakes, sausage, fruit, kiss, kiss, kiss, school, homework, home, bills, dishes, dinner, play, diapers, laundry, organize, read...sleep. Each day. Excluding the school part 3 days of the week. I sympathize with Ursula. My children dictate my life mostly, for now anyhow. I have often sensed the silent hum that comes with repetition. I desire repetition. Order. I can control some things. Just like the Buendia family. Perhaps the repetition was their solace. To know what's coming next amidst all of the chaos. To set something in motion, and decide it's end. Isn't that what life really is? What is the point of existence? I watch my children, wandering the house on days when we don't go anywhere, waiting for me to invent something for them/us to do. These are the days when they usually get into the most trouble (like smearing peanut butter on the refrigerator)... If Idle hands are the devil's workshop, then maybe we're just all trying to keep busy so we can stay out of trouble. Biding time until the one in charge invents something for us to do. At the end of the day, I may not have had progress by definition of accomplishment, but there is definite progression. One small battle at a time (in this sense, life is an ongoing civil war, during which we sometimes forget the point of). I made it through the day. Time passes with or without my approval. I can never get those moments back. I wait. I pass the time. Life. One hundred years of experiencing this in solitude. If I get that far.

I'm not sure this is coherent.

Well, this concludes the homework part...My bambinos are jumping on my bed.
Time to play.

The Labyrinth and Solitude

When I think of a labyrinth, it coincided with my thoughts of being alone. I picture the journey into a labyrinth as a solo journey. A spiritual journey even, as was mentioned in class. Perhaps this journey even mimics that of life. I would imagine walking through a labyrinth to symbolize walking through life. You end where you began...ashes to ashes and all that jazz... You can only move forward, to progress...what's the point in regrets, when you can't change what happens... You live it alone...you have to work things out with you. You are the author of your fairytale/nightmare. Since last week's discussion on solitude, I cannot help but notice the solitude of each character in the book. Each character is experiencing solitude in some way. Some characters, like Amaranta and Colonel Aureliano, embrace it, while some, Fernanda and Petra, reject it. Solitude can represent safety and control, but it can also represent loneliness and the fact that no one wants to be around you. Whether or not solitude is self-imposed or forced, makes a huge difference. This may be what the title means. One hundred years...the time span of the novel...of solitude...the different kinds of solitude that exist within the one-hundred year chronicling of the Buendia family.

Maybe.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Solitude is an interesting situation. They say that no one is an island, and this is supposed to make us feel...comfort. The knowledge that we are not alone is intended to insight feelings of camaraderie with our fellow man. This knowledge should create feelings of universality and oneness with humanity. So, if this is true what about all that crap about individuality. We are conversely taught from childhood, if nothing else we innately understand, that we are unique and different. Biologically, anyhow, no two people are alike (so to speak). So what's so bad about solitude again? Doesn't solitude just say that simply, "I (we) are different from you." And in cultural terms, you cannot separate the I from the We. We are Americans. I am American. Maybe these terms don't work for our country, since we are so exclusive of one another. But we are unified in our general experiences. I think what Gabo is describing in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, is what many who have experienced "abnormal" circumstances struggle with. How else can you describe the demeanor with which a victim of a devastating situation can speak about it, after the fact, so matter-of-factly to the utter puzzlement of their listener. I have seen this same puzzled look on people's faces, as I have told stories of my childhood. It becomes clear, that what was normal to me...in my world, was abnormal to others. This knowledge is initially devastating, as it stamps me as an other. But it also gives one access to a very different world. One in which only those who have been to can ever understand. And even then, no one can really ever understand any individual case of any similar situation. The honest truth is, that when you feel alone sometimes you need to own that solitude. To know that you're not crazy for falling apart, you are justified for it because what has happened to you is different and new. Their is no standard for how to act because this situation hasn't even been invented yet. Solitude has two faces. When I look in the mirror, I too see solitude, I too want people to understand what brought it about, but I want it to stay b/c it is what makes me unique. I am ever-justified in this way...their is no standard for reactions. There is no particular way of living. Each situation is different and new. I am justified and welcome to fall apart, or not, at any time.

It made sense to me...

The God of Small Things: Oneness

I was so fired up when I finished the reading. The idea of oneness has always haunted me. I found myself crying during the incest scene between Rahel and Estha, and yet catching myself b/c incest is wrong of course. But I was overwhelmed with compassion for them both. For some reason, as I was reading it I was reacquainted with the emotions that I encountered when I was depressed...the emotions that I still struggle with. And yes, I definitely feel that both twins were depressed. (flat/inappropriate affect, lack of motivation, not finding pleasure in the things that they usually found pleasure in, mainly just being together). During depression, psychologists say that patients seek to find a physical manifestation of the "good" feeling that they may not be feeling internally. (This can be seen in a very graphic sex-scene in Monsters Ball between the two main characters). Patients feel that if they can physically feel good, then perhaps the emotion of feeling good will follow. Couple this with the sensation of lonliness that comes along with the separation from that which you have always known. It is said that patients who experience limb-removal experience a sort of mourning for the physical loss of the limbs that their minds can still feel. This tells me that prostetic parts are not just there for looks. In the absence of said limb(s), the brain is still sending commands for them to do work (out of sheer habit.) Such are these two-egg twins. They were severed from eachother at the train station. Separated, but always experiencing the absence of the other. I can make this connection-

When I had my daughter, I underwent an intense depression at our separation. We were no longer we, but she and I. The day after she was born, I stared at her. Silently. I felt that I would have to get to know her all over again. Separate from me. That oneness was gone. For months after she was born, I found myself talking to my stomach ("what should we eat this morning?"). I felt a gaping emptiness in my womb...As I read, it occured to me that when we are in the womb, and when we are making love, are the only two times that we as humans experience oneness. Perhaps, all mankind is just trying to recreate the oneness that was present at our very first breath. I have loved so hard, that I have wanted to absorb/be absorbed by that which was the object of my affection...(there's a thin line between love and crazy, this almost sounds like canabalism).

When Jill was two, I was in the mall with her, and there was this guy there (in the Sbarro line) staring at her. She was waving and smiling at him, as is typical Jillian, and he just stood there and stared at her. He never said a word, never even smirked. He just watched her. I paid for our food, and quickly walked away utterly freaked out. This saying blared in my mind: "It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." In that moment, as I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities of the terrible things that could happen to my child, I saw that as complete bullshit. I tend to be more morbid than most in a lot of ways. I would have rather never known Jill, (I wouldn't miss her that way anyhow), than to love her like I do and have to suffer the loss of her existence. This is how the God of Small Things ends...was it worth it? I think for Ammu, she would say the same as me. No. She loved those that were hurt in the process too much, and would not have acted had she known the result. But what a beautiful story anyways...I'm just glad it isn't mine to tell.

Blog Paper

Ashique S. Berry
Dr. Paul Gleason
English 303: Non-Western Literature
October 8, 2008
Blog Paper:
Climbing the Reading Ladder
Reading is an activity that I have always enjoyed and felt privileged to participate in. At the beginning of this semester, I was just completing my 6th book for the summer, Richard Wright's Black Boy. I typically spend my summers catching up on literature that I hear referenced during the semester. I believe that the stage that I was, and am currently, at can most efficiently be described as an amalgamation of all three of the stages. (Although, truthfully, I still spend a great deal of my time reading literature by African-American authors, which is a reflection of the fact that I have a lingering position in the “Self” stage.)
The catalyst for my love of literature was its relate-ability potential. Since high school, I would read literature as though there were some common driving force connecting all forms of it. This force was the described to me as “the human experience.” Everybody hurts, so to speak. High school was a difficult era in my life, and literature provided for me a way of escape. Through literature, I could decentralize my thoughts and vicariously experience the lives of others. I found that reading books, listening to music, and watching movies about people in difficult situations took the edge off of my loneliness, and feelings of unwanted and uncomfortable “uniqueness.” It was at this time that I began to see commonalities in texts of all forms. Different texts could insight different feelings, but they could also remind me of each other both explicitly and implicitly. I didn't know it at the time, but I was picking up on intertextuality. My favorite book at the time was Alice Walker's The Color Purple. My initial response was very “I-centered,” but it was what I needed at the time. I read a great deal of African-American literature for the very purpose of finding myself. (I'm still lost on that one.) I never wanted to believe that my experiences were exclusive of others, this would only pay homage to my loneliness. It wasn't until English 150, in college here at Cardinal Stritch, that I began to truly decentralize the “me” from the text, and put names to the possibilities that I had seen in texts.
Deconstruction for me, was a word that represented an overhaul of all my preconceived notions, and prior taught conventions about literature and text. In English 150, we explored such a broad spectrum of texts, and in so many ways, that I began to see literature for all of its correlations, conventions, as well as varying contexts. All of a sudden literature could be compared to art, art could be seen in film, and film could be related to prose. Literature was no longer just books, by definition, in my mind. Text broke free of being words on a page. Everything is suddenly text. Whole movements of literary form existed that I had never even considered. I went from symbolism, to realism, to modernism, and beyond. We worked with paintings, and music, and poetry in relation to each of these historical time frames, and I was awe-struck. From this point, the next logical step was finding the agenda of the author. What was the point of writing this in the first place?
I was first introduce to foreign author's when I took a course called “Images of Women in Literature.” This is when I read the works of non-western feminist authors Helene Cixous, and Gayatry Spivak. In these works I began to wrestle with the issues of cultural decentralization and politics. The question of authenticity presented itself. How does colonization influence a culture's ability to retain it's original forms? Although as an African-American I have always considered my experiences unique from the average American, I never saw the truth in the fact that my experiences were still American. I drudgingly swallowed the hard pill that said that everything is not necessarily relate-able. I was completely removed from the experiences that these women wrote about, by way of respect for their individuality, and reverence for their authenticity. These women wrote about situations that are removed from Westernized culture. They wrote about situations that are removed from me. The purpose being just to let us know. Not for us, as readers and Americans, to necessarily say “I understand what that must be like,” but for us to say “I can't understand what that must be like.” These writers put us in the “know.” A binary is created between knowing things and being in the know. Literature becomes a way of documenting occurrences, in order that we may discuss them, analyze them, hold them to a light and examine their authenticity, and change ourselves accordingly. Literature becomes a small part of history (or her-story).
This semester, I have been re-confronted with the way that I view literature. I noticed that I continue to, whether by way of the subconscious or embedded education, symbol hunt and insist that stories follow the plot diagram. I demand that events make sense, and that the story ends sensibly. When we read Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories I was intrigued. I found the style to be fun and nontraditional. It was more like reading a sophisticated fairy tale. By the time we read Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, I found myself feeling agitated. As I wrote in my blog, “For some reason, my brain seems to want everything to fit in their own places. I am a prisoner of my socialization, education, and over analyzations. This story challenges that part of me.” Reading works like this have been good practice for me. I related to absolutely nothing, and understood very little, in the Murakami piece, although I could read what was being written. It took about 60 pages into the story before I could vaguely follow what was being said. Class-time became invaluable to this aim. Murakami simply reminded me that the text is not about “me” but about the “why.” Complimentary to this, the “why” doesn't need to make sense. I suppose this puts me at number three mostly. This is especially apparent in my reaction towards the Roy piece. I fully realize the uniqueness of the culture in this story, and am attempting to preserve it's integrity in my mind, but not comparing it to other universally human experiences or historical occurrences.
I believe I am on the right path to solidifying this “world “ stage of reading development. My mind is open to the fact that, I don't know certain things, nor can I ever truly. But just as they say in therapy, “The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.” In this case, “the more I know, the more I know that I don't know,” is the most appropriate phrase. This is what makes literature so wonderful in my mind. It is wholly multifaceted, and ever-evolving. Who knows, by the time I get this stage down there may be another.