重組微物：阿蘭達蒂‧洛伊《微物之神》中的地方和生活空間

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(1)♁ 國立中山大學外國語文學系研究所碩士論文 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE NATIONAL SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY. 重組微物：阿蘭達蒂‧洛伊《微物之神》中的地方和生活空間 Remapping the Small Things: Place and Life Space in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. 研究生：孫筱菁撰 By: Sun Siao Jing 指導教授：洪敏秀博士 Advisor: Dr. Min-hsiou Rachel Hung. 中華民國九十八年七月 July 2009.

(2) Acknowledgements. I would like to express my gratitude to several people who help me so much in my study life of graduate school. First and foremost, my advisor Dr. Min-hsiou Rachel Hung for her patience and kindness encourages me to complete the thesis. Without her guidance and assistance, I could not finish the thesis with consistency. I am also very grateful for my committee members, Professor Hsin-ya Huang and Professor Jade Tsui-Yu Lee, for their thorough reading and insightful comments. Professor Huang and Prof. Lee are also my dearest and respected teachers who instructed and inspired me to study literature when I was a college student in National Kaohsiung Normal University. Moreover, I would like to give my special thanks to Professor Ting-yao Luo who inspires me to study the small things of the novel and provides me many perceptive and useful suggestions. During my school life, I am most thankful to Professor Yu-san Yu whose kindness supports me to complete my thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my best friend Yu-li Lin who often inspires me when I suffer in writer’s block and accompanies me through my entire student life..

(3) 論文名稱：重組微物：阿蘭達蒂．洛伊《微物之神》中的地方和生活空間校所組別：國立中山大學外國語文學系研究所畢業年度與提要別：九十七學度第二學期碩士學位論文提要研究生：孫筱菁指導教授：洪敏秀. 博士. 論文內容提要：阿蘭達蒂．洛伊的《微物之神》描述微小事物構成的世界，任一微小事物和生活在當地阿耶門連的人們都有重要關連性，特別是對故事中主角雙胞胎瑞海兒和艾斯沙而言。本論文藉由重組阿耶門連此地散落各處的微小事物來審視地方、空間與人三者間的交織關係。地方之所以具有意義是因為生活在其中的人們，其個人歷史、社會關係和個人經驗對地方產生了生活空間的認知感。因此，地方的意義，應該取決於個人對地方的體驗，而不是單純地受外在環境和官方敘事的描述所主宰。個人對地方的認同來自於個人的生活空間，人對於微小事物的感受和認知形成了生活空間。本論文第一章旨在探討人們對地方的認知主要是受到個人歷史和個人經驗所影響，而非單純的隨著地理外在形貌的改變而有所變更。雙胞胎瑞海兒和艾斯沙被維魯沙之死所遺留的微小事物禁制於當時的時空。儘管地景外貌已變，人事已非，雙胞胎對地方的認知卻始終停滯在當時悲劇發生的空間。第二章透過討論微物之神維魯沙以其賤民身份在阿耶門連上所遇到的困境和壓迫，企圖重現地方和人之間的社會關係。第三章重組地方上微小的事物再現人們對地方的認知，並呈現當地的生活空間。本章著重生活空間因地方和人之間的交互運作而生，而人的生活經驗和生活空間同時也建構人對地方的認知。.

(4) 關鍵字：生活經驗、地方、微小事物、社會關係、空間.

(5) Abstract. In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy depicts a world constituted by small things, and each small thing attaches its significance with those who live in Ayemenem, especially for the twins Rahel and Estha. By remapping the small things scattered in Ayemenem, this thesis aims to explore the interrelation between place, people, and space. Place is meaningful for those who live there when their personal history, social relation, and personal experience produce life space and thus have the sense of place. Therefore, place is defined by the personal experience, not the changes of landscape or political history. The sense of place is developed from life space which is formed by small things that people perceive and conceive. Chapter One focuses that place is identified by personal history and experience, not by the changes of landscape. The twins are traumatized by the small things that trace Velutha’s death and are confined in the space constructed by the past memories. Even though the landscape and people of Ayemenem become different, the twins still sense Ayemenem consistent with its past. The small things are left in Ayemenem by the god of small things, Velutha, who belongs to subaltern group. Chapter two illustrates the social relation between place and people through the dilemma and oppression he faces. By remapping the small things of the novel, Chapter Three represents how people identify place to produce their life space. Life space is produced from the interrelation between people and place, while the sense of place is constructed by people’s life experience and life space. Key words: life experience, personal history, place, small things, social relation, space.

(6) Table of Contents. Introduction………………………………………………………..……..1. Chapter One Place and Personal History………………………………………..….....17. Chapter Two Subaltern Identities in Small Things…………………...……………..…43. Chapter Three Small Things and Life Space…………………………………………....65. Conclusion…………………...…….…………………………………....86. Works Cited………...…………………………………….……………..92.

(7) Introduction. The flying moth, monsoon, and smell are some of the small things that keep recurring in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, and these small things scattering in the novel construct a world which needs to be examined: “Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story” (32). The flying moth, once discovered by Pappachi, haunts him and his children. As an Imperial Entomologist at the Pusa Institute in New Delhi, Pappachi repines at the truth that the moth does not name after him, for when he first discovers the moth, the moth is confirmed as a “slightly unusual race of a well-known species” (48). However, twelve years later, because of a radical taxonomic reshuffle, Pappachi’s moth becomes “a separate species and genus hitherto unknown to science” and is named after other person (48). The regret thus torments Pappachi, and his “black moods and sudden bouts of temper” are embodied in the moth transmitting to Ammu, Rahel and Estha. Beside the new species of Indian moth, the brooding monsoon with heavy rainfall penetrates the whole novel (48). It is raining when Rahel returns to Ayemenem in 1992, and she almost forgets how damp the monsoon air could be. Because of the unusual rain in December, 1969, Sophie Mol is drawn in the river which overturns the small boat. It is also in the rain when Velutha crosses the river, meets his fate, and is beaten by the policemen in 1969. The rain thus plays a crucial part in the novel. Monsoon, in fact, represents the typical climate in India. Ayemenem, the place where the story of The God of Small Things happens, is in.

(8) Sun 2. Kottayam, one of the 14 districts in the state of Kerala, the southeast India. In Kerala, most of the rivers are small due to environmental factors. Kerala’s rivers thus face many problems, including summer droughts, the building of large dams, sand mining, and pollution. Since the small rivers are entirely fed by monsoon rains, monsoon is very important for Kottayam people. Without raining, droughts would cause the famine as the situation happens in the novel. In Kottayam, there are two monsoon seasons, the south-west monsoon and the north-east monsoon. The south-west monsoon is from June to August. The north-east monsoon starts from October and ends in November. December, January and February are cool, while March, April and May are hot. In The God of Small Things, Rahel returns with the June rain, the rain on Estha who could not feel it, for he is confined in the space of the “sicksweet” smell, “like old roses on a breeze” (32). This smell like a ghost haunts Rahel and Estha through the novel and hides in ordinary things around them. They learn this “History smell” from Velutha, the god of small things for Rahel and Estha. It is the smell that only exists in Rahel and Estha’s history with Velutha. The “History” means a particular period of time when Rahel and Estha smell Velutha’s blood, and they remember it as History smell. This History smell connects the past and the present of the twins with Ayemenem where they witness how Velutha is beaten by the police to near death. From the special Indian moth, monsoon, and smell, it seems that there is a relation interweaving behind these small things, and they all relate to the place, Ayemenem. Besides moths, monsoon, and smell, many small things scatter in Ayemenem, including cupboards, holes, footprints, and toys, etc. By remapping the small things in place, this thesis aims to discover the meaning behind the small things.

(9) Sun 3. and the interrelation between the small things and place. Actually, small things are people’s life experience connecting people with place. People experience different small things to situate themselves in place. Moth, monsoon, and smell are some examples that people sense and perceive from the place, Ayemenem. People live with these small things in place and experience them in place. The different senses for small things form different life experiences for people, and life experiences also shape how people feel about place. Their life experiences thus form their sense of place that produce space where people live and experience. For instance, the sicksweet smell that Rahel and Estha sense becomes space confining both Rahel and Estha in the terrifying past when they witness the violence of the police. Space thus is formed by people’s life experience from place where people live to gain their sense of place. To elaborate what place and space are how they are interrelated, this thesis starts with the definition of place from Lucy Lippard’s The Lure of the Local and J. Hillis Miller’s Topographies. For the interrelation between people and place, the ideas from Tim Cresswell’s Place: A Short Introduction and Doreen Massey’s “A Global Sense of Place” would be examined. The difference and interrelation between place and space would be clarified from Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place. The concepts of space and the ideas how space connects with people’s life experience would be introduced from Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space and Edward W. Soja’s Thirdspace. In addition to clarifying the ideas of place, this thesis also analyzes how place and space connect with people’s life experience from the small things in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. According to Lucy Lippard, place is “temporal and spatial, personal and political,” for place is “a layered location” involving time, history, and memory that.

(10) Sun 4. connect human life (7). Place is temporal because place records the events and the histories of human life. Following the changes of the landscape, history is layered by the time. For example in The God of Small Things, Meenachal River in Ayemenem is a wide river in the 1960s, while it becomes a small stream because the dam blocks the water in the 1990s. One can tell the difference and the history of a place from its changes of appearance. Place is spatial since place forms the space that people conceive, perceive and live in. Place is personal because people know where they live from their own senses and experience. Place is also political while place is constructed by social relation. Place undergoes the social process and connects people with their life experience and forms the space where people live and have the sense of place. Miller’s idea on Topography indicates that the name of place implies the history of place. From the name of place, one can tell the story and history behind the place. Miller explains how this word, Topography, is formed: it “combines the Greek word topos, place, with the Greek word graphein, to write” (3). The meaning of Topography transforms several times. First, Topography means “the art of mapping by graphic signs rather than words” (3). Then, it becomes “the name for what is mapped, apparently without any reference to writing or other means of representation” (3). In the final transformation, as “the name of the map,” Topography is carried “to name what is mapped” (4). The power of naming is so great that it could even project the landscape in front of people’s eyes. We see the landscape as though it were already a map, complete with place names and the names of geographical feature. [. . .] You can get to the place by way of its name. Place names make a site already the product of a.

(11) Sun 5. virtual writing, a topography, or, since the names are often figures, a “topotropography.” (Topography 4) Therefore, from the name of place, the history of the place has been recorded. Place reveals its own history. Both Lippard and Miller point out that place implies the human history. Place inscribes human life and history, which provides the idea for Chapter One in which Ayemenem where the story of The God of Small Things happens represents the life and history for those who live there. To study place, Cresswell analyzes that place could be approached at three levels through the history of place studies in Place: A Short Introduction. The first level is a descriptive approach. This approach is based on the common sense that the world is constructed by places, so each place could be a unique subject to study. Regional geographers often use the “ideographic” approach to study the place with the concerns of “the distinctiveness and particularity,” such as the study of “The Geography of the North of England” or “The Soul of San Francisco” (Cresswell 51). This approach focuses on the particularity of one place, but the general idea of place is not sufficient. This thesis does not exclusively appropriate Cresswell’s theory to explore the particularity of Ayemenem, but rather by researching the small things of Ayemenem as the examples of place’s particularity, the thesis aims to unveil the interrelation between small things and people, people and place, and place and space. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the social relation of a place as Cresswell’s social constructionist approach by using the distinctiveness and particularity of the place as examples to support to explore the social relation of the place. In a study of place, it requires examining the relation between people and place..

(12) Sun 6. Therefore, the second level of Cresswell’s place study helps to explore the connection between Ayemenem and those who live there. The second level is a social constructionist approach. This approach still concerns the distinctiveness and particularity of places but only as examples of the social process. Marxists, feminists and post-structuralists might take this approach to study the social structure of the places which explain the uniqueness of the places and to pinpoint how the places are formed under “capitalism, patriarchy, heterosexism, post-colonialism and a host of other structural conditions” (Cresswell 51). Therefore, Chapter Two tries to reveal the social relation between people and place by representing the dilemma of subaltern group under the social structure of Ayemenem. In studying place by constructionist approach, Doreen Massey tries to explore how the social process of place is formed in the article entitled “A Global Sense of Place.” Cresswell indicates that Massey’s definition of place comes from her challenge to David Harvey’s idea of time-space compression. According to Harvey, “Place, in whatever guise, is like space and time, a social construct” in “From Space to Place and Back Again” (293). Cresswell points out that Harvey discovers that place is under time-space compression due to the “political economy of place construction under capitalism” (Cresswell 57). In short, following Harvey’s explanation, Cresswell agrees, the global flows of people, information, products and capital are the reasons of anxiety and need to be resisted (Cresswell 71). Therefore, at the beginning of Massey’s paper, she questions the assumptions of time-space compression and globalization. Massey indicates that the idea of time-space compression is the product from the perspective of capitalism, which ignores gender and race that are also factors of global.

(13) Sun 7. processes. By using examples of people’s movement, she observes that some people are forced to move, some move whenever they want, and while others are forced to stay. Massey explains that if we only focus on the binarism between the fixity of place and the flows of capital, we would miss the particularity of people’s movement. She points out:“Power-geometry of time-space compression, different social groups and individuals are placed diversely” (Massey 149). From the point of power-geometry, it not only concerns about who moves and who cannot move but also involves the power of flows and movement. Most of the time, those who can move around and with the place communicate simultaneously own the power of control in some ways. They could be businessmen who distribute movies, control news, organize investments and the international currency transactions. They belong to a social group who really dominates time-space compression. They could use it and turn into their advantages, and thus time-space compression also increases their power and influence. Massey indicates that this way to think time-space compression makes us return to the question of what place or a sense of place is. This is the reason why she asks “how do we think about ‘locality?’” (151). To answer the question that she proposes, Massey redefines the idea of place. She analyzes Kilburn in the north-west of London as an example. Though Kilburn may have its own “character,” it is not a “seamless, coherent identity, a single sense of place which everyone shares” (Massey 153). The routes that people come here, the favorite place they like to visit, and the connection they made (the way using the phone or email, or the way connecting memory and imagination with this place) between Kilburn and other places in the world are all varied. Massey proposes that if people have multiple identities, one could also confirm the multiple identities of a.

(14) Sun 8. place. What gives a place its particularity is not some kind of long internalized history implying political history, but the interrelation between a specific place and its social relation. Therefore, Massey urges not to view places as areas with borders but to imagine place as “moments in networks of social relations and understandings” (154). Massey emphasizes that the significance of place is its social relation with people. While reviewing Velutha’s social dilemma due to his subaltern identity, this thesis would apply Massey’s definition of place. Massey concludes her paper with three concepts of place. First, places in process are not “static.” Places have their interrelation with society. These interrelations are certainly not frozen in time but are processes. Second, place has multiple identities and history. Place does not have a “single, unique identity.” In fact, place is “full of internal conflicts” such as the conflicts between social groups in Ayemenem. Third, the uniqueness of place is defined by its interrelation with society, but not by its long internalized history (Massey 155-56). As a result, Massey defines place as processes constructed by social interrelations, but Massey’s social relations are not just confined in capitalism. Her social structure is more open and takes into consideration other elements, such as race or gender. Cresswell, Harvey, and Massey all indicate that place is a social process. Place connects people with social relations. In the social structure of a place, the social relations could be demonstrated from the structure of class. Therefore, by illustrating the social dilemma Velutha encounters, the social relation of Ayemenem is represented. However, in Lippard’s explanation, place is not only political and social but also personal and spatial. Therefore, to study place, one need not only research the social relation between people and place but also the interrelation between personal.

(15) Sun 9. experiences and place. Thus, Cresswell’s third level of approach for place study could further interpret the interrelation between people and place by focusing on personal experiences with the idea of space and place. Cresswell’s third level of place study is a phenomenological approach. The essence of human existence is necessary. Human geographers who use this approach concern “Place” rather than “places” (Cresswell 51). Place represents how people face the world by focusing on “subjectivity” and “experience,” not “the cool, hard logic of spatial science” (Cresswell 20). Yi-Fu Tuan remarks that the main concern of his book Space and Place is how humans experience and understand the world. Tuan defines place through a comparison with space. He points out the relations of space and place: “‘Space’ is more abstract than ‘place’” (Tuan 6). Place has a sense of value and belonging, while space is for abstract discussions of special science. He elaborates that a sense of space is open and allows “movement,” while place is “pause” (Tuan 6). “Each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place” (Tuan 6). To understand place, one could know it through “experience” (Tuan 6). “Experience can be direct and intimate, or it can be indirect and conceptual” (Tuan 6). For example, people know their home intimately, and they could only know their country is large. People could also know a place conceptually as well as intimately. They could explain concepts but may not express well from his senses of “touch, taste, smell, hearing, and even vision” (Tuan 6). Personal experiences thus are significant, while people identify place through their sensory experiences as what Rahel and Estha perceive in their home town, Ayemenem. In Space and Place, Tuan tries to define what place is instead of focusing on the “cultural particularities” of places (Tuan 5). He aims to figure out the concept of place..

(16) Sun 10. He explains that since place is a “pause,” place could exist at many scales: “At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth” (Tuan 149). Cresswell points out a phenomenological approach for place, but Tuan suggests that one could study place from their homes because home is most intimate for people, and feminists argue that home for women or children could be the source of horror. Indeed some places are “oppressive and exploitative,” they are still the way how people “experience the world—through and in place” (Cresswell 50). Therefore, personal experience is significant for place studies. This idea of place could be applied on reading Rahel and Estha, for their life experience and personal history form their sense of the place, Ayemenem. In studying place, Cresswell points out that a social constructionist approach and a phenomenological approach relate to each other since the place people live—favorite rooms, neighbors, and nations—could be analyzed as the product of social processes, and these places are also examples to demonstrate an understanding that human has to live in place. Place has complex relationships with people, and people experience the world through place (Cresswell 50). Place has close relationships with people who live in it, and there are two approaches to study place, from the social structure or from the interrelation with people. Therefore, to study place, one needs to know the interrelation between place and people. Cresswell thus concludes in Place: A Short Introduction that while researching and writing place, one needs to understand “the physical world, both ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’, the processes of meaning production and the practices of power that mark relations between social groups (122).. Place is produced by those who constitute a “society,” while place is. also the key that produce human relations. In other word, place is the center of human.

(17) Sun 11. beings (Cresswell 123). A study of place explains how people experience the world and express their interrelation with place. Therefore, in order to study the small things scattering all over Ayemenem, it is necessary to explore how small things are connected with those who live in Ayemenem. People experience the small things through place. It is essential to study the social relation between people and place and how people conceive and perceive the small things from the place. Place thus is personal and political at the same time. Place is personal, for people have their life experience with place, while place is political since place relates to people with its social relations. In fact, place is not only personal and political but also temporal and spatial. In the definition of place, Lippard points out that the place is spatial. Yi-Fu Tuan explains the difference between place and space and points out that space is as important as place, while place and space both relate to peoples’ life experience. Lefebvre also emphasizes the significance of experience. He remarks that sensory experience of human body constructs space. “Within the senses (from the sense of smell to sight, treated as different within a differentiated field) prefigure the layers to social space and their interconnections” (Lefebvre 405). Therefore, personal experience is significant for both place and space. Since people experience small things from place to produce their sense of place, place forms the space that people conceive, perceive and live in. Therefore, to study the place, one also needs to study its spatiality. Based on Lefebvre’s space theory, Soja has developed the “trialectics of spatiality” in order to break the binary notions of spatiality, including the oppositions of objective versus subjective, material versus mental, real versus imagined, and space.

(18) Sun 12. versus place. Thirdspace is thus the term emphasized in Soja’s study of spatiality. Soja indicates that there are Firstspace, Secondspace, and Thirdspace in the “trialectics of spatiality.” Soja explains that Firstspace, perceived space (espaca perçu) in Lefebvre’s term, is “a material and materialized ‘physical’ spatiality that is directly comprehended in empirically measurable configurations,” such as “sites and situations,” “multitude of materialized phenomena across spaces and places,” and “the concrete and mappable geographies” (74-75). Firstspace accents objectivity and materiality. Firstspace is the traditional domain of human geography to explore “the historicality and sociality of spatial forms” and inquiry how human spatiality are socially produced (Soja 76). Relatively human geographers thus seek the social production of Firstspace either in “individual and collective psychologies” or in “the social processes and practices presumed to be underlying and structuring the production of material spatialities.” Marxist geographers explain the uneven development of the material worlds through appeals to “class analysis, the labor theory of value, and the evolving historical effects of the interplay between social relations of production and the development of the productive force” (Soja 77). Thus, the study of Firstspace tends to focus on “presumably non-spatial variables, behaviors, and social activity such as historical development, class consciousness, cultural preferences, and rational economic choice” (Soja 77). In contrast to the materiality of Firstspace, Secondspace is a conceived space (espace conçu) that is “primarily produced through discursively devised representations of space, through the spatial workings of mind” (Soja 79). Secondspace is subjective and imagined. “Secondspace is the interpretive locale of the creative artist and artful architect, visually or literally re-presenting the world in the.

(19) Sun 13. image of their subjective imaginaries” (Soja 79). Despise the binary oppositions of perceived space and conceived space, Soja and Lefebvre propose the “trialectics of spatiality.” “Space is social morphology: it is to lived experience what form itself is to the living organism, and just as intimately bound up with function and structure” (Lefebvre 94). In Soja’s explanation, this lived space (espace vécu) is his Thirspace, the space “as directly lived, with all its intractability intact, a space that stretches across the images and symbols that accompany it, the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’” (67). Thirdspace is “comprised of all three spatialities—perceived, conceived, and lived—with no one inherently privileged a priori” (Soja 68). Soja’s idea of Thirdspace actually includes all the spatialities, Firstspace and Secondspace. This thesis would adopt Soja’s idea of Thirdspace by using the term “life space” instead of “Thirdspace” because the thesis aims to focus on life experience that people perceive, conceive, and live. Life means “the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual” and “one or more aspects of the process of living” in the definition of Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2009). The meaning of life space is literally more specific than the term “Thirdspace,” and life space focuses on people’s life experiences. Life space is a space where people live, experience and practice. In The God of Small Things, the small things that Rahel and Estha experience form their life space, a unique space confining them in quiescent time and thus influencing their sense of place. By remapping the small things of the novel, this thesis discovers that the small things relate to the characters with the place and their life space. The small things are local as the examples above, the Indian moth, monsoon, and smells. These small things all relate to the place, Ayemenem in Kottayam, the district of Kerala, the.

(20) Sun 14. southeast India. Based on the small things, there is a story, a history that connects people with place. Therefore, Chapter One focuses on the histories with the place by adopting Miller’s and Lippard’s ideas of place. Miller indicates that place conveys its own history. From the name of place or the changes of place, one can retell the history of place. However, place is not only historical but also personal and political in Lippard’s view. In the place, there is a history representing its interrelation between people and place. By demonstrating the past and the present of three main locations of the novel, this chapter argues that place is identified with personal experience and personal history, not by the changes of outer landscape or political history. In The God of Small Things, there are many small things relating to the twins Rahel and Estha who are traumatized by the memory of the tragedy for the god of small things, Velutha. The twins are forced to separate from each other and lose their ability to sense the world, so their sense of place thus maintains in the past in spite of the changes of place. To conceive the world once again, the twins need to be united in order to complete each other’s emptiness because they share joint identities of a single Siamese soul. Until they fill each other’s emptiness, the frozen time begins to flow, and they regenerate their sense of place for Ayemenem. In studying the small things of The God of Small Things, the thesis aims to explore the connections between the small things and people in Ayemenem. Chapter One focuses on the small things and the twins in Ayemenem, and Chapter Two examines the small things and Velutha since he is the god of small things for the twins, leaving the traces of small things that traumatize the twins. He is also the god of small things for Ayemenem. Because of his subaltern identity, he is a nonentity as the insignificant small things. By representing Velutha’s dilemma as subaltern, Chapter.

(21) Sun 15. Two aims to reveal the social relation of the place, Ayemenem, to see how the caste system and Marxism influence this place. By adopting Massey’s definition of place and Cresswell’s constructionist approach, especially the second level of his place study, Chapter Two continues to work on the interrelation between people and place. People develop their sense of place from society. Place represents the social relation between people and place in society which could be displayed by its social structure, especially the structure of class. Ayemenem exemplifies the representations of the social structure of class. Under the social structure of Ayemenem, the life of subaltern group expresses the sense of place and the unique meaning of place for those who live here. Belonging to the subaltern group under the caste system, the dilemma that Velutha faces reveals the social relation between people and place in Ayemenem. Following Chapter Two on the relation between place and people, Chapter Three remaps the small things of the novel. By analyzing each small thing, Chapter Three tries to figure out how the small things produce life spaces of people in Ayemenem. The small things are classified into three categories. The first one is the sensory experience, including smell, taste, sunglass, and goosebumps. The second one is the relics of the history, including stains, footprints, and toys. The third one is the roots of place, including monsoon and moth. Tuan’s and Lefebvre’s theories help to elaborate the significance of human experience. Tuan indicates that people form their sense of place from experience, while Lefebvre points out that experience constructs space, the space where people conceive, perceive, and live. Human experience thus constructs life space where people live, experience, and practice. From the small things that Rahel and Estha feel and experience, Chapter Three tries to represent the interrelation between people and place to see how people’s life experience from the place they live.

(22) Sun 16. in to construct their life space. By remapping the small things with the place, the thesis aims to manifest the interrelations of people and place. From the connection of small things and the twins, the thesis reveals that place is identified by personal experience. With the dilemma of the god of small things, place as processes constructed by social relation is represented. People’s life experience that connects small things with the place constitutes their life space. The sense of place thus is formed by personal experience and life space through the social relation between people and place..

(23) Sun 17. Chapter One Place and Personal History. A story begins with its characters, settings, and events. When writers tell stories, they depict the landscape. The landscape thus shapes the story, and the story depicts the landscape. Arundhati Roy begins her story, The God of Small Things with a place, Ayemenem: “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month” (3). How is this place related to those who live here? In Topographies, J. Hillis Miller introduces: “Topographical setting connects literary works to a specific historical and geographical time. This establishes a cultural and historical setting within which the action can take place” (6-7). What Roy depicts Ayemenem involves its particular culture, histories, and memories. Following the time, the landscape changes its figure by the forces of nature or artificiality. Could the changes of landscape’s appearance represent the history of place? By representing the past and the present of the three main locations in Ayemenem, this chapter aims to figure out how place is identified with those who live there. Ayemenem House, Meenachal River, and History House are the three locations that the story of The God of Small Things takes place. Small things left in these locations have been haunting the twins Rahel and Estha since Velutha’s death. Despite the official history that describes the reason of Velutha’s death, the twins bear in mind the sullen truth: they are also persecutors who kill Velutha. Even though the landscape of Ayemenem becomes different in 1992, the twins are stuck in the traumatic memory of Velutha’s death. Their sense of place for Ayemenem remains in 1969. Until they fill each other’s emptiness, the frozen time.

(24) Sun 18. begins to flow, and they regenerate their sense of place for Ayemenem. Through the twins’ sense of place, this chapter explores the sense of place which is formed by personal history. Rahel and Estha’s sense of Ayemenem is constructed by their life experience, their traumatic memory for Velutha, not by the outer changes of landscape in Ayemenem. To unveil the meaning of the places in Roy’s The God of Small Things, this chapter adopts Miller’s idea of Topography and Lucy Lippard’s definition of place. Miller’s Topography means that place conveys its own history. The name of place retells the changes of landscapes. Moreover, topography could function as “parable or allegory,” which personifies the figure of landscape (Topography 4). Miller further explains what involves in the naming of places. That is “the politics of nationalism” when the place names “involve border demarcations and territorial appropriations” (Topography 5). Names of places depict the landscape, while the power of naming is so strong that the name even replaces the figure of the landscape in people’s mind. It is quite interesting to find that illustrative metaphors, despite their original spatial and material reference, transform into conceptual terms, so Miller questions that place names such as “Key West,” “Egdon Heath,” and “The Quiet Woman Inn,” would “have a function beyond that of mere setting or metaphorical adornment” (7). Therefore, to find out the meaning under the place is crucial. One could figure out the story behind the place from its history, culture, and memory. Lawrence Buell also suggests that “place-making” is a “culturally inflected process” in which nature and culture are mutuality (67). Place is a process involving landscape and its people. Place as Miller and Buell describe has interrelation with those who live there. Miller points out the history of place layers by time as one could retell the history of.

(25) Sun 19. place from its changes of landscape, while Lippard proposes that place is not only temporal but also spatial, personal and political. Place is layered by the history of those who live there. “It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there” (Lippard 7). In the definition of place, Massey also confirms that the particularity of place is defined by its interrelation with people. However, Lippard’s connection of place involves more: the layering history of place with personal experience. Ayemenem of 1969 is certainly different Ayemenem of 1992. The history of place is not only told by the appearance of landscape but also by people’s sense of place. From The God of Small Things, the political history of Ayemenem is represented by the changes of landscape in Ayemenem House, Meenachal River, and History House, while the personal history is told from what had happened to Rahel and Estha from 1969 to 1992. Through Rahel and Estha’s sense of place, this chapter unveils that place is identified by personal history and life experience.. Ayemenem House, Meenachal River, and History House From Miller’s point of view, the story of The God of Small Things could be told from its setting. For place reveals its own history, the changes of landscape’s appearance retell the story that happened here. One could pinpoint how Roy sets The God of Small Things in Ayemenem, where the history had live performance in front of seven-year-old-twins. The story begins with Rahel’s return after the terror happened twenty-three years later. She is one of the twins who witnessed Velutha’s death, the man she, her brother Estha, and her mother Ammu loved. Twenty-three years ago, Ammu divorced and brought the twins back to Ayemenem, where she had no legal.

(26) Sun 20. right as a married daughter. According to Baby Kochamma, Ammu’s aunt, “a married daughter had no position in her parents’ home” (45). All the properties belonged to her brother, Chacko, as he said, “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is also mine” (56). The twins were too young to understand their mother’s position in the family. They were just like two naïve and happy frogs to learn the world. There were simple happiness when “a dragonfly they’d caught lifted a small stone off their palms with its legs, or when they had permission to bathe the pigs, or they found an egg hot from a hen” (45). It seemed the disappearance of their father left the windows of their hearts that were wildly open and welcomed to everyone. They were willing “to love people who didn’t really love them” (42), so Ammu sometimes hurts them just for “an education, a protection” (42). For her, the twins are like a pair of small frogs passing a highway, easily to get hurt by trucks that obliviously would hurt them. When Ammu was eight months pregnant of the twins, it was October of 1962. The war was going to break out between India and China, so in the rumors of “Chinese occupation and India’s impending defeat,” Ammu gave birth to the twins. She was happy to have them, but she was not aware of “the single Siamese soul” in her two egg twins (40). In fact, no one discovers the truth that the two egg twins possess the single Siamese soul. They are like two “stacked spoons” and cannot be separated (311). “They were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities” (5). To them, there are only “me” and “us” but no separated “he” and “she” as other people perceive. The twins are made of one soul. “The confusion lay in a deeper, more secret place” (4). However, even the twins themselves do not recognize this confusion. From the instinct, they know themselves as one, but they do not really understand the importance of being together. Only when they are forced to.

(27) Sun 21. separate, they would know why it is essential for them to get together. Therefore, when they are young, as normal two eggs twins, they have different personalities. From their appearance or their personalities, no one would get confused to define who is who. As Roy says, this story could be told in various ways. “[T]o say that it all began when Sophie Mol, the daughter of the twins’s uncle Chacko and his British ex-wife Margaret came to Ayemenem is only one way of looking at it” (32). Brinda Bose thus expresses: “All histories, as we all know now, are re-told in various ways. There is no one story that endures; who tells the tale and who listens is almost as important as who broke the Laws in the first place” (67). As Roy begins this book with Ayemenem, the Ayemenem House is the primary stage where all the characters had their performance. Here Ayemenem House is just a setting in the story. It has not yet made the sense of place for the twins. When Sophie Mol’s came in December, 1969, the Ayemenem House was in its prime time: “Nine steep steps led from the driveway up to the front verandah. The elevation gave it the dignity of a stage and everything that happened there took on the aura and significance of performance” (158). This beautiful grand house belonged to an Anglophile family who had the generations of good breeding and reputation. Converted to Syrian Christianity, this classic bourgeois family owned lands of Ayemenem and the “Paradise Pickles and Preserves” factory founded by Mammachi, the twins’ grand mother. In 1876, the twins’ grand grand father, Baby Kochamma’s father, Reverend E. John Ipe had been blessed by the Syrian Bishop and thus was known as “Punnyan Kunju—Little Blessed One” (23). The twins’ grand father, Pappachi, “had been an Imperial Entomologist at the Pusa Institute. After Independence, when the British left, his designation was changed from.

(28) Sun 22. imperial Entomologist to Joint Director, Entomology” (47-48). The twins’ uncle, Chacko, an Oxford scholar, has divorced a British woman Margaret and has a daughter, Sophie Mol. This is a noble Touchable family having Syrian religion, good education, and even British relatives. Now all the members of the family, Mammachi, Baby Kochamma, Ammu, and the twins are all in their position welcoming Sophie Mol, a girl who has Pappachi’s (the Imperial Entomologist) nose in Mammachi’s opinion. The grand play of welcoming Sophie Mol began at the Ayemenem House: “on one side of the driveway, beside the old well, in the shade of the kodam puli tree, a silent blue-aproned army gathered in the greenheat to watch” (164), the workers of the factory all waited for Sophie Mol. In this grand play, the Ayemenem House watched people who live inside as the outsider “[a]s though it had little to do with the people who lived in it. Like an old man with rheumy eyes watching children play, seeing only transience in their shrill elation and their wholehearted commitment to life” (157). Susan Strehle also indicates the Ayemenem House is “distant and detached, indifferent to the inhabitants” (131). The Ayemenem House represents the grand history and watches coldly what happened and would happen to the family. “The old man/house/nation takes the long view from a great age, overlooking the transient children immersed in time: they are small things to a family priding itself in its grandness and antiquity” (Strehle 132). For the grand history, they are just small lives. While the show of welcoming Sophie Mol was playing, the house was constructed with orders. It seems like an old decent gentleman with his clean suit, just like Pappachi wearing his “well-pressed three-piece” in the “stifling Ayemenem heat,” sweat inside the suit (48). Secrets exist inside the house as Roy depicts the house:.

(29) Sun 23. The steep tiled roof had grown dark and mossy with age and rain. The triangular wooden frames fitted into the gables were intricately carved, the light that slanted through them and fell in patterns on the floor was full of secrets. Wolves. Flowers. Iguanas. Changing shape as the sun moved through the sky. (157) Simon G. Barnabas thus indicates that the Ayemenem House symbolizes the moral decadence of Ayemenem. From the earl indifferent appearance of the Ayemenem House, the horrible secrets of the family members reveal from their “hypocrisy, vanity, brutishness, male chauvinism, sexual jealousy, despicable colonial feelings, callousness” (Barnabas 300). Strehle also points out that this description uncovers “the legacies of patriarchal arrogance, caste racism, and gender oppression that run through several generations of Ipes” (132). However, these secrets did not damage it because at that time, everything still functioned well and followed the social law. A man beating his wife and daughter, as Pappachi did, is allowed in this patriarchal society. The grand appearance of the house represents Pappachi’s behavior. Outside the house, Pappachi “was charming and urbane with visitors, and stopped just short of fawning on them if they happened to be white” (171). He acted as a nice man and even “donated money to orphanages and leprosy clinics. However, inside the house, “alone with his wife and children he turned into a monstrous, suspicious bully, with a streak of vicious cunning” (171-72). With “cold, flat eyes,” he beat Mammachi with a brass flower vase and cut Ammu’s new gumboots. Mammachi and Ammu “were beaten, humiliated and then made to suffer the envy of friends and relations for having such a wonderful husband and father” (172). But all these insults are allowed in the social order of patriarchy society. Beating wives or children does not cross the.

(30) Sun 24. boundary of patriarchy orders. Therefore, when welcoming Sophie Mol’s play performed, the Ayemenem House still had its decent look. In this play, Sophie Mol is the leading actress welcomed by Mammachi. Rahel only had a very small part in the play. “She was just the landscape. A flower perhaps. Or a tree. A face in the crowd. A townspeople” (164). She was the background behind the stage, but when Sophie Mol came, no one expected Rahel would be in the core of the play. Since Rahel was not so important in Sophiel Mol’s play, she ran away to Velutha who performed special greeting to her and gently hold her up on his shoulder (166). He had the power not to smash children’s dream but comfortably played with them in their dream. When Rahel, Estha, and Sophie Mol tried to dress like Hindu ladies, wearing saris, having red bindis on their foreheads, Velutha “greeted them with the utmost courtesy,” gave them coconut juice, chatted about the weather, introduced them to his surly hen, and showed them his carpentry tools (181). Only when Rahel grew up, she realized how precious it was, “[a] grown man entertaining three raccoons, treating them like real ladies” (181). Velutha kindly took care of the children’s dreams, not to smash them “with adult carelessness” (181). It was after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried abound carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do. (181) When the twins come back to Ayemenem with Ammu, Veltha and they become best friends. They visit Velutha’s house even though the adults forbade them. They love to learn the knowledge of wood with Velutha..

(31) Sun 25. They would sit with him for hours, on their haunches—hunched punctuation marks in a pool of wood shavings—and wonder how he always seemed to know what smooth shapes waited inside the wood for him. [. . .] It was Velutha who made Rahel her luckies-ever fishing rod and taught her and Estha to fish. (75) It is Velutha who fits in the window of the twins’ heart, treating them with the warm and kindness. Therefore, when Estha makes his plan and rowed the jam, they bring the boat they find to Velutha and ask him to fix it. It is Estha’s idea that “[a]nything can happen to Anyone,” so “It’s best to be prepared.” When he stirs the red banana jam and tries to pickle his memory of The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man’s sexual abuse, Estha rows the jam and has a third thought to get a boat to row across the river. The memory of sexual abuse Estha tris to seal happened just before Sophie Mol’s arrival. Chacko drives the car and sent Baby Kochamma, Ammu, and the twins to the movie theater to see The Sound of Music. After the motive, they would stay in a hotel nearby, so they can pick up Sophie Mol next morning in the airport. The twins had seen The Sound of Music several times, and they were familiar with the plot and can even sing all the songs of the movie. Therefore, when Estha sees the movie, he could not stop singing, so Ammu sends him out alone. Estha “EXITED” the door with” EXIT in a red light” (96). This was Estha’s first step to exit his life and to seal himself in quiescent time, a world of silence, for later he met The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man. He would row the boat to cross the river, but Sophie Mol is accidentally drowned. He would witness Veluta’s death and memorizes the smell of Velutha’s blood symbolizing the smell of history forever, and he would officially exit his life by train to be returned to his father. In several days, Estha, a seven-year-old boy would.

(32) Sun 26. lurch these steps of his life and exited. For his first step to exit the life, his song irritates The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man who offers Estha a bubbled Lemon drink asked Estha to hold his penis, “[h]ard, hot, veiny” (98). He held Estha’s hand up and down until “Estha’s hand was wet and hot and sticky” with white egg (99). From then on, Estha held an invisible sticky orange in his hand. It was why Estha went to the pickle factory, rowed the jam, and tried to pickle his invisible orange. He began to be prepared for running, for The Orangedrink Lemondrink may come to Ayemenem to find him. He prepared the boat to cross the river. The Meenachal, the river behind the Ayemenem House was wild and full of lives when the twins were young. Barnabas points out that the Meenachal River provides childhood dreams and pleasant memories for the twins (298). The river was gray green with fish in it. The twins were familiar with the first third of the river, for they learned to fish and study silence like real fishermen. They also learned to swim and even crossed the river several times. The second third of the river “was where the Really Deep began” with swift and certain current: “downstream when the tide was out, upstream, pushing up from the backwaters when the tide was in” (194). The third part of the river was shallow with brown water and mud, “[f]ull of weeds and darting eels and slow mud that oozed through toes like toothpaste” (194). The river was full of strength and power. Kutappen, Velutha’s elder brother confirmed: “You must be careful, [. . .] This river of ours—she isn’t always what she pretends to be” (201). He explained that the river pretended to be “a little old churchgoing ammooma, quiet and clean . . . idi appams for breakfast, knji and meen for luch. Minding her own business. Not looking right or left” (201). However, the river was “really a wild thing” as Kutappen convinced: “I can hear.

(33) Sun 27. her at night-rushing past in the moonlight, always in a hurry” (201). The river was so powerful and could be dangerous for even adults. Kutappen warned the twins to be aware of the river. Even Velutha asked the twins to promise not to play stupid games in the river when he helped to fix the boat. The twins thought the river was their friend, for they learn and play in it, but they did not fully understand the river. They did not know that the river has its power to decide to terminate one’s life or not until the night they crossed the river. It was purely an accident for the twins, for Sophie Mol insisted to cross the river with them. [She] had convinced the twins that it was essential that she go along too. That the absence of children, all children, would heighten the adults’ remorse. [. . .] Her clinching argument was that if she were left behind she might be tortured and forced to reveal their hiding place. (276) The river, however, was already full of water of last night’s rain and turned over their boat when they passed the really deep part. The twins, but not Sophie Mol, knew how to swim but not Sophie Mol. The river brought Sophie Mol’s life away: “Just a quiet handing-over ceremony. A boat spilling its cargo. A river accepting the offering. One small life. A brief sunbeam” (277). In the dark, the twins arrived at the back verandah of the History House, “numb with fear, waiting for the world to end” (278). They knew they would go to jail for Sophie Mol’s death, but they did not perceive yet that they would have to pay higher price than that. The live history performance thus began at the History House. At the History House, the twins would witness how history embodies in the policemen and punishes the one who does not follow the social rule. The twins would learn that the smell of Velutha’s blood is the smell of history, for history teaches them the social lesson they.

(34) Sun 28. must obey. Barnabas points out that the History House represents “the moral corruption and spiritual degeneration” of the place, Ayemenem (299), for Kari Saipu displays his own dark history here. The History House that the twins believed was actually Kari Saipu’s house. Roy introduces him as “Ayemenem’s own Kurtz,” for Ayemenem is “his private Heart of Darkness” (51). Kari Saipu, “[t]he Englishman, who had “gone native,” “spoke Malayalam, and wore mundus,” shot himself when “his young lover’s parents had taken the boy away from him” in 1959 (51). The house had been empty for several years, for his cook and secretary had fought for the property in the court. Very few people went to the house. Vellya Paapen, Velutha’s father told the twins that it was a ghost house, as he claimed that he pinned Kari Saipu’s ghost on a rubber tree near the house, but he did not know Kari Saipu’s house is also a History House (191). It was when Chacko explained what history was, the twins mistook Kari Saipu’s house as the presence of the history. He said, [H]istory was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside. To understand history, [. . .] we have to go inside and listen to what they’re saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells. [. . .] But we can’t go in, [. . .] because we’ve been locked out. (51-52) The twins immediately associated the history with Kari Saipu’s house as “the History House” (52). Although the twins had not yet seen Kari Saipu’s house, it was not difficult for the twins to picture it as a ghost house with its doors locked and windows open. The ancestors whispered inside in the language that they could not understand. It was where dreams were captured and re-redreamed. When the history had its live.

(35) Sun 29. performance, the twins would see The History House which was actually a beautiful house: “White-walled once. Red-roofed. But painted in weather-colors now. With brushed dipped in nature’s palette. Mossgreen. Earth-brown. Crumbleblack. Making it look older than it really was” (290-91). Strehle points out that the History House portraits “a colonial heritage” and “old ancestors supervising the life below” (134). The History House was where the twins witnessed that Velutha was beaten by the police nearly death. They learned two lessons here: Lesson Number One: Blood barely shows on a Black Man. (Dum dum) And Lesson Number Two: It smells though, Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze. (Dum dum) (293) Rahel refused to believe the unconscious man on the ground was Velutha, so she said to Esthat that it was not Velutha. It was Velutha’s twins brother, but Estha was “[u]nwilling to seek refuge in fiction, so [he] said nothing” (295). The police took the twins back to the police office. They collected and brought home the toys that the twins left near the History House, but they all forgot to pick Rahel’s toy watch with permanent time on ten to two. “It stayed behind in the History House. In the back verandah. A faulty record of the time. Ten to two” (295). The time thus was frozen at that moment. Sophie Mol was dead. Velutha was dying and the twins were the persecutor who confirmed Velutha’s false charge. In the police office, Inspector Thomas Mathew found Baby Kochamma’s censure.

(36) Sun 30. was wrong. Baby Kochamma accused Velutha who came to the the Ayemenem House and threatened them and thus a beautiful girl was dead and the twins were missing, but now the twins said that they crossed the river by their own wills and the boat was turned over, so the girl was drowned in accident. The Kottayam Police basically abused “a technically innocent man” to “Death in Custody”: True, he was a Paravan. True, he had misbehaved. But these were troubled times and technically, as per the law, he was an innocent man. There was no case. (298) Therefore, Baby Kochamma menaced the twins. She accused them as murders who killed Sophie Mol, and the police would sent them and their mother to jail. If they wanted to save their mother, they had to confirm the false the charge. Estha was sent into the small room. There Velutha “was naked” and “[b]lood spilled from his skull like a secret”: His face was swollen and his head look liked a pumpkin, too large and heavy for the slender stem it grew from. A pumpkin with a monstrous upside-down smile. (303) Estha confirmed the false crime, and thus he sent away the childhood and let the silence stay. “The Inspector asked his question. Estha’s mouth said Yes. Childhood tiptoed out. Silence slid in like a bolt” (303).The twins did not admit the truth that Velutha was beaten to death. Estha agreed with Rahel that it was not Velutha. “Until the next morning, when Ammu shook it out of them. But by then it was too late. [. . .] Velutha didn’t live through the night” (304). As for this little family, death did not come, “[j]ust the end of living” (304)..

(37) Sun 31. The Sense of Place Stuck in the Past Estha’s sense of place for Ayemenem is stuck in the past, for he could not feel the changes of the outside world. He is confined in his own silent world where the traumatic memory of Veltuha’s death haunts him. After The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man’s sexual abuse, Sophie Mol’s funeral, and Velutha’s death, Estha was returned to his father by train. Now as the millstone, Estha had dragged Sophie Mol and Velutha to death and dragged away from his mother and sister with a feeling of a drowning person in the water. Deep in mind he knew he was the murderer who sent Velutha to death, and now he had to accept the punishment to be sent away. Alone on the train, Estha was returned to his father, and he was also sent to the abyss of silence. Estha’s silence was never awkward. Ever intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn’t an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season except that in Estha’s case the dry season looked as though it would last forever. (12) No one found out when he stop talking. “It had been a gradual winding down and closing shop” (12). Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. [. . .] It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. [. . .] Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. The past for Estha was too painful and left a hole in his heart, an “Estha-shaped Hole in the Universe” (149). These painful memories, The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man’s.

(38) Sun 32. sexual abuse and the guilt of Velutha’s death are the millstones that drag him into the silence of sea. His silence as falling into a long summer sleep, Estha sleeps quietly, numbly with his nightmare, the man with “a swollen face and a smashed, upside-down smile” in the “sicksweet” smell like “old roses on a breeze” (32). After twenty-tree years, Estha was “re-Returned” by his father to Ayemenem (11). He is silent and does not speak to anyone. He dose the house work and bought the daily grocery as though it was his job. Every day he follows the same routine. After his old dog died, he begins to walk. He walks all over Ayemenem. Some days he walked along the banks of the river that smelled of shit and pesticides bought with World Bank loans. Most of the fish had died. The ones that survived suffered from fin-rot and had broken out in boils. Other days he walked down the road. Past the new, freshly baked, iced, Gulf-money houses built by nurses, masons, wire-benders and bank clerks, who worked hard and unhappily in faraway places. (14) Basically, he is a walking dead. He walked without feelings. And Estha, walking on the riverbank, couldn’t feel the wetness of the rain, or the suddenshudder of the cold puppy that had temporarily adopted him and squelched at his side. (16) He himself was like a mirror that only reflects what he sees but without his own opinions as though his time is frozen. He seems to live in a glass ball where the time is permanently frozen. No matter how the outside changed, nothing has to do with him. He was stuck in the past, at the moment that he confirmed Velutha’s censure. His world is completely quiet. Nothing, at least nothing from the outside world bothers.

(39) Sun 33. him. The memories that he suffers are buried in the deep of his heart, and from time to time these traumatic memories are embodiment of the “smell of old roses” (14). He only walks but never talks, not even in his mind. He walks pat the old houses. These old houses are like the Ayemenem House that has its own history. Once they were grand, but now only the corruption and relics left. Just like those bourgeois fall down in the historic stream of the rise of communists, naxalism, and terrorism. These old houses including the Ayemenem House all have been through this historic moment. To take the Ayemenem House as an example, one could read the newspaper that printed the official history. There was a scandal between an Untouchable man and a woman whose family has ancient history and good reputation. Everybody knew. It had been in the papers. The news of Sophie Mol’s death, of the police “Encounter” with a Paravan charge with kidnapping and murder. Of the subsequent Communist Party siege of Paradise Pickles & Preserves, led by Ayemenem’s own Crusader for Justice and Spokesman of the Oppressed. Comrade K. N. M. Pillai claimed that the Management had implicated the Paravan in a false police case because he was an active member of the Communist Party. (286) What not every one knew are those “sea-secrets” that are carried by Estha, walking quietly “[l]ike a fisherman in a city” (14). He, Rahel, and Ammu, “[a]ll three of them bonded by the certain, separate knowledge that they had love a man to death. That wasn’t in the papers” (307). Estha locked his world in the numbness until Rahel returned from America. Although he still keeps silent and Baby Kochamma was pleased that he does not.

(40) Sun 34. recognize Rahel, the noises from the outside world begin to flood into his head. It had been quiet in Estha’s head until Rahel came. But with her she had brought the sound of passing trains, and the light and shade world, locked out for years, suddenly flooded in, and now Estha could hear himself for the noise. Trains. Traffic. Music. The stock market. A dam had burst and savage waters swept everything up in a swirling. Comet, violins, parades, loneliness, clouds, beards, bigot, lists, flags, earthquakes, despair were all swept up in a scrambled swirling. (16) The twins have been separated for twenty-tree years. Now “they are as old as Ammu was when she died. Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable die-able age” (5). Estha did not see how Ammu died. His memory of Ammu stays in the moment when he was sent away in the train station. He “never saw her like that, [w]ild, [s]ick, [s]ad,” “with asthma and a rattle in her chest that sounded like a faraway man shouting” (151-152), but Rahel did. Rahel knew how Ammu became “swollen with cortisone, moonfaced, not the slender mother” she once knew (153). After Ammu died, the church refused to bury her because of the scandal that everyone knew from the newspaper, so Chacko and Rahel took Ammu to the electric crematorium where “beggars, derelicts and the police-custody dead were cremated” (155). After Ammu died, “[t]here was hum in Rahel’s head, and for the rest of the day Chacko had to shout at her if he wanted to be heard” (155). Just like Estha, Rahel had lost in a world of numbness but only a while for she grew up in a different way. Rahel stayed in Ayemenem and was sent to study in the boarding school where she corrupted in a “civil, solitary form” (18). The neglect of her family (Chacko, Mammachi, and Baby Kochamma) “seemed to have resulted in an accidental release of the spirit” and.

(41) Sun 35. created a liberal space in her heart” (18). Unlike Estha who locked himself in the quietness and secluded himself from the outside world, those past memories left an empty space in Rahel’s heart, and enquiring the outside world is the way for Rahel to survive. She married to Larry McCasin with her empty heart and divorced in America. After she got Baby Kochamma’s letter that said Estha’s return, she “left America gladly [t]o return to Ayemenem [t]o Estha in the rain” (21). Rahel carries her empty heart back to Ayemenem where the “Unfurnished” house and the blocked river are waiting for her. “The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat” (4). Strehle points out that the Ayemenem House represents “the unhoming promise implicit in the image of the aloof old man” (134). It seems that the Ayemenem House has been in estivation for a long time, wearing its “low hat,” deep in its sleep as Estha in his silence. The house, like a ghost house, has been abandoned: “The house itself looked empty. The doors and windows were locked. The front verandah bare. Unfurnished” (4). Everything seems to stop growing. It seems no lives inside the house, just like Rahel’s locked and empty heart. The locked windows of the Ayemenem House as Rahel’s eyes are full of emptiness. Her eyes, according to her husband, Larry, seem to belong to someone else: “Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat” (20). Rahel’s eyes are the windows of Ayemenem House that always memorize what had happened: from Mammachi and Baby Kochamma’s point of view, a shameful affair between a man and a woman, an Untouchables with a Touchable who had crossed the river, crossed the social boundary, and violated the social law, “the Love Laws” that “lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much” (33), for L. Chris Fox indicates: “Mammachi responds to the ‘idea’ of Ammu’s.

(42) Sun 36. transgression with the ‘vomity’ reaction that is typically induced by contact with […] the abject” (46). Both Mammachi and Baby Kochamma show their distaste for the abject, wondering how Ammu bears Velutha’s particular Paravan smell. However, when this happened, Rahel was too young to understand the roles of her mother, Ammu and Velutha that played in the affair. While Growing up, Rahel was fed on neglect, “largely ignored by Chako and Mammachi,” “largely ignoring Baby Kochamma” (17). Rahel’s family “provided the care (food, clothes, fees), but withdrew the concern” (17). Her eyes, bit by bit, grow to be swallowed by the despair, an acknowledgement as her mother’s that “life had been lived” (38), yet even worse, since for Rahel, “Worse Things had happened,” “Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered” (20). Her eyes are “somewhere between indifference and despair” (20) as Larry described. Locked in the traumatic memory, her heart is stuck between indifference and despair and “poises forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening” (20). What Larry sees in Rahel’s eyes, according to Roy, are “a hollow where Estha’s words had been”, a hole of emptiness (20). The loss of Sophie Mol was also buried in this hollow. It is amazing “how the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined” (17). As “the memory of Sopie Mol” “slowly faded, the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive” “[l]ike a fruit in season,” “[e]very season” (17). The Loss of Sophie Mol as a dynamic and powerful vine climbs and strangles the Ayemenem House and everyone lives in it. Like a ghost, the memory of Sophie Mol hides every corners of the house: The Loss of Sophie Mol stepped softly around the Ayemenem House like a.