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.