The God of Small Things I

It has been noted frequently in this blog that there are two broad ways to read literature (and many sub-divisions of both): historical and universal.  Debates abound on their relative validity, but I prefer the both-and approach rather than the either-or dilemma.

Arundhati Roy’s 1997 novel offers an excellent opportunity to compare the two ways of reading and hopefully appreciate both.

The God of Small Things can be read as a post-colonial Indian novel that reflects the blending of cultures (Indian, British, American) and religions (Hinduism, Christianity), the corruption of India’s natural environment by capitalistic ventures, the historical conflict between capitalism and Marxism as it has played out in India and the persistence of ancient Indian traditions in a global environment.

None of these “big things” (culture, history, politics, religion) come off well in the novel, which portrays a world grown putrid with exploitation, oppression, dislocation, and corruption.  Even, especially, the family unit has deteriorated into a hotbed of physical and psychological trauma.  At best the novel can be read as a protest against patriarchy, class and caste,  divisions based on skin color, family “honor,” environmental destruction, the raw exercise of power through social structures, and the corruption even of those (Marxists) who would reverse the power structures and deliver the oppressed from suffering.

Above all, it interrogates the “Love Laws” that determine “Who should be loved.   And how.   And how much.”  The novel demonstrates the destructive effects of both violating the love laws (pedophilia) and of following them (religious restrictions).  In some cases it registers a silent protest against the love laws, as when class, caste, and color forbid the relationship between Ammu and Velutha and the breaking of the taboo leads to violence, deceit, and the exploitation of children in the name of family honor.  In other cases, as when Estha is molested, the love laws are affirmed.  Adultery and divorce seem to pass unjudged. 

The most ambiguous act is the incest between Rahel and Estha, shared not out of “happiness, but hideous grief.”  Whatever aftereffects they might experience are left to our imaginations.  They are not shown to suffer from the act, nor are they shown to benefit, though one can infer they experienced some short term comfort.

Anthropologists have identified incest as an almost universal taboo, though it has been practiced historically in some cultures and has been defined differently in different cultures.  While it occurs in nature, there is evidence that more highly evolved species prefer to mate outside their biological family.

To the close-knit twins the act might feel like an entirely natural coupling (though they had been separated from an early age).  Yet, one wonders to what extent their intimacy may result in yet more guilt and trauma.  Or, perhaps it is their shared childhood guilt and trauma that lead them to turn to each other for comfort.  What is ambiguous is whether that mutual comfort is part of their healing or part of their psychic damage.

For whatever reason, incest is a recurring literary theme, often associated with the tragic fall of a family, whether it be in Greek drama (Oedipus the King), Shakespearean tragedy (Hamlet), gothic fiction (“The Fall of the House of Usher”), or the modern novel (The Sound and the Fury).  In its prime the Ipe family was highly educated, well-respected, and accomplished.  When the patriarch of the family Pappachi fails to get credit for the discovery of a new species of moth, the decline begins, as the family loses its chance for lasting fame.  Pappachi’s bitterness leads him to abuse his family.  Mammachi bears the scars of Pappahi’s beatings and their daughter Ammu enters into a bad marriage to escape the harsh family environment.  Although the family pickle factory is successful, the marriages of both Ammu and her brother Chacko fail, and their aunt, called Baby, who never marries, becomes as bitter and spiteful as Pappachi, grieving over her unrequited love for a priest.

Ammu’s affair with the Untouchable Velutha; the accidental drowning of Chacko’s daughter, Sophie Mol; Baby’s false accusation of rape and kidnapping against Velutha; Estha’s near-coerced betrayal of his beloved Velutha and the latter’s death at the hands of the police; Chacko’s beating of Ammu; the separaton of the twins; and the subsequent failure of the pickle factory leave the family in shambles.  Chacko emigrates to Canada, Ammu dies at age 32, Estha becomes mute, Rahel becomes “empty,” and Baby neglects her ornamental garden as she and Mammachi live out their days watching American television and allowing the house, as well as themselves, to deteriorate.

 In such a context, Estha and Rahel’s act of incest suggests that the family has reached its nadir and that the only hope of a new generation is utterly blighted. 

 As long as we are examining the novel from a historical perspective, we must take note of the History House.  Chacko speaks of the family history as “a long line of Anglophiles,” who have become “trapped outside their own history” by the history of colonialism.  Their true history is found in a metaphorical “History House,” from which they have become alienated. 

The young twins think Chacko is talking about the abandoned house across the river, said to have been the home of an Englishman who had “gone native,” speaking the local language and wearing Indian clothing. Explicit references to “the heart of darkness” refer to both Conrad’s novel (see blog post April, 2010) and the darkness to be found in colonialism.  Ironically, it is not only the colonized who become alienated from their own history and culture, but the colonizers as well.

And the literal History House across the river becomes the site for the secret meetings between Ammu and Velutha, the hiding place of the twins after Sophie Mol drowns, and for the brutal beating of Velutha by the local police.  “Darkness” takes on the meanings of forbidden love, secrecy, tragic loss, and savage violence.  The big things (culture, history, politics, religion, the Love Laws) and the small things of individuals, their private feelings, and their human experience all intersect in the History House, both Chacko’s metaphorical one and the twins’ literal one.  And that intersection takes place in “the heart of darkness.”

Is the Ipe family a microcosm of the Indian nation?  In its larger historical context the novel can perhaps be read as a lament for modern India, an indictment of the colonial legacy, or even as a grotesque warning about the coming global catastrophe. The prospect of globalism and a cross-cultural world community offers no solace.  It is difficult to find any promising or redemptive message unless the writing of the novel itself implies some hope that its dystopian vision might be reversed.

In the next post the case for a more optimistic conclusion will be considered in more depth, but a historical reading yields little to be hopeful about.