Plurality of Vision and Reality in 'The God of Small Things'
Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things intertwines the universal human issues of globalisation, family ties, and love with voice, vision and reality. The text begins with a quotation from John Berger:
Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one
and this theme of pluralism runs strongly throughout the novel. Although Roy employs an omniscient narrator, we experience certain events from more than one point of view, not only from various characters but also various times in a non-linear chronology. The apparent dysfunction of the family becomes understandable as Roy describes their pasts, their hopes, and their ways of thinking. The family members’ vision are so varied that they inhabit different realities. This pluralism of reality makes communication difficult and compassion impossible.
The driving force, the epicentre around which the entire plot is spun, is 'The Terror'. It is fuelled by the unveiling of a taboo intimacy between Velutha and Ammu and results in a period of chaos that alters the lives of all of the characters. While a cultural theorist could endlessly extrapolate the symbolic collision of Western and Eastern ideals in the context of a globalizing world, this essay will focus on how pluralism relates to themes of time, vision and language, how it echoes, morphs and feeds back into itself, leaving us with the most intimate encounter with contradicting realities.
Thormann suggests that the western 'global master discourse... has the power to determine forms of social exchange universally' and therefore can 'enter into the unconscious processes of subjects everywhere to construct desire' (Thormann, 299). While increasing exposure to American and European films, clothes or ideas could increase a wanting for material goods, it seems a bit far fetched that it could actually construct any other sort of desire, such as the passion between Ammu and Velutha. But perhaps the integration of Western thought in Ayemenem gives the lovers a new ability to see something that was already there, an attraction that had been obscured by tradition and guarded by 'history's fiends' (Roy, 177). Framed by a period of frenzy in honour of Western visitors, Ammu and Velutha suddenly see through a lifetime of socially constructed blindness and realize their attraction to one another. However, in this same instant they become blind to the potential repercussions of their feelings, and ultimately their actions.
The family represents a continuum of insight, from Mammachi who is literally blind, to the grandchildren who see and understand more than anyone expects. Vision is not quantified by acceptance of Western norms, but rather the ability to see individuals within a social context.
Mammachi is a traditionalist: she accepts the world as it is. As an obedient wife, she endures repeated brutal beatings from her husband assuming that showing subservience to her spouse is the ‘right’ thing to do. She cannot see a way out of domestic abuse despite her obvious physical and emotion pain. Beyond accepting societal expectations, Mammachi enforces them with her seniority. She not only believes in the caste system and ‘the Love Laws [that] lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much’(Roy, 177): she is eager to implement them. Whether it is serving a celebratory cake, ‘one piece each’ (Roy, 183), or monitoring 'desire privilege' (Thormann, 300), spitting in untouchable Velutha’s face for desiring what was not rightfully his, Mammachi is blind to human compassion because of a duty to obey ancient societal standards.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are Mammachi’s twin grandchildren, Estha and Rahel, who see the world as its individual parts rather than its class structure. They see cruelty as cruelty and love as love. Rahel is chastised for being ‘over-familiar’ (Roy, 84) with Velutha because she sees him as a kind person rather than his class distinction as an untouchable. As Estha and Rahel grow up, they begin to see the reality of the Love Laws but they can also see their futility. Perhaps sometimes they see too much: their family’s obsession with the West and unfounded fondness for their half-white cousin Sophie Mol, their mother’s pain. Estha literally sees the destruction of their beloved Velutha in the police station cell, a sight that haunts and eventually silences him for life.
Lying somewhere between her insightful children and her blind mother is Ammu. A vivid dreamer and independent thinker, she has the extraordinary and torturing capacity to see two distinct realities that cannot coexist. At first Ammu wonders who the mysterious one-armed man of her reoccurring dreams is, but suddenly she realizes ‘she knew who he was- the God of Loss, the God of Small Things. Of course she did' (Roy, 220). What initially seemed cryptic instantaneously becomes clear, not as newly learned information but a refreshed ability to see something she has already internalized.
But despite this crystallised moment of clarity, this is only one of Ammu’s realities. After the surreal dream sequence of uncertainty and passion, the bathroom scene reveals Ammu’s other vision. This one is more conventional and grounded in the past of her family and Paradise Pickles. Ammu feels as though she can predict the path of her life.
‘So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it only would have been Not to Know. … Not to Know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend. And Ammu knew. Or thought she knew, which was really just as bad (because if in a dream you’ve eaten fish, it means you’ve eaten fish)’ (Roy 224).
Ammu is convinced that she will lead a dry life in Ayemenem which certainly could become a reality. Still her mind has the capacity to legitimize her fantastical dream.
Ammu echoes her extremely insightful son when he wonders that if you dream you’ve done something in a dream, ‘if it counts’ which leads us to the question of multiple realities. Just as the God of Small Things in Ammu’s dream can only do one thing at a time in her dreams, ‘if he held her, he couldn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn’t see her. If he saw her, he couldn’t feel her.’ (Roy, 215), she can only see the world with one vision at a time. But if the world can be envisioned in different ways by different characters or at different times, than which reality is real?
There is a tangible reality in Ammu and Velutha’s love. They are close in age and both depicted as physically attractive. They are both headstrong and more confident than their second-class citizenship entitles them to be. Ammu sees Velutha’s ‘man’s body’ (Roy, 175) and his ability to be a good father while 'holding her daughter in his arms' (Roy, 176). After so many years of servitude and presenting small handcrafts to Ammu, Velutha sees that ‘he was not necessarily the only giver of gifts. That she had gifts to give him too.' (Roy, 176-177). Of course Ammu’s potential gifts are not concrete like his wooden boxes or toy boats, but nonetheless they still are real.
Unlike western Sophie Mol who is 'Loved from the Beginning' (Roy, 186) for no particular reason, Ammu and Velutha are outsiders, not loved in their childhoods because of bad luck rather than bad character. One trauma scholar suggests that when 'two people bonded in and around their respective catastrophic experiences’ they still must face ‘a central problem of listening, of knowing and of representing that emerges from the actual experience of the crisis’ (Caruth, 4-5). The comparatively small troubles Ammu faced as an abused child and the perpetual degrading treatment that Velutha receives brings the couple together in their shared exile; however, it is the sympathetic bond that eventually leads to the more traumatic period of The Terror.
However, the reality of Ammu and Velutha’s love is entirely dependent on a blindness to the institutions of tradition. Their love is forbidden by Indian society so in order to act upon their desires, they must turn a blind eye to the Love Laws. The arrival of westerners Sophie Mol and Margaret Kochamma disrupts the regular patterns of everyday life just long enough to let Velutha and Ammu discover their passion. When their eyes meet ‘centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, caught off guard. Sloughed off like an old snakeskin. Its marks, its scars, its wounds from old wars and the walking backward days all fell away’ (Roy, 176). In a single moment, the caste distinctions that blinded Velutha and Ammu to their physical and emotional attractions to each other disappeared. Freed from history’s conventions, Ammu and Velutha can see their powerful attraction to one another. The caste system is dissolved and ‘in its absence it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain to see as water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel as the heat on a hot day or the tug of a fish on a taught line’ (Roy, 176). This love is real.
Where the plot’s conflict lies and the Terror begins is in the fact that History and its enforcers are a legitimate reality too. The Love Laws are deeply ingrained and devoutly obeyed, that they began ‘long before Christianity arrived in a boat, (Roy, 33). After the moment when time telescoped in upon itself and passion was realised, Velutha and Ammu returned to the ‘hopeless practical world’ (Roy, 34) and their more conventional visions. 'Ammu saw that he saw. She looked away. He did too. History's fiends returned to claim them. To rewrap them in its' old, scarre`d pelt and dragged them back to where they really lived' (Roy, 177). While their love is a reality, so is the place where they really live, where the Love Laws are seen and obeyed. The return to the practical world comes from even deeper insight, when the simple fantasy of one mind meets reciprocity from another being. To see one another’s desires means that their fantasies could become a reality.
History’s tradition of torment is physically manifested in the History House. The dilapidated and haunted structure is avoided but still standing. Its locked doors deny entry to change: however the house's windows are unlocked, indicating that any violations of History’s laws can be seen and the old rules can reach out from under dusty shadows to punish offenders. Symbolically appropriate, Velutha is found and beaten sleeping just outside the History House. It is the still upheld rules of history that kill him.
It is impossible to envision a world where intimacy between touchables and untouchables and well established caste system can coexist peacefully. Just like the God of Small Things, if Ammu and Velutha observe the Love Laws, they must ignore their attraction. If they can see their love for one another, they become blind to the eventual repercussions of their actions. When the realities of taboo and passion collide, they result in ‘the Terror’. Ammu is most tortured by the conflict of her two realities, between her need to love and provide for her children and be loved intimately by Velutha. What is particularly painful is that she knows the realities cannot coexist, or thinking that she knows. Caruth suggests that trauma has a 'double telling' (Caruth, 7), from the crisis of encountering death as well as the crisis surviving the encounter.
This duality of voice or double telling is personified by the multiple faces of Roy’s narrator. As language gives voice to new visions, new visions consequently represent new realities. Conflicting plurality of vision and reality is embodied by a constantly changing voice, ‘as if the narrative continuity itself is unsettled’ (Thormann, 300).
Perhaps the real tragedy of The God of the Small Things is that Ammu and Velutha’s love affair could have endured in different circumstances, in a different time. But time is unreliable. Rahel’s toy watch with a painted face shows us that time is arbitrary and also unchanging, just like the Love Laws. When the narrative voice sympathizes with the children, words of time are difficult: ‘later’ and ‘never’ are both powerful and dangerously easy to confuse. Time is no help in judging or classifying reality. The family business Paradise Pickles’ banana mash is an unclassifiable consistency, neither jam nor jelly, and therefore not marketable for mass consumption. Rahel notices that ‘this difficulty their family had with classification ran more deeply than the jam-jelly question’ (Roy, 30-31). Ammu and Velutha are caught between the realities of the Love Laws and their emotions. Just like the banana mash, their coupledom is not classifiable so it cannot be accepted by the conventional reality of the masses.
Bibliography
Caruth, Cathy. The Wound and the Voice, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. London: Harper Perennial, 1997.
Thormann, Janet. 'The Ethical Subject of The God of Small Things', Journal for the Psychoanalytical study of Culture & Society, Volume 8, Number 2, Fall 2003. Ohio State University, 2003.
Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one
and this theme of pluralism runs strongly throughout the novel. Although Roy employs an omniscient narrator, we experience certain events from more than one point of view, not only from various characters but also various times in a non-linear chronology. The apparent dysfunction of the family becomes understandable as Roy describes their pasts, their hopes, and their ways of thinking. The family members’ vision are so varied that they inhabit different realities. This pluralism of reality makes communication difficult and compassion impossible.
The driving force, the epicentre around which the entire plot is spun, is 'The Terror'. It is fuelled by the unveiling of a taboo intimacy between Velutha and Ammu and results in a period of chaos that alters the lives of all of the characters. While a cultural theorist could endlessly extrapolate the symbolic collision of Western and Eastern ideals in the context of a globalizing world, this essay will focus on how pluralism relates to themes of time, vision and language, how it echoes, morphs and feeds back into itself, leaving us with the most intimate encounter with contradicting realities.
Thormann suggests that the western 'global master discourse... has the power to determine forms of social exchange universally' and therefore can 'enter into the unconscious processes of subjects everywhere to construct desire' (Thormann, 299). While increasing exposure to American and European films, clothes or ideas could increase a wanting for material goods, it seems a bit far fetched that it could actually construct any other sort of desire, such as the passion between Ammu and Velutha. But perhaps the integration of Western thought in Ayemenem gives the lovers a new ability to see something that was already there, an attraction that had been obscured by tradition and guarded by 'history's fiends' (Roy, 177). Framed by a period of frenzy in honour of Western visitors, Ammu and Velutha suddenly see through a lifetime of socially constructed blindness and realize their attraction to one another. However, in this same instant they become blind to the potential repercussions of their feelings, and ultimately their actions.
The family represents a continuum of insight, from Mammachi who is literally blind, to the grandchildren who see and understand more than anyone expects. Vision is not quantified by acceptance of Western norms, but rather the ability to see individuals within a social context.
Mammachi is a traditionalist: she accepts the world as it is. As an obedient wife, she endures repeated brutal beatings from her husband assuming that showing subservience to her spouse is the ‘right’ thing to do. She cannot see a way out of domestic abuse despite her obvious physical and emotion pain. Beyond accepting societal expectations, Mammachi enforces them with her seniority. She not only believes in the caste system and ‘the Love Laws [that] lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much’(Roy, 177): she is eager to implement them. Whether it is serving a celebratory cake, ‘one piece each’ (Roy, 183), or monitoring 'desire privilege' (Thormann, 300), spitting in untouchable Velutha’s face for desiring what was not rightfully his, Mammachi is blind to human compassion because of a duty to obey ancient societal standards.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are Mammachi’s twin grandchildren, Estha and Rahel, who see the world as its individual parts rather than its class structure. They see cruelty as cruelty and love as love. Rahel is chastised for being ‘over-familiar’ (Roy, 84) with Velutha because she sees him as a kind person rather than his class distinction as an untouchable. As Estha and Rahel grow up, they begin to see the reality of the Love Laws but they can also see their futility. Perhaps sometimes they see too much: their family’s obsession with the West and unfounded fondness for their half-white cousin Sophie Mol, their mother’s pain. Estha literally sees the destruction of their beloved Velutha in the police station cell, a sight that haunts and eventually silences him for life.
Lying somewhere between her insightful children and her blind mother is Ammu. A vivid dreamer and independent thinker, she has the extraordinary and torturing capacity to see two distinct realities that cannot coexist. At first Ammu wonders who the mysterious one-armed man of her reoccurring dreams is, but suddenly she realizes ‘she knew who he was- the God of Loss, the God of Small Things. Of course she did' (Roy, 220). What initially seemed cryptic instantaneously becomes clear, not as newly learned information but a refreshed ability to see something she has already internalized.
But despite this crystallised moment of clarity, this is only one of Ammu’s realities. After the surreal dream sequence of uncertainty and passion, the bathroom scene reveals Ammu’s other vision. This one is more conventional and grounded in the past of her family and Paradise Pickles. Ammu feels as though she can predict the path of her life.
‘So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it only would have been Not to Know. … Not to Know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend. And Ammu knew. Or thought she knew, which was really just as bad (because if in a dream you’ve eaten fish, it means you’ve eaten fish)’ (Roy 224).
Ammu is convinced that she will lead a dry life in Ayemenem which certainly could become a reality. Still her mind has the capacity to legitimize her fantastical dream.
Ammu echoes her extremely insightful son when he wonders that if you dream you’ve done something in a dream, ‘if it counts’ which leads us to the question of multiple realities. Just as the God of Small Things in Ammu’s dream can only do one thing at a time in her dreams, ‘if he held her, he couldn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn’t see her. If he saw her, he couldn’t feel her.’ (Roy, 215), she can only see the world with one vision at a time. But if the world can be envisioned in different ways by different characters or at different times, than which reality is real?
There is a tangible reality in Ammu and Velutha’s love. They are close in age and both depicted as physically attractive. They are both headstrong and more confident than their second-class citizenship entitles them to be. Ammu sees Velutha’s ‘man’s body’ (Roy, 175) and his ability to be a good father while 'holding her daughter in his arms' (Roy, 176). After so many years of servitude and presenting small handcrafts to Ammu, Velutha sees that ‘he was not necessarily the only giver of gifts. That she had gifts to give him too.' (Roy, 176-177). Of course Ammu’s potential gifts are not concrete like his wooden boxes or toy boats, but nonetheless they still are real.
Unlike western Sophie Mol who is 'Loved from the Beginning' (Roy, 186) for no particular reason, Ammu and Velutha are outsiders, not loved in their childhoods because of bad luck rather than bad character. One trauma scholar suggests that when 'two people bonded in and around their respective catastrophic experiences’ they still must face ‘a central problem of listening, of knowing and of representing that emerges from the actual experience of the crisis’ (Caruth, 4-5). The comparatively small troubles Ammu faced as an abused child and the perpetual degrading treatment that Velutha receives brings the couple together in their shared exile; however, it is the sympathetic bond that eventually leads to the more traumatic period of The Terror.
However, the reality of Ammu and Velutha’s love is entirely dependent on a blindness to the institutions of tradition. Their love is forbidden by Indian society so in order to act upon their desires, they must turn a blind eye to the Love Laws. The arrival of westerners Sophie Mol and Margaret Kochamma disrupts the regular patterns of everyday life just long enough to let Velutha and Ammu discover their passion. When their eyes meet ‘centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, caught off guard. Sloughed off like an old snakeskin. Its marks, its scars, its wounds from old wars and the walking backward days all fell away’ (Roy, 176). In a single moment, the caste distinctions that blinded Velutha and Ammu to their physical and emotional attractions to each other disappeared. Freed from history’s conventions, Ammu and Velutha can see their powerful attraction to one another. The caste system is dissolved and ‘in its absence it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain to see as water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel as the heat on a hot day or the tug of a fish on a taught line’ (Roy, 176). This love is real.
Where the plot’s conflict lies and the Terror begins is in the fact that History and its enforcers are a legitimate reality too. The Love Laws are deeply ingrained and devoutly obeyed, that they began ‘long before Christianity arrived in a boat, (Roy, 33). After the moment when time telescoped in upon itself and passion was realised, Velutha and Ammu returned to the ‘hopeless practical world’ (Roy, 34) and their more conventional visions. 'Ammu saw that he saw. She looked away. He did too. History's fiends returned to claim them. To rewrap them in its' old, scarre`d pelt and dragged them back to where they really lived' (Roy, 177). While their love is a reality, so is the place where they really live, where the Love Laws are seen and obeyed. The return to the practical world comes from even deeper insight, when the simple fantasy of one mind meets reciprocity from another being. To see one another’s desires means that their fantasies could become a reality.
History’s tradition of torment is physically manifested in the History House. The dilapidated and haunted structure is avoided but still standing. Its locked doors deny entry to change: however the house's windows are unlocked, indicating that any violations of History’s laws can be seen and the old rules can reach out from under dusty shadows to punish offenders. Symbolically appropriate, Velutha is found and beaten sleeping just outside the History House. It is the still upheld rules of history that kill him.
It is impossible to envision a world where intimacy between touchables and untouchables and well established caste system can coexist peacefully. Just like the God of Small Things, if Ammu and Velutha observe the Love Laws, they must ignore their attraction. If they can see their love for one another, they become blind to the eventual repercussions of their actions. When the realities of taboo and passion collide, they result in ‘the Terror’. Ammu is most tortured by the conflict of her two realities, between her need to love and provide for her children and be loved intimately by Velutha. What is particularly painful is that she knows the realities cannot coexist, or thinking that she knows. Caruth suggests that trauma has a 'double telling' (Caruth, 7), from the crisis of encountering death as well as the crisis surviving the encounter.
This duality of voice or double telling is personified by the multiple faces of Roy’s narrator. As language gives voice to new visions, new visions consequently represent new realities. Conflicting plurality of vision and reality is embodied by a constantly changing voice, ‘as if the narrative continuity itself is unsettled’ (Thormann, 300).
Perhaps the real tragedy of The God of the Small Things is that Ammu and Velutha’s love affair could have endured in different circumstances, in a different time. But time is unreliable. Rahel’s toy watch with a painted face shows us that time is arbitrary and also unchanging, just like the Love Laws. When the narrative voice sympathizes with the children, words of time are difficult: ‘later’ and ‘never’ are both powerful and dangerously easy to confuse. Time is no help in judging or classifying reality. The family business Paradise Pickles’ banana mash is an unclassifiable consistency, neither jam nor jelly, and therefore not marketable for mass consumption. Rahel notices that ‘this difficulty their family had with classification ran more deeply than the jam-jelly question’ (Roy, 30-31). Ammu and Velutha are caught between the realities of the Love Laws and their emotions. Just like the banana mash, their coupledom is not classifiable so it cannot be accepted by the conventional reality of the masses.
Bibliography
Caruth, Cathy. The Wound and the Voice, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. London: Harper Perennial, 1997.
Thormann, Janet. 'The Ethical Subject of The God of Small Things', Journal for the Psychoanalytical study of Culture & Society, Volume 8, Number 2, Fall 2003. Ohio State University, 2003.
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