January 2000

Review of The God of Small Things

 

"Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy."
Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.
Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over.
A cold moth lifted a cold leg.
The cigarette smoke curled into the night. And the fat man and the little girl lay awake in silence. (The God of Small Things, 112-113)

     In her first novel, Arundhati Roy, who received her formal education in architecture, does more than retell a story­she explores the possibilities of human nature. Drawing the reader into the state of Kerala in southern India, she introduces a myriad of characters and reconstructs the interactions of a system of living based on caste. Although the crux of the action takes place in 1969, the novel opens twenty-three years later in the dismal aftermath and broken beings left over from one fatal tragedy which will not be fully explained until the final scenes of the novel. Slowly peeling back layer upon layer and moving among the stories of the various participants, Roy reveals the horrifying series of events which lead to the present carnage.

     Told primarily from the point of view of the two-egg twins, Rahel and Esthappen who are excited by life in general and picture shows in particular, the primary plot unfolds within the Kochamma family: Mammachi, who enjoys playing classical violin; her husband, Pappachi, who was an imperial entomologist; their son, Chacko, who studied in England where he met and married Margaret Kochamma and fathered a daughter, Sophie Mol; their daughter, Ammu, who left her alcoholic husband and moved home with her twins; and Pappachi's sister, Baby Kochamma, former nun despised by the twins. The family owns a pickle factory, started by Mammachi as a cottage industry and then expanded (although to its detriment) by Uncle Chacko after his divorce from Margaret and return to India.

     As the household prepares for a visit from Margaret, whose second husband has recently passed away, and Sophie Mol, they find themselves on the brink of a Marxist revolution. Although Chacko considers himself a proponent of worker's rights, he is nevertheless a factory owner and employer. The local printer, Comrade K.N.M. Pillai inflames local opinion in a bid for political power and a young factory worker of a lower caste, Velutha, who has caught the attention of the twins as well as their mother, is trapped in the middle. As the title character, Velutha offers hope and new life to the Kochamma household and the rigid society of Ayemenem. The twins love him for his imaginative play, and Ammu is drawn to his acknowledgment of life's simple pleasures.

One of the most striking features of the work is Roy's expansive prose. Beginning one chapter,

Filth had laid seige to the Ayemenem House like a medieval army advancing on an enemy castle. It clotted every crevice and clung to the windowpanes.
Midges whizzed in teapots. Dead insects lay in empty vases.
The floor was sticky. White walls had turned an uneven gray. Brass hinges and door handles were dull and greasy to the touch. Infrequently used plug points were clogged with grime. Lightbulbs had a film of oil on them. The only things that shone were the giant cockroaches that scurried around like varnished gofers on a film set. (The God of Small Things, 84)

her metaphors pour across the page, moving the reader to a universe of her own creation. Although the foreshadowing is at times tedious, her slow meting out of details heightens the experience of revulsion when the final events are at last told in full. The interweaving of past and present, along with the interjections of an omniscient narrator, place the characters in different situations demonstrating that hasty judgement is inappropriate. For every mean or petty action executed in the present moment by Ammu or Baby Kochamma or Mammachi, there are a host of equally appalling incidents in their past lives that have been acted against them. With human nature, anything is possible, and in these brief pages we certainly experience, "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy." (The God of Small Things, 112)

More books by Roy