阿蘭達蒂‧洛伊《微物之神》中愛的律法、身體及生態學間的恆久衝突

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(1)♁ 國立中山大學外國語文研究所碩士論文 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE NATIONAL SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY. Incessant Confrontation: Love Laws, Body and Ecology in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. 研究生：張雪珍撰 BY CHANG, HSUEH-CHEN 指導教授：張淑麗 Advisor: PROFESSOR CHANG, SHULI. 中華民國九十四年六月 June 2005.

(2) Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Professor Chang Shuli. Without her instruction, encouragement and support, I would not have finished my thesis.. Her insightful viewpoints and timely assistance provided me with confidence. to overcome the hardship I suffer while I struggled with the painful process of writing my thesis. Besides, I am indebted to Professor Rufus Cook and Professor Luo Ting-yao, both of whom gave me intriguing comments and precious advice.. I am. really grateful to them for reading my thesis and letting me know how I could improve my thesis. I would also like to thank my mother, whose support and humor eased my pressure when I racked my brains trying to compose my thesis.. Also, my dear. husband, Vic Hsu, has always encouraged me and patiently listened to my complaints while I was in fits of depression. Jessie Chen, one of my best friends, gave me helpful suggestions for making improvements in my thesis and made the time I spent in the school library researching more enjoyable.. Without my professors, family,. and friends, I would never be able to complete this thesis.. Thus, I sincerely thank. them all for their full support that assisted me to face the challenge in my life..

(3) Abstract Arundhati Roy’s first novel The God of Small Things focuses on the incessant confrontation permeating in divergent layers of the Indian society.. With the prevalence of. the caste system, which stabilizes the society by eliminating individuals’ social mobility, Roy reveals that the essential conflicts individuals face in their daily interactions are repressed by their social consciousness and accordingly distort their subjectivities.. “Love Laws,” an. oxymoronic term that Roy intriguingly combines, points out the generally-believed opposing position of love and laws but simultaneously reveals their interrelated relationship that blurs their division.. Based on “Love Laws,” body serves as another battlefield for the social. norms and individuality to compete against each other. Individual bodies are trapped between their desire for bodily contacts and their inscription of various social codes. Such confrontation even subtly seeps into individuals’ daily lives through visual, olfactory and tactile senses and provides them with numerous ways to sense their unquenched desire in the severely guarded society. The natural environment, vulnerable to human abuses, is also encoded with “Love Laws.”. The monsoon and the river, closely related to the prosperity of. the Indian people, bear human beings’ love, fear, and impulses to control.. In human beings’. pursuit of happiness, the Nature “witnesses” and suffers their brutality that leads to the destruction of both the Nature and human beings.. Thus, ecology functions as a broader. scope to demonstrate the power of “Love Laws” and expresses Roy’s utmost concern for human beings’ unruly abuse of the Nature.. In The God of Small Things, it is through the. discussion of “Love Laws,” body and ecology that Roy presents the incessant confrontation in human nature.. Instead of being pessimistic about such confrontation, Roy transmits the. message that only by celebrating individuals’ love that transcends laws, only by paying homage to their bodies that perform their subjectivities as well as their positive relationship that bridges the gap with nature, can the ever-lasting conflicts within human nature be ceased and a new prospect of a better tomorrow will emerge..

(4) 中文摘要阿蘭達蒂•洛伊的「微物之神」旨在傳達人性中永無止盡的衝突。種姓制度長期禁錮印度人身心，以輪迴之說限制人們追求自我、僭越種姓之隔，在層層社會習氣的制約下，人的慾望被壓抑、自我被扭曲。洛伊於是藉著「微物之神」來傳達她對人性的觀察。「愛的律法」是洛伊用以闡釋人在社會中面對愛與法律兩極的拉力下，更進一步窺看這看似相異但實為相依相生的觀念。在律法強勢掌控、規範個人行為時，追本溯源其實卻是為愛所驅使。這互相矛盾、似是而非的「愛的律法」正是推動整個社會，乃至於導致在生活中各層面無止盡的衝突的最佳例證。這樣的衝突更具體的表現在個人的身體，它是大我及小我相衝突的競技場。在個人的自我實現以及社會規範透過各式管道銘刻在身體上的禮教習俗間，充滿著紛亂與不安。而身體所傳達出相吸引卻又互不相容的訊息，卻是人們透過身體的各項知覺，以最感官的方式讓每個人時時體會感受著。「愛的律法」所欲傳達的人性衝突更擴大體現於自然環境中。人與自然環境的親近性在人們極力追求物質上的享受及精神上的安穩中被硬生生地斬斷。透過對大自然受人們短視近利破壞的哀悼，洛伊提出她對愛、個體及自然的見解。唯有透過超越律法的愛、充分自我實現的個體以及對大自然的尊崇，或許這人性間恆久的衝突可被化解，而「明天」也能因而更加耀眼。.

(5) Table of Contents. I.. Introduction: The God of Small Things: A Book about Human Nature? …………………………………………………………….1. II.. Chapter One: Love Laws: Blessing or Curse?…………………….12. III.. Chapter Two: The Making and Marking of the Caste(d) Bodies in The God of Small Things………………………………………….35. IV.. Chapter Three: Water Image: “Love Laws” Hidden in the Natural Environment………………………………………………………64. V.. Conclusion………………………………………………………...81. VI.. Works Cited……………………………………………………….86.

(6) Chang 1. Introduction The God of Small Things: A Book About Human Nature?. Arundhati Roy, whose first novel The God of Small Things won her the prestigious Booker Prize, has received overwhelming acclaim since the novel was first published.. Praised as “The daughter of India,” Roy successfully hoists India. onto the international stage through her literary achievement and attracts global attention to the ancient country, India.. However, with compliments flooding in, Roy. also faces criticism that accuses her of describing India in the negative. Indeed, The God of Small Things, far from a psalm to praise the gods in India, is actually a novel with piecemeal details about the conflicts within oneself, among people, and between divergent castes in the Indian society. The India under Roy’s description is not always a prosperous country with magnificent history.. Instead, through the foul. smell lingering in the air, horrendous scenes of the decaying city, as well as the mental turmoil within the characters, the India Roy manages to present reveals the dark side of “progress” as well as the brutality of human nature.. It is Roy’s specific. observation of the repressed society and the truthfulness of her description that inspire the readers and draw them to scrutinize India in the way Roy perceives it. Roy’s courage to stand up against the dominant belief results in fierce refutation. Paul Kingsnorth so describes the aftermath that Roy’s radical political stance has led to: “Roy had done what few celebrity writers do: she had taken an outspoken political stand.. She had also made powerful enemies. The same politicians who had praised. only months before now condemned her for betraying her homeland” (592).. Roy’s. apparent political stance immediately brings about a controversial situation, which does not discourage her from staying outspoken on politics. As Salil Tripathi points out, “Roy admits her tone is deliberately provocative.. She says she wants to shake.

(7) Chang 2. consciences. She will spare no one” (n.pag.).. Indeed, besides her first novel The. God of Small Things, Roy also indulges herself in writing polemical essays, in which she candidly expresses her discontentment with the nuclear test,1 the Sardar Sarovar dam2 and United States imperialism.3. Her political stance thus brings her the title of. “peace activist,” which Roy herself might not accept. herself to asserting justice in the oppressed society.. Even so, Roy indeed devotes She would not shun any forms. of challenges in her life. She has been accused of inciting radical opposition toward the building of the dam and thus was put into jail.. Idikkula and Thomas,4 lawyers in. Kerala, even “dragged Roy and her God of Small Things to court for ‘obscenity’” (n.pag.).. Instead of being beaten down by the flooding controversy her fame has. brought her, Roy stands against any form of oppression and faces herself truthfully. With her persistent effort to uncover the hypocrisy prevailing in the Indian society which maintains a cosmetic stability with the continuous hegemony of the caste system, she has made herself one of the most controversial figures in contemporary Indian society. The God of Small Things becomes a hit in the world not only because of the unique, and exotic Indian atmosphere presented in the novel but also because of the conflicts revealed through the tragic events in it.. Roy herself once said, “Eventually. for me, The God of Small Things is not a book specifically about ‘our culture’—it’s a. 1. In Roy’s essay “The End of Imagination,” Roy does not mince her words in denouncing India’s nuclear testing. See Roy’s interview by David Barsamian in “The Progressive Interview.” 2 In Roy’s essay “The Greater common Good,” later collected in her book Power Politics, she expresses her objection to the building of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada, making clear that the price of building such a dam would mean uprooting numerous villagers (about 10,000 people) who live near the place where the dam is to be built. See “India’s Arundhati Roy: Novelist Turned Social Activist” by Robert Marquand. See also “Arundhati Roy Activist in an Angry World” by Mother Jones. 3 In an interview by Mother Jones, Roy said “Because America is such a powerful country, its mistakes are seriously mistakes. … That’s because there’s a huge subterranean reservoir of anger. These people, like Osama bin Laden, or the right-wing Hindu fundamentalists, act as booster pumps that tap into this anger and they pull it up they mold it to what suits them” (n.pag.). 4 See Rediff on the Net. “Booker or not, Arundhati’s still in the dock” by Chindu Sreedharan. <http://www.rediff.com/news/nov/29roy.htm>..

(8) Chang 3. book about human nature” (Abraham 91).. Roy attempts to expose, upset, blur,. challenge, and undermine the divisions individuals strive to draw to distinguish, with sometimes tragic consequences, between us and them in their daily lives.. As she. states through the voice of her unspecified narrator in her novel, “Edges, Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their separate horizons” (5).. Simultaneously, at the beginning of the novel, she also manages to. call the readers’ attention to how such man-made boundaries and divisions cannot withstand the disruption of natural forces such as the river and the monsoon. “Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom” (3).. The subversive power. residing in the natural environment resonates with the unspoken undercurrents of desires among individuals.. Thus, in the Indian society where strict caste systems. prevail, such subversive power becomes even more prominent and essential as a breakthrough in the traditional patterns of lives. In such an ancient society as India, its societal stability is secured by the enforcement of the caste system.. With the prevalence of such a system, the Indian. people are grouped into specific castes and assigned works that would be inherited from generation to generation.. By eliminating individuals’ social mobility, the. Indian society consequently maintains its stability.. The laws that bind the Indian. people into their fixed social positions are both visible and invisible.. They could be. specific disciplines that regulate individuals’ behavior, or the proper dress codes individuals should follow.. At the same time, the laws could also be as invisible as. the traditional norms, publicly-agreed customs, or even the smell that marks individuals’ castes.. With layers of confinement chained on each individual, the India. is forced into an “ideal” society where everyone is satisfied with one’s own social position. Yet, under the peaceful disguise of the society, turmoil is boiling within. In a strictly regulated society, personal needs are often sacrificed and stamped for the.

(9) Chang 4. benefit of the public.. Roy, interested in figuring out the origin of human conflicts,. thus poses love as an equivalent concept to laws in the novel, bringing the readers to question the righteousness of the laws. Love, amorphous and ungraspable as it is, supports the emotional need in the relationship among people.. Its unpredictability. increases its power when it suddenly settles down in individuals’ hearts. Because love follows no specific rules, it creates more tension when it contradicts against the laws.. The laws, which individuals have long believed their unchallenged status, are. facing the crisis of collapsing when juxtaposed with love. The two seemingly-opposing concepts are actually similar in that both are essential for the development of individuals’ subjectivities and vulnerable to deliberate appropriation. In the novel, most of the characters are torn between their recognition to abide by the laws and their instinct to pursue their love. Thus, in the battle between love and laws, trauma ensues.. The tragedy that the Ipe family undergoes originates from the. confrontation between love and laws.. Whichever defeats the other will cause. irretrievable wounds for the sufferers.. Roy exemplifies the conflicts between love. and laws mostly through Ammu and Velutha’s trans-caste intercourse.. Driven by. their innermost desire for each other, Ammu and Velutha shrug off their acquired knowledge of the impossibility of transgressing social boundary.. The more strictly. laws regulate individuals, the more violently individuals will fight against them. Eventually, Ammu and Velutha love what they should not love and touch what is forbidden for them to touch, heading for the road of destruction like “[s]trange insects appeared like ideas in the evenings and burned themselves on Baby Kochamma’s dim forty-watt bulbs” (11). Their physical fragility and weakness to impulses reveal how the confrontation between love and laws can lead to destruction.. Ammu and. Velutha’s tragic ending not only demonstrates the vulnerability of the Small God under the force of the Big God but also reveals the brutality human beings are capable.

(10) Chang 5. of once the stability of the society is threatened. Yet, Roy is not satisfied with this binary division of love and laws.. She invokes the oxymoronic phrase, “Love Laws,”. to fully reveal the tension in the relationship among individuals. The term “Love Laws” implies that love is also a kind of law, especially when love is manipulated to regulate individuals’ behavior.. To further elaborate on this term, the relationship. between love and laws should be re-examined and this is what makes the term “Love Laws” self-contradictory. Actually, the origin of the laws is based on love.. To. protect the loved ones, to maintain desirable love-relationship and to restrain the potential of love, “Love Laws” “lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.” (33).. With the premises that even the originally unconstrained love can be. regulated, the society will fit into the laws designed for the benefit of the majority of people, even if a “small price” should be paid for it.. The uses of laws to regulate. amorphous love results in more subversive forces and more traumatized hearts. With love and laws combined, all the love relationships are redefined and such extreme laws suffocate the hearts of those who desire freedom. Instead of blabbering about how Love Laws traumatize individuals, Roy specifically uses individual bodies as stages to perform the Love Laws’ explosion and to present its traumatic impacts.. Under the customs of the society, individuals follow. certain dress codes to dress themselves up. In India, where caste distinction means everything, dress codes become even more crucial for them to follow. It does not matter whether these codes are forcefully inscribed on individual bodies or individuals with internalized social values actively perform these codes. What matters in the attempt to maintain caste distinction is that individual bodies are accurately coded and marked.. However, resistance to this cultural inscription also permeates in the novel,. challenging the supreme rules that govern the dress codes. Whether individuals are dressing properly according to their castes becomes an indication of the differences.

(11) Chang 6. among castes.. Deliberate resistance against such division is regarded as an intention. to blur social distinction, thus humiliating the caste he/she was born in. Besides the dress codes, the preference for light skin colors indicates the Anglophile values’ strong influence on the Indian people. The message expressed through the unchangeable skin colors joins hands with caste systems, thus showing the close link between the white skin color, purity, and moral righteousness in the upper-caste people.. At the same time, the negative trait that dark skin color and. lower-caste people lead to is also singled out by the repeated contrast between the binary values in the society.. Furthermore, individual bodies also demonstrate their. differences through their “touchability.” Divided into Touchables and Untouchables, the Indian people broaden the gap between divergent castes with their tactile senses. Inappropriate physical contacts may be regarded as serious pollution to the purity of the upper-caste.. At the same time, bodily smell ambushes individuals’ olfactory. senses, representing an extreme example of how people radically separate one another. Even if the bodies bear so many regulations on them, love always sneaks through the crevice on the stonewall of social regulations. The same mechanism that carries the inviolable regulations may turn into the source of desire that seduces individuals to transgress social boundaries. It is also through the visual, tactile, olfactory observations that individual desire is aroused.. To further scrutinize individual bodies,. they are also inseparable from individual subjectivities.. With appropriate body. performance, individuals’ subjectivities can be naturally fulfilled.. Yet, once failing. to meet the requests of proper behavior, individuals are also risking their integrity or even their lives.. The gap between each individual’s self-expectation and what one. can achieve remains wide, and sometimes this sense of loss and helplessness will destroy the remaining subjectivity inside one..

(12) Chang 7. In addition to elaborating on the unique message individual bodies carry and the fulfillment of individual subjectivities, Roy explores the unknown field of the mentality of twins.. Fascinated by the mysterious telepathy between twins, Roy. depicts such connection between twins as the most desirable relationship that there ever was.. Indeed, the twins’ shared identity eliminates the boundary stretching over. human beings, but this fragile relationship is also challenged when the connection between the twins is violently severed.. However, a shared soul born into two bodies. itself is a kind of violence that cannot be shed with their recognition of “We, and Us” instead of “I, and me.”. A split of subjectivity of the twins ends up with two soulless. bodies strolling in the world.. The incomplete sense resulted from losing each other’s. presence in life forces the twins into numbness and indifference.. It is only through. their bodily reunion that the possibility for schizophrenic subjectivity to unite will occur.. Bodies, the stage for people to act out their interpretation of Love Laws, bear. the wounds that mark the drastic confrontation between love and laws.. Still, behind. all the codes that reinforce the power of the laws lies the unmistakable love for oneself and for the specific group one settles in. By performing according to the norms, the sense of unity among people increases, and the lovability of each individual is also enhanced. The desire to love and to be loved drives individuals to follow the codes inscribed on their bodies.. However, it is also the same desire that. leads to individuals’ resistance to the codes so that they would be able to seek love across the boundaries. The opposite effects of love in reaction to the laws demonstrate their respective situation on the individual body, thus forcing people to meditate on such a complicated relationship. The power of Love Laws not only shows itself in the field of laws and bodies, but also reflects through the natural environment in Kerala, the place where the story.

(13) Chang 8. is set.. Roy uses the Meenachal River as a metaphor for Love Laws.. The mutable. Meenachal River resonates with the unpredictability of love, but simultaneously it also resembles the laws in that geographically it represents a clear division that separates places.. The Meenachal River has the soothing power to ease individuals’. anxiety once people are willing to form intimate relationship with it.. However, the. destructive power of the river also draws individuals’ awe toward it, making individuals feel awe toward such a magnificent force.. Such awe also generates fear,. resulting in people’s attempt to control the nature’s power for their own benefit. People’s strife to turn the natural power into supporting power for the society unfortunately ends up as the incessant exploitation of the natural environment.. Once. the nature is deprived of its power, it dwindles to the extent that the death images linger in the natural environment.. The Meenachal River reflects human brutality. through its changed appearance and foul smell. By depicting the destruction done to the natural environment, Roy implicitly points out the destructive power in Love Laws. Besides indulging herself in connecting the river with people, Roy also emphasizes the purifying power of the rain. Because to the Indians the monsoon is indispensable for their prosperity, Roy further singles out the power of nature through the rain.. In India, a monsoon’s arrival is related not only to individuals’ well-being,. the vitality of nature, but also to the whole country’s fortune. Roy, on the one hand, focuses on the power of the rain. With scenes depicting traumatized characters strolling in the pouring rain, Roy intends to praise the magnificent power of rain that washes away the impurity and trauma within individuals.. On the other hand, such. excessive indication of nature’s power reveals Roy’s political stance toward the abuse of nature in the Indian society. India has long been noted for its construction of.

(14) Chang 9. dams, which is often regarded by the India people as an effort to prevent the damage the river might do to the innocent people and also as an indication to represent the progress the society contributes to achieving.. This grand excuse to exploit the. natural resources becomes a great concern to Roy, who perceives the self-contradiction in such reasoning.. When most Indians are pursuing the profits that. come with the spread of capitalism or even globalization, Roy reflects on the incurable wounds that the Indian people’s shortsightedness brings about. Even though Roy does not explicitly assert the importance of immediate conservation of nature, she metaphorically reminds the readers of the possible unbearable aftermath that a decaying river might cause.. Therefore, while tracing the reason of people’s. ruthless exploitation of the nature, Roy also senses the self-contradiction within such horrendous deeds.. To prevent the unpredictable nature from harming their loved. ones and to effectively utilize the nature’s power, individuals only see the profit they may gain from utilizing natural resources but ignore the irretrievable harm they have done to the nature. As Roy says in the interview by Lewis Bruke Frumkes, “I’m always tempted to say that [The God of Small Things is] about everything” (n.pag.).. Indeed, the world. presented in the novel through various small things appears fragmented.. Yet, once. put together, the details in the daily life reveal a complex world for readers to explore. I am fascinated by Roy’s way of expressing the conflicts within individuals, between people, and in the society through the small things that most people are so accustomed to that they are no longer aware of their significance. In Chapter One, I will focus on the interpretation of the term “Love Laws.” Viewed respectively, love and laws are both mechanisms that dominate individuals’ behavior in the society. At the same time, both of the ideas are so unpredictable that.

(15) Chang 10. they are subject to appropriation.. Based on the ever-changing ideas, the stability of. the society faces the challenges of the subversive power repressed by the dominant. The combination of love and laws further complicates the commonly believed idea that love and laws are incompatible.. “Love Laws” serve as the laws that quantify the. amorphous love and such disastrous attempt is actually resulted from individuals’ innermost love toward their loved ones and themselves. Thus, in the following chapter, I intend to discuss how Roy demonstrates the power of Love Laws through the body of the characters.. The body serves as the. battlefield for Love Laws to fight against itself and reveals a variety of interactions of different codification. The body bears the inscription of the social laws but at the same time individuals often will their bodies to perform the social codes according to their recognition of the laws.. The body becomes a sphere where personal values and. collective powers compete against each other. In comparison with the individual body, the subjectivity of individual is also singled out.. Whether the exterior. behavior of an individual can be performed in accord with one’s interior subjectivity, the discord within each individual and the process of pursuing ultimate peace generate the power for the individual to confront and transgress societal laws, written and unwritten. In Chapter Three, I will switch my focus to elaborate on how Roy uses the Meenachal River as the metaphor of Love Laws.. From the spatial perspective, I will. delve into the way Roy manages to build the relationship between nature and human beings.. River, regarded as a holy symbol in the Indian society, is transformed into. the embodiment of Love Laws and reflects its conflicts through its unpredictable and powerful nature.. Besides the Meenachal River, other forms of water, for example,. the monsoon, the rain, or even the sweat on the individual body, all serve to demonstrate the purifying trait of the water.. Starting from this point, Roy continues.

(16) Chang 11. to express her discontentment with the exploitation of the natural environment by greedy human beings. She also expresses the message that only through building peaceful relationship with nature can individuals retrieve the essential love that has been exempted in the pursuit of the so-called “progress.”.

(17) Chang 12. Chapter One Love Laws: Blessing or Curse?. Since first published, Arundhati Roy’s praise-winning novel, The God of Small Things, has attracted the attention of the public.. With Roy’s vivid description, a. detailed portrait of India emerges as the words weave the scenes in the novel; simultaneously the hidden conflicts in the Indian society are accordingly uncovered. At first glance, The God of Small Things appears to be another story depicting the sordid realities of the people residing in the Ayemenem house.. Yet, the seeming. randomness and triviality of the many unconnected incidents that happened to the members of an extended family eventually add up to accentuate the caste problems that keep haunting each individual, thus subtly molding the novel into an accusation of the immobility resulted from the caste system.. The caste system divides the. Indian people into specific groups, confining them in their inherited positions with the idea of karma deeply planted in their minds.. In Introduction to his book Indian. Literature in English, William Walsh, while discussing the concept of caste, writes that “Caste is a principle of order which differentiates among mankind in a way that is both intrinsic and tyrannical; it is also seen as a cohesive force binding the various parts of the society together” (4). With its prevalence, individuals remain in their positions, repress their dissatisfaction, and hope for a better afterlife.. When. restrictions of human possibilities and divisions of social spaces get tangled with the individual desires for breaking through the confinement, disasters occur and tragedies ensue.. The failure of the characters’ attempts to realize their desires implies the. indissoluble power of the caste system.. However, it is more than the despair in. societal constraints that Roy aims to focus her novel on.. When interviewed by. Taisha Abraham about whether her novel was aimed to criticize the social system in.

(18) Chang 13. India, Roy responded that “[The God of Small Things is] a book about human nature. … I don’t see my book as an angry critique of ‘our society.’ It’s really a way of seeing, a way of presenting the irreconcilable sides of our nature, our ability to love so deeply yet be so brutal” (91).. Roy’s exploration of the human nature makes her. novel so appealing and endows it with the power to transgress the social as well as cultural boundaries. An architect by training, and a screenplay writer by interest, Roy nevertheless chooses the genre of the novel to express her perception that “Anything’s possible in Human Nature” (112). In an interview by Lewis Burke Frumkes, Roy explains that “I’ve always believed that story is the simplest way of presenting a complex world. It’s a way of making sense of the world” (n. pag.).. To Roy, the comparatively. simplified world existing in the novel assists her to tackle with the complicated life she experiences in the real world. Though the world presented in the novel is limited by fixed words and description, such limitation provides Roy with a better way to narrate the confrontation between mixed emotions in human nature. In another interview by David Barsamian, Roy even points out that “fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was.. My whole effort is to remove that. distinction. The writer is the midwife of understanding” (n. pag.).. Roy strives to. shorten the distance between fiction and truth, emphasizing the power that fiction possesses in spreading the truth to its readers and in arousing great resonance in them. The novel becomes the access for Roy to analyze the human relationships in the complicated society and for the readers to perceive the world as the way Roy views it. Roy obtains materials for The God of Small Things from her childhood memory. She experiences the multi-cultural atmosphere of “Christianity, Hinduism, Marxism.

(19) Chang 14. and Islam [in India, which] live together and rub each other down;”5 she also witnesses the special time-span in which India “lives in several centuries at the same time.”6. This unique historical environment provides Roy with a colorful stage to set. her characters in and to include some “autobiographical elements”7 in the story.. Her. hometown Aymanam (Ayemenem in the novel), Kerala, is the setting of The God of Small Things. members.. The protagonists in the novel are depicted according to her family. Her grandmother runs a pickle factory just as the character, Mammachi,. in the novel. Her own mother is the prototype of Ammu, who, as a Syrian Christian, marries a Hindu and later divorces him. of Rahel.. Roy grows up in a similar situation to that. Later, she left her hometown at the age of sixteen, and started to live an. independent life.. It was not until several years later that she came back to Aymanam.. Her protagonist, Rahel, undergoes such drifting in the novel as well.. Rahel becomes. the embodiment of Roy and her narration leads the readers through Roy’s train of thought in the story. Ayemenem.. The God of Small Things begins with Rahel’s return to. Upon seeing her familiar hometown with altered small things, Rahel. sets out to stroll around the town, collecting her memories.. By speaking through the. mouth of Rahel, Roy constructs her story and summons up her memories.. In the. novel where unspeakable desires are articulated and repressed memories recalled, the plot appears fragmented because the narration follows the process of an unspecified narrator’s recollection of traumatic past events, a remembering which can be easily distracted by the simultaneous emergence of divergent memories.. 5. Thus, reading the. See the website by Seby Varghese Thokkadam about Arundhati Roy. <http://www.chitram.org/mallu/ar.htm> 6 See the Progressive Interview on line. This is an interview by David Barsamian in the April 2001 Issue. <http://www.progressive.org/intv0401.html> See also WordsWorth Interview with Arundhati Roy. <http://curiousgeorge.wordsworth.com/www/epresent/royint/> In this interview, Roy explains her concept of time more explicitly. “India exists in several centuries simultaneously. So there are those of us like me, […] It’s a very strange situation where there’s sort of a gap between […] urban and rural, but it’s really a time warp.” 7 See also the Progressive Interview on line..

(20) Chang 15. novel turns out to be an adventurous journey of sorting through bits of debris left by some past catastrophes.. With the clues found, recollected, and re-membered,. long-forgotten incidents are once again pieced together.. This crooked route to piece. together Rahel’s story makes the novel fascinating, for it renders Rahel’s story multiple and multifaceted, at once her story and the story of Ammu, Estha, Velutha as if seemingly unrelated incidents are almost always intertwined to form a kaleidoscope for each individual to wonder at its fantastic undercurrents of interrelatedness. The God of Small Things centers on Rahel’s memory of the three weeks leading to the drowning of Sophie Mol, the death of Velutha, the exile of Ammu, and the loss of childhood of Rahel and Estha; that is, before the day of Terror which shattered forever the world they live in, the day which is so traumatic that it signifies to them “the end of living” (304).. Rahel and Estha, twins of a middle-class divorced mother,. Ammu, live in the Ayemenem house, which belongs to their Uncle, Chacko, Mammachi’s beloved son.. A series of unexpected incidents follow the arrival of. Chacko’s ex-wife, Margaret Kochamma, and their daughter, Sophie Mol.. Without. informing any adults, the three children make their own crossing of the overflowing river at night in a little boat and Sophie Mol is unfortunately drowned.. Sophie Mol’s. death, accompanied by the scandal of Ammu and Velutha’s (a lower-caste Untouchable) trans-caste love affair, results in Velutha’s death, Ammu and the twins’ separation, and the invisible wounds in the hearts of all the Ayemenem dwellers. Twenty-three years later, Rahel comes back to Ayemenem to meet her re-returned twin brother, Estha.. Their shared memories begin to emerge from their sealed hearts. as all the small things in their hometown beckon their hidden memories from their oppressed past and the long-forgotten events are accordingly reconstructed. After reading the novel, readers are unavoidably drawn by Velutha’s tragic death and Ammu and the twins’ misfortune.. The tragedies of the protagonists in the novel.

(21) Chang 16. trigger the readers’ sympathy toward the powerless and their reflection of the injustice imposed on the weak in such an oppressed society.. Naturally, The God of Small. Things is accordingly regarded as a story revealing the outbursts of psychic violence and physical brutality in Ayemenem.. Moreover, such outbursts of violence are more. often than not regarded by the perpetrators as merely routine, though paranoid, efforts of “battling an epidemic” (293), in this case, the Untouchable.. The caste system is. singled out for critique and indictment. As Gqola points out in “‘History Was Wrong-Footed, Caught Off Guard’: Gendered Caste, Class and Manipulation in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things,” “caste is shown to be intimately linked with identity, purity, gender and class interests. However this subversive novel also highlights the profound humanity of lower-caste characters” (107).. Even though the. caste system serves as the basic framework that keeps the society intact and ensures its function, the fact that the lower-caste characters suffer so brutal a fate because of their race, caste, and gender in the power-structure still reveals the hidden problems in Indian society. Laws, written in the dominant language, are supposedly endowed with unchallenged authority in the patriarchal society. Laws are held in such a supreme position because they are written with the intention to maintain justice and social orders. Members in the society should obey the laws in order to maintain social order and ensure the progress toward prosperity for the majority.. However, with the. capriciousness of language and unpredictability of human desires, laws work both to protect and to prohibit, inviting both obedience and discipline, subversion and transgression.. Besides the written laws, invisible laws, such as common sense,. inherited beliefs, religions, customs and traditions, also dominate individuals’ daily interactions.. These unwritten laws affect individuals even more profoundly than the. written laws.. The invisible laws’ power derives from the ever-lasting “norms” in the.

(22) Chang 17. society.. They are supported by the public who believe in their own righteousness. and who seldom questioned or challenged the authority of laws, explicit or implicit. Through the collective power in the whole society, social orders are hence maintained and the society is run smoothly.. Nevertheless, the power that gives society peace,. structure, and stability can also be turned into the source of conflicts.. The written. laws, officially put into fixed words, show the same weakness as all the printed language. Different individuals at divergent places in various periods of time will explicate the same written laws according to their specific condition, thus endowing the written laws with immeasurable flexibility. Similarly, unwritten laws lack exact forms in the beginning and often depend on the shared beliefs of a group of people, so they can be appropriated even more easily than the written laws.. Any challenge to. either the written or unwritten laws may symbolize the defiance against the public, hence bringing about violent punishment. Due to the laws’ trait of flexibility, conflicts caused by different interpretation of the laws are effortlessly provoked. Whichever law it may be, the law is unavoidably accompanied by violence.. Laws may be designed to cease violence, but ironically. they often lead to more violence.. Laws always stand by the side of the powerful. because generally they are laid down by the authority for the benefit of the public. With such a premise, between those who suffer under the laws and the ones who design them, there always exists a bottomless gap that cannot be bridged. Those who suffer in the hands of the law are often regarded as the violators who tend to threaten the benefits of the pubic. Their voices are naturally silenced by the public because the sufferers’ images are overlapped with those of the threats they pose to the stability of the society. Even though the laws might be proved wrong or excessive, the possibility for the powerful to admit their faults or to adjust the laws seems rather slim and impractical. The neutral position of the law is challenged by its.

(23) Chang 18. unbreakable relationship with the authority. The power structure endorsed by the laws is metaphorically reflected in the novel’s narration of the tense relationship between the Big God and the Small God. “That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance.. Then Small God. (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity” (20). The Big God symbolizes the authority that interprets the laws for its own benefit.. Supported by the majority of law-abiders, it possesses the. absolute power to oppress any challengers who attempt to stand up against it.. Thus,. when pursuing his freedom and desires, the Small God, without any privilege, faces repeated oppression and is neglected if his behavior contradicts with acceptable standards of the public. In the confrontation between the Big God and the Small God, laws join hands with the Big God to silence any turmoil in the society.. Laws. serve as the accomplice of the Big God and protect only those who have the right and the power to manipulate them. To further specify the relationship between The Small God and The Big God, we may refer to the unjustified and excessive violence that is inflicted on Velutha by the police after he was falsely accused by Baby Kochamma of raping Ammu.. Velutha,. The Small God, is repeatedly depicted as someone who “[leaves] no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no image in mirrors” (250), an almost non-existing being. Despite his talent and education, as an “Untouchable” by birth, he excites in the “Touchable” Police an “inchoate, unacknowledged fear,” a fear that is so strong that it prompts them to “destroy what [they] could neither subdue nor deify” (292).. Thus,. when Baby Kochamma brought the news of Velutha’s raping of Ammu to the Police Station, the Inspector immediately believed her lies and instantly sent a posse of police to track Velutha down.. Thus, Baby Kochamma seeks assistance from the. authority, Inspector Thomas Mathew.. He consults with Comrade Pillai, a leading.

(24) Chang 19. member of the Communist Party, to make sure Velutha’s position in the party. Comrade Pillai’s assurance of Velutha’s irrelevance in the party extinguishes any hopes for this dispensable Small God.. Inspector Thomas Mathew and Comrade. Pillai act as the agents of the Big God and sentence Velutha’s death.. Once. agreement is reached and death sentence pronounced, “They looked out at the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew.. They worked it.. They. were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine” (248). Inspector Thomas Mathew, the enforcer of the laws, instructs his men to execute the laws upon Velutha, who has no opportunity whatsoever to fight against the dominant power and the Small God is finally silenced and wiped out from any record that might prove his existence. Such a horrendous execution is shown undisguised before the twins and Roy ironically explains the scene as “a clinical demonstration in controlled conditions … of human nature’s pursuit of ascendancy. Complete monopoly.. Structure.. Order.. It was human history, masquerading as God’s Purpose,. revealing herself to an under-age audience” (292-293).. To those Touchable. policemen who ruthlessly bully Velutha, they justify their uncontrollable violence as “merely inoculating a community against an outbreak” (293).. With a standpoint of. maintaining social order and exorcising their fear of possible threat to the community, the policemen, in the name of their love for their own people, appeal to the laws that provide them with excuses to eliminate the subversive power in the society. Through Velutha’s tragic ending, the laws that wear him down are explicitly presented as monstrous and oppressive.. His inherited caste position and dispensable. role in the Communist Party deny him any access to power in the laws of the world. However, while presenting the net of laws that captures the powerless, Roy also intends to reveal another kind of unwritten law, Love.. Love is an amorphous part of. human affection and an indispensable element in the relationships among individuals..

(25) Chang 20. Love’s unpredictability makes itself appear unassociated with the more straightforward laws that are written down.. However, contrary to common beliefs,. laws, susceptible to divergent interpretations and appropriation, are not necessarily that specific.. While romance writers like their readers to believe that love has a. subversive power that can conquer all obstacles that stand in the way of the lovers, love actually obeys its own laws and is itself a cause of disaster, for once the laws were made to dictate “who should be loved, and how, and how much,” (33) tragedies are around the corner. In other words, whereas most people would like to believe that love is a natural feeling whose root and intensity can hardly be traced and measured, love obeys its own laws and such laws are easily manipulated and appropriated by those in power in order to discipline and control those who are not in control of their own destinies. On the one hand, Roy desires to assert that even though how to love can be taught, love itself and its possibility are infinite. Love is uncontrollable because most of the time, before the individual is aware of it, love has already grown, so the love-object seems to appear so suddenly that no one is quite prepared for it and no one can retrieve one’s love even though whether the love-object is worth loving remains uncertain. This mental struggle of whether to love increases the tension inside each individual and will be transformed into a source of energy for him/her to take any possible move.. On the other hand, Roy also emphasizes the possibility to. manipulate love.. Because there are so many different ways for one to be in love,. ranging from limited expectation of positive and negative emotions, to total bodily contacts, conventions are made up to help determine what are and what are not proper expressions of love. performable.. In the interaction between individuals, love is sometimes. Thus, rules are formulated to regulate or standardize love and its. performance, dictating how love may be articulated, and by whom..

(26) Chang 21. Between love and laws exists no distinctive line that separates them or drives them to opposite poles, even though it is commonly believed that love and laws differ drastically in that love is characterized by its shapelessness while laws by its concreteness.. However, Roy suggests in this novel that love can also be so concrete. that no one can deny its existence while laws can affect each individual without anyone’s awareness. Whether the forces to structure human behavior and beliefs are generated from inner motivation or outer disciplines, both love and laws contribute to the development of individuals’ subjectivities and leave their traces in human’s modes of thought and behavior. Though love and laws seem to oppose each other by generating conflicting desires in the subjects, they are not mutually incompatible. Rather, both love and laws are vulnerable to appropriation. Individuals who master the rules of the laws can effortlessly twist them by appealing to various interpretations. Love and laws hence remain unsteady while assuming the utmost significance in the regulation of the variegated life of the human world. In The God of Small Things, the instability of the love laws is most evidently discerned in the relationship between Ammu and the twins. As a single mother, Ammu doubles her love for the twins so as to fill up the twins’ desperate need of love due to the absence of a father in their life. Despaired as Ammu is when she returns to Ayemenem, she nevertheless realizes that she occupies a crucial position in the twins’ hearts and this realization provides her with additional strength to protect them. Similarly, as fatherless children, the twins are deprived of patriarchal governance and social positions.. When compared with Sophie Mol, who is loved from the beginning,. the twins are anxious of reassuring themselves about the love they receive from their mother, because Ammu has always been the only source of love for the twins.. Their. categorical dependence on Ammu for love forms a tight bondage between the mother and the children.. However, Ammu’s monopoly of the twins’ love also turns her into.

(27) Chang 22. the source of pain for the twins.. Such love not only generates the power for the. twins to live on but also reveals its potential to destroy a desirable relationship between the family members.. Whether Ammu is aware of the twins’ fragile hearts,. she disciplines them with the threat of loving them “less.”. To the innocent eyes of. the twins, they believe that their mother’s love has a fixed amount of quantity and can always be re-proportioned and adjusted according to whether they can live up to Ammu’s expectations. Because the twins lack the sense of security, losing Ammu’s love becomes the twins’ deepest fear, which keeps haunting their muddled recognition of love. The twins’ fear of losing Ammu’s love can be explicated respectively through their experience before the day they meet Sophie Mol.. The innocent questions that. Rahel incessantly asks of her uncle, Chacko, reflect her anxiety of losing the little love she has in her possession upon Sophie Mol’s arrival. “‘Chacko?. Is it. Necessary that people HAVE to love their own children Most in the World?’” (112) “‘Chacko, for example … just for example, is it possible that Ammu can love Sophie Mol more than me and Estha? example?’” (112). Or for you to love me more than Sophie Mol for. Rahel is in dire need to figure out how love can be distributed. among them, convinced of the fact that when Sophie Mol, the perfect cousin whom the adults direct their unconditional love at, arrives, the small amount of love she now possesses will face the challenge of being reduced.. The anxiety Rahel suffers while. in apprehensive anticipation of Sophie Mol’s arrival, unfortunately, prompts Rahel to make insensitive comments and indulge in offensive behaviors.. As if possessed by. jealousy, she cannot even tolerate her mother for making a courteous but positive comment on the Orangedrink Lemondrink fellow at the theatre where they went to see The Sound of Music the day before they went to the airport to greet Sophie Mol.. So,. upon hearing Ammu said, rather casually, “Sweet cap, that Orangedrink Lemondrink.

(28) Chang 23. fellow,” Rahel said rather petulantly, “Why don’t you marry him then?” Her rash and pungent response irritates Ammu so much that she asked Rahel, “do you realize what you have just done?”. Then, in explication of the moral lessons behind Rahel’s. rash but obnoxious comment, Ammu told Rahel, “When you hurt people, they begin to love you less.. That’s what careless words do.. little less” (emphasis mine, 107).. They make people love you a. By repeating the threat of loving her children less,. Ammu inadvertently becomes the very accomplice of the love laws in disciplining the twins into subjecting themselves to Ammu’s logic of love. Ammu’s love becomes the very object they have to vie for and retain. Estha, in a similar plight to that of Rahel’s, feels frightened after he is sexually harassed by the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man. “He knew that if Ammu found out about what he had done with the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man, she’d love him less as well.. Very much less. He felt the shaming churning heaving turning sickness in. his stomach” (emphasis mine, 108).. The experience of touching the “Untouchable”. brings Estha the feeling of impurity, but, more importantly, it may be the very cause for him to lose Ammu’s love.. In other words, Ammu’s love, invisible, insubstantial,. but quantifiable, is nevertheless so concrete that it becomes the very force to form the fragile subjectivities of the twins. Love, in the mutable relationship between Ammu and the twins, serves as the laws that govern the twins’ behavior and the threats that may endanger their world. Most interestingly, Roy describes the twins’ mental sufferings resulted from their love toward Ammu through her unique metaphor of the moth, which almost always appears in the text whenever Rahel feels paranoid, as well as the metaphor of the egg-white, which seems to be another bodily image to project Estha’s anxiety.. The. originally invisible and unspeakable feeling is embodied in the two specific objects that can effectively reveal how love and laws influence the twins.. The moth, to.

(29) Chang 24. begin with, refers to an indigenous moth that Pappachi discovered before his retirement.. As an entomologist, Pappachi incidentally discovered a new-found. species of moth in India, but was told otherwise. However, years later, his moth was named after some other person as a separate species and such disappointment and anger lingered in Pappachi’s heart until his death: In the years to come, even though he had been ill-humored long before he discovered the moth, Pappachi’s Moth was held responsible for his black moods and sudden bouts of temper.. Its pernicious ghost—gray, furry and. with unusually dense dorsal tufts—haunted every house that he ever lived in. It tormented him and his children and his children’s children. (48) In this respective, Pappachi’s moth represents his complicated, indescribable feelings toward the whole incident, that is, his excitement of discovering the moth, his disappointment of being informed of the moth’s commonness and his rage against the fact that he was deprived of the chance to have the moth named after him.. The moth,. with its implication of embodying the variegated feelings of anger and jealousy, later settles on Rahel’s heart. This cold moth with “unusually dense dorsal tufts” spreads its wings and lifts its downy leg as Rahel’s emotion is affected by the things she encounters. By overlapping the image of the moth with Rahel’s subtle feelings, the influences of love and laws on Rahel’s heart are explicitly pictured through the reaction of the moth toward all the incidents.. Examples can be seen when Ammu. explains to Rahel how careless words would cause the decrease of her love for Rahel. At that moment, Rahel feels the cold moth on her heart, whose “icy legs touch[es] her” and brings “goosebumps” (107).. The chilling feeling of facing the deprivation. of love is tangibly presented through the slight touch of the moth’s downy legs as well as the goosebumps that appear on Rahel’s skin. Similarly, as Rahel watches Chacko looking at Sophie Mol’s photo, the cold moth “spread[s] its wings again.. Slow out..

(30) Chang 25. Slow in.. A predator’s lazy blink” (111). Confronting with the possible threat of. Sophie Mol’s competition, Rahel’s anxiety, again, reflects through the motion of her moth that is haunting her.. Yet, this time the moth, as a predator, with its wings. stretched as if waiting for its chance to make any possible assault, seems to concretize both Rahel’s escalating hostility toward Sophie Mol and her readiness to take the offensive so as to, rather ironically, defend her own territories. On the other hand, Estha, a silent boy who is always depicted as “[occupying] very little space in the world” (12), is unable to express his feelings as directly as Rahel through words.. Thus, when he is forced to help the Orangedrink Lemondrink. Man masturbate outside the Abhilash Talkies, he is too frightened to tell Ammu what happened to him.. Harassed by the belief that once the incident is uncovered, Ammu. will love him less, Estha could only attempt to repress his fear.. Despite his effort,. the “[w]hite egg white[,] [q]uarter-boiled” (99) feeling, mixed with his “free bottle of fizzed, lemon-flavored fear” (100), keeps haunting him because he has touched what he should not have touched.. This sense of guilt, accompanied by his fear resulted. from the possibility of losing Ammu’s love and from the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man’s threat, increases his anxiety for the future. This hand-with-egg-white feeling symbolizes Estha’s sense of impurity and innermost fear of losing Ammu’s love. Thus, after the incident, Estha comes up with the conclusions that “(a) Anything can happen to Anyone, … (b) It’s best to be prepared” (186) and “(c) A boat” (187). This chain of thought later becomes the source of all the tragedies in the Ayemenem House and leads all the members to the road of disaster. The twins’ fear becomes another form of laws that predominate over their love. When Ammu, in a rage, accuses the twins of being the reason for her unexpected, incredible imprisonment in her room and demands them to go away, the twins, in a fit of despair, decide to cross the river, seeking shelters in the old History House because.

(31) Chang 26. they have already “prepared” for the worst. The incidental outbreak of Ammu’s rage and the twins’ desperation results in Sophie Mol’s death, which contains the most powerful destructive force to break the bondage among the Ayemenem dwellers. Ironically, it is Ammu’s “careless words” that trigger the tragedy and hurt the twins’ fragile hearts.. The love that should tie Ammu and the twins together is transformed. into the knife that cuts off their relationship.. Without a chance to mourn for their. suffering, Ammu and the twins are torn apart. The wounds caused by love have no time to be healed, and the twins are forced into adulthood once their mother’s love and protection are removed.. Such unpredictable aftermath of love leaves its traces. on the twins’ subjectivities, depriving them of the language that could help them understand what and why it has happened, leaving “them behind, spinning in the dark, with no moorings, in a place with no foundation” (182).. Rahel’s indifference and. Estha’s silence yield ample and concrete evidence of love’s unpredictability and its destructive power. The confrontation between love and laws causes deaths within the Ipe family and traumatizes those who survive the tragedy. The trauma that occupies the minds of the victims tremendously affects their lives, but, for the twins at least, they can only manage the “Hole in the Universe” left behind by the traumatic events, with “incoherence” (197), silence, and self-imposed exile.. Even though the shock of the. tragedy can be deliberately forgotten and buried deep down inside each individual, fractured and disjointed memories are always beckoned and aroused unexpectedly by the small things in daily lives.. Within a few days, the twins witness their mother’s. sorrow, the river’s claim of their cousin, Sophie Mol, Velutha’s violent death, and Chacko’s rage that tears everything apart. The drastic change of their originally orderly lives leaves irretrievable wounds on the twins. As Randall Curb says in his “All in the Details: A Fiction Chronicle,” “[t]he returned children fall into ‘a Hole in.

(32) Chang 27. the Universe’—their emotional development arrested by trauma—and more deaths ensue. … [T]ime stops on that fateful day—as it has on Rahel’s toy watch, which always reads ‘ten to two.”. The following years are like a dream” (87).. The trauma then takes its roots in the “enforced optimism” in Rahel’s eyes and “a hollow where Estha’s words had been” (20).. Although the twins are separated soon. after the tragedy, their shared memory of Velutha’s tragic death scene and Ammu’s desperation follow them wherever they go.. After Ammu died, Rahel began her. drifting but despite the fact that she hates Ammu for changing from a clever and confident mother into one who “refuse[s] to acknowledge the passage of time” (152), Ammu’s face keeps emerging in Rahel’s memory. Years later, on a crisp fall morning in upstate New York, on a Sunday train from Grand Central to Croton Harmon, it suddenly came back to Rahel.. That expression. on Ammu’s face. … That hard marble look in Ammu’s face. … Across the aisle from Rahel a woman with chapped cheeks and a mustache coughed up phlegm and wrapped it in twists of newspaper. … Her co-passenger’s madness comforted Rahel. It drew her closer into New York’s deranged womb.. Away from the other, more. terrible thing that haunted her. (69-70) The co-passenger’s coughing up phlegm reminds Rahel of Ammu’s last visit to the Ayemenem House when Ammu’s health deteriorates rapidly.. Seeing her beloved. Ammu beaten down by the hardship of lives increases Rahel’s anger and hatred towards her mother because Rahel herself cannot manage to deal with her own inexplicable sorrow and wounds. The terrible thing that haunts Rahel is “[a] sourmetal smell, like steel bus rails, and the smell of the bus conductor’s hands from holding them.. A young man with an old man’s mouth” (70).. Such a specific scene. on the bus provokes Rahel’s repressed memory through sensual stimuli, challenging.

(33) Chang 28. the fiction she sought refuge in as a child. The trauma also takes its shape in Rahel’s dream.. After Sophie Mol’s funeral, Chacko furiously storms into Ammu’s bedroom,. demanding Ammu’s leaving and threatening physical violence. Such a savage scene repeats itself in Rahel’s dream.. “After that for years Rahel would dream this dream:. a fat man, faceless, kneeling beside a woman’s corpse. Breaking every bone in its body” (241).. Hacking its hair off.. Chacko’s threat becomes the lively,. atrocious dream that keeps haunting Rahel, forcing her to face her irrepressible memory. As for Estha, his reaction toward his traumatic past is his gradually diminishing voice.. His silence is not “an accusing, protesting silence” but a self-punishment for. what he once said, “Yes, it was him” (32) when asked to identify Velutha in the police station.. When Estha is returned to his father, on his trip to Calcutta, he carries his. belongings as well as “terrible pictures in his head. … [He carries] inside him the memory of a young man with an old man’s mouth. and a smashed, upside-down smile” (32).. The memory of a swollen face. As the train leaves the station, he also. “[leaves] his voice behind” (309). Witnessing the scene in which the Touchable police ruthlessly beat Velutha compels Estha to step into the adult world even though he is still too young to understand the brutality of human nature.. Simultaneously,. unable to recover from the lie that Baby Kochamma forces him to tell, Estha could only blame himself for what he did.. “It was his fault that the faraway man in. Ammu’s chest stopped shouting. His fault that she died alone in the lodge with no one to lie at the back of her and talk to her. (308).. Because he was the one that said it”. Years after the incident, Estha would keep repeating in his mind the scene in. which he sentences Velutha’s death and betrays his beloved friend, but Estha still could not work out such a trauma.. Hence, “the quietness arrive[s]. … It strip[s] his.

(34) Chang 29. thoughts of the words. … Unspeakable.. Numb. … Slowly, over the years, Estha. [withdraws] from the world” (13). Facing a world that is beyond a child’s ability to deal with, Estha chooses to shun it all, retreating to a condition in which he does not have to hurt anyone with his words any more. The trauma originating from the collision between love and laws causes the twins to lose the ability and the will to form desirable relationships with others. Rahel’s marriage with Larry McCaslin is doomed to fail because the husband cannot realize the message emanated from his wife’s empty eyes. Unable to love anyone with her indifferent state of mind, Rahel grants a divorce and goes on drifting. Similarly, Estha turns to his silence and walks incessantly around the town, seemingly unaware of his surroundings. barren” (124).. “One was mad.. The other die-vorced. Probably. This is what Comrade Pillai regards the twins as.. Indeed, since the. twins’ forced separation twenty three years ago, they have been living incomplete lives.. Not until their return to Ayemenem can the twins face their shared trauma. together for the first time. through the trauma.. The twins’ reunion brings the possibility of their working. It initiates the process of re-constructing the buried history and. provides them with chances to unearth their belated memories.. Rahel’s return. changes Estha’s perception of the world and his repressed memories come alive. had been quiet in Estha’s head until Rahel came.. “It. But with her she had brought the. sound of passing trains, and the light and shade and light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat.. The world, locked out for years, suddenly flooded in” (16).. Rahel’s appearance brings back Estha’s memory of the day when they separated. The farewell scene in which Estha wailed and Rahel screamed was recalled through Estha’s remembrance of the train that took him away.. Similarly, Estha’s existence. also brings Rahel the familiar sensation she feels toward him.. “She could feel the.

(35) Chang 30. rhythm of Estha’s rocking, and the wetness of rain on his skin. She could hear the raucous, scrambled world inside his head” (22). Their first encounter after long years of separation brings their shared memories back through all kinds of subtle sensations.. Past memories flood their minds just as. the river overflows the riverbanks. The twins’ perception of the world is suddenly switched on and they begin to remember the small things in the past.. In the. obsessively clean room where Estha lives, “[the] terrible ghosts of impossible-to-forget toys clustered on the blades of the ceiling fan.. A catapult.. A. Qantas koala (from Miss Mitten) with loosened button eyes. An inflatable goose (that had been burst with a policeman’s cigarette).. Two ballpoint pens with silent. streetscapes and red London buses that floated up and down in them” (87).. These. small things beckon their memories and they begin to see the decaying Ayemenem, smell the history and touch each other’s body in search of the image of their long-deceased mother.. The two separate souls desire to piece up the history that they. have repressed and forgotten with their fragmented memories so as to comprehend afresh what has happened and to acknowledge their debt to the victim.. To regain. their oneness, their final healing process is through intimate physical contacts because they would revive their lives from where it stopped.. It is the battle between love and. laws that destroys the lives of the twins, and once again through the confrontation within love and laws should their lives go on once again. After breaking the Love Laws, for the first time the twins are able to share the “hideous grief” that they should have shared long ago. In The God of Small Things, Roy not only attempts to probe into the meanings of love and laws but also combines the two contradictory words.. The oxymoronic. phrase, Love Laws, tends to dramatize the tension the characters suffer in the novel. The meanings of love and laws overlap with each other, but the most confusing part.

(36) Chang 31. lies in the combination of the two words.. Love, through individuals’ non-stop. pursuing, becomes the laws for all the love-bound people to follow.. It regulates. individuals’ behavior and molds them according to the fantasy created in their love-relationship.. Similarly, laws based themselves on love.. To secure the. authority of the law-makers and to protect the loved ones from any possible harms, laws are reinforced to maintain the stability of the society.. Thus, love and laws, as. inter-dependent ideas, give the term “Love Laws” an even more complicated notion. “Love Laws” can be viewed respectively to reveal the unruly confrontation in the interaction among people.. Simultaneously, it can also be taken as a unity to show. the supplementary nature between love and laws.. By creating the phrase “Love. Laws,” Roy designs a complex word/world in which relationships clash against and merge with each other. It is this increase and decrease of tension caused by the struggle between love and laws that Roy manages to analyze.. It is also the conflicts. implicit in the co-presence of love and laws that initiate all the incidents in the novel. As Roy claims at the end of chapter one “[t]hat it really began in the days when Love Laws were made.. The Laws that lay down who should be loved, and how.. how much” (33).. The attempt to regulate the unregulated is doomed to result in. more unexpected incidents.. And. The singularity of the novel lies in her exploration of the. turmoil resulted from Love Laws in the seemingly peaceful life of the immobile Kerala society.. To speak the hidden tension of Love Laws, Roy searches for the. clues among the small things in the daily life.. By the detailed description of the. small things in life, Roy successfully arouses the shared sensual experiences among human beings and leads them to sense the multiple meaning of Love Laws. To further elaborate on another facet of love, besides the previously mentioned parental as well as lovers’ love, the selfless love toward all human beings is also what Roy desires to explore. It is natural for human beings to love those who form.

(37) Chang 32. intimate relationship with them, but to love those who take no part in their lives becomes even more difficult.. Roy may not expect a world where all human beings. live in peace and love one another, but witnessing the brutality that human beings are capable of, she feels the need to point out how human beings’ selfish love can do to harm those they do not love.. “If they hurt Velutha more than they intended to, it was. only because any kinship, any connection between themselves and him, any implication that if nothing else, at least biologically he was a fellow creature—had been severed long ago. They were not arresting a man, they were exorcising fear” (293).. To the Touchable policemen, Velutha is far from a fellow human being to. them.. Their indifference toward him results from the brutal caste system that has. severed the connection between the Touchables and the Untouchables. Roy intends to expose how human beings divide one from another, and how cruelly they can kill another person without their conscience being troubled. problem in the caste-bound India.. This is the most serious. People stop feeling connected to those they are. not acquainted with, and their children are taught accordingly. The twins witness “History in live performance” (293). Therefore, Roy adds a note “in the back verandah of the History House, as the man they loved was smashed and broken, Mrs. Eapen and Mrs. Rajagopalan, Twin Ambassadors of God-knows-what, learned two new lessons.. Lesson Number One: Blood barely shows on a Black Man.. …. Lesson Number Two: It smells though, sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze …” (293). The twins are forced to learn the cruelty of human beings.. To them, Black. Man is not exactly a man because they can barely see the blood on the black skin, which makes the scene they witness less realistic. smell, the History’s smell.. However, they remember the. The deadly scene may blur in the dark, but the smell. takes the vision’s place and haunts the twins’ sensual awareness of death. The twins are to carry the new lessons in their lives, puzzled by the brutality they see in those.

(38) Chang 33. “benevolent” policemen’s face when the policemen believe they are assigned to rescue the twins from an unruly “animal.”. The love among human beings are. destroyed under the caste system, and this is exactly what Roy intends to express and articulate: the caste system both divides and destroys the lives of individuals. Besides the obvious plot in the novel that reveals the injustice in the society, Roy also manifests other subtle means to reinforce such an idea. The strong regulations disciplining individual behaviors in Indian society find their apt metaphor in the banana jam that the Paradise Pickles & Preserves makes.. “[B]anana jam (illegally). after the FPO (Food Products Organization) banned it because according to their specifications it was neither jam nor jelly. Too thin for jelly and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency” (30-31). In the society where everyone is addicted to classification, the unclassifiable objects are definitely not allowed. Respectively, Ammu, a Touchable but a divorcee, is not allowed in the patriarchal family because she does not belong to her father, neither her husband.. Velutha, an. Untouchable with amazing ability of making crafts, is also unclassifiable because of the talents he has.. This jam issue implies that Ammu and Velutha, who break the. laws and transgress their caste boundaries in loving each other, are intolerable to the public and thus need to be banned. Even more, the twins resemble the jam as well. As Estha’s imagination runs when he copies the Banana Jam recipe for Ammu, “Like Noah’s sons. … And nearby in the jungle, in the eerie, storm-coming light, animals queued up in pairs: Girlboy. allowed” (187). them to dwell.. Girlboy.. Girlboy. Twins were not. Because they are not classifiable, they are not granted a place for Estha’s ominous imagination foreshadows the day of doom which. indeed is yet to come in the near future. ensues.. Girlboy.. After the tragedy, the ultimate division. The twins with a shared identity is forced to separated, each arriving at a.