Arundhati RoyBiography

1
Arundhati Roy--Biography

• My mother says that some of the incidents in the
  book are based on things that happened when I was
  two years old. I have no recollection of them.
  But obviously, they were trapped in some part of
  my brain.

2
Arundhati Roy-- childhood

• born as Suzanna Arundhati Roy on 11/24/1961
• mother--Mary Roy (Christian)--a well-known social
  activist, ran an informal school (Corpus Chrisiti
  )
• father (a Bengali Hindu tea planter)
• uncle--George Issac (owned the Palat Pickles--the
  slogan Emperor in the realm of taste)

3
Arundhati Roy--childhood

• 1-yr-oldparents splitfeeling of insecurity
  because of the broken marriage--on the edge of
  the communitydidnt go to school until she was
  10
• When I think back on all the things I have done
  I think from a very early age, I was determined
  to negotiate with the world on my own. There
  were no parents, no uncles, no aunts I was
  completely responsible for myself."

4
Adult Life and Career

• left home at 16 and lived in a squatters colony
  in Delhi
• The Delhi School of Architecture
• marriage (Gerard Da Cunha)--divorced after 4
  years
• a role in Massey Saab
• The Banyan Tree--TV series
• screenplay--In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones
  /Electric Moon
• a critique of Bandit Queen

5
Kerala and the Meenachil river
6
Influence of Kerala

• A lot of the atmosphere of A God of Small Things
  is based on my experience of what it was like to
  grow up in Kerala. Most interestingly, it was
  the only place in the world where religions
  coincide, there is Christianity, Hinduism,
  Marxism and Islam and they all live together and
  rub each other down. When I grew up it was the
  Marxism that was very strong, it was like the
  revolution was coming the next week. To me, I
  couldnt think of a better location for a book
  about human beings.

7
The Rural Environment

• I think the kind of landscape that you grew up
  in, it lives in you. I dont think its true of
  people whove grown up in cities so much, you may
  love building but I dont think you can love it
  in the way that you love a tree or a river or the
  colour of the earth, its a different kind of
  love. Im not a very well read person but I
  dont imagine that that kind of gut love for the
  earth can be replaced by the open landscape.

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The God of Small Things

• Completed in May 1996 (after 4/12 years of
  writing)
• published in 4/4/1997 by Random House
• the Booker Price--Oct. 1997 (Indias 50th
  anniversary of independence)--the first
  non-expatriate Indian author and the first Indian
  woman to win the price

9
Arundhati on Writing the Novel

• inspiration--the image of this sky blue Plymouth
  stuck at the railroad crossing with the twins
  inside and this Marxist procession raging around
  it (Chapter 2)
• so much of fiction is a way of seeing, of making
  sense of the worldand you need a key of how to
  begin to do that. This was just a key. For me
  (the novel) was five years of almost unchanging
  and mutating, and growing a new skin. Its
  almost like a part of me.but she claimed that
  she never revised

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Controversy

• England--derivative--about India
• India--communist critique from E M S
  Namboodiripad--Anybody who attacks Communists
  anywhere in the world will be welcomed by the
  captains of the industry of bourgeois literature
  in the world. sexual anarchy
• obscenity case--Sabu Thomas-- affront Indian
  tradition, culture, and morality excites sexual
  desires and lascivious thoughts hurts the
  Syrian Christian community

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Syrian Christian Community

• less than 5 of Indians population
• more than 20-1/3 in Kerala are Christians (the
  Untouchables turned the Rice-Christians 71)
• the Syrian Church is one of the oldest branches
  of Christianity--came to India with St. Thomas in
  52 CE.

12
Marxism in Kerala

• The first Communist government in the world was
  elected in Kerala in 1957, and from then on it
  became a big power to contend with. I think in
  '67 the government returned to power after having
  been dismissed by Nehru, and so in '69 it was at
  its peak. And it was as if revolution was really
  just around the corner. ( p.64-65)
  

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Biology and Transgression

• I have to say that my book is not about history
  but biology and transgression. And, in fact is
  that YOU CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF
  BRUTALITY UNTIL YOU SEE WHAT HAS BEEN LOVED BEING
  SMASHED. And the book deals with both things--it
  deals with our ability to be brutal as well as
  our ability to be so deeply intimate and so
  deeply loving.

14
The Title

• To me the god of small things is the inversion
  of God. Gods a big thing and Gods in control.
  The god of small thingswhether its the way the
  children see things or whether its the insect
  life in the book, or the fish or the stars--there
  is a not accepting of what we think of as adult
  boundaries. This small activity that goes on is
  the under life of the book, All sorts of
  boundaries are transgressed upon.
• Transgressions-- Problem with classificationbanan
  a jamneither jelly nor jam (p. 30)

15
Small Things

• What is the god of small things?
• Big God vs. Small God (P.20 )Big Godin control
  vs Small Godfrom the childrens perspectiveaway
  from the adult boundariesthe structure of the
  book is a collection of small things (episodic,
  fragmentary)life is constantly interrupted by
  these small things and people have no way to
  protect themselves from being changed by these
  small things
• silent, indifferent, enforced optimism

16

• Its a story that examines things very closely
  but also from a very, very distant point, almost
  from geological time and you look at it and see a
  pattern there. A patternof how in these small
  events and in these small lives the world
  intrudes. And because of this, because of people
  being unprotectedthe world and the social
  machine intrudes into the smallest, deepest core
  of their being and changes their life.--a last
  minute title

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Characters

• The Ipe family
  Papachi (Benaan John)--Mammachi
  (Shoshamma) Margaret--Checko Ammu
  (1942-73)--Baba Sophie Mol(1960-1969)
  Esthappen (Estha) Rachel
• Baby Kochamma (Navomi Ipe) (father Mulligan)
• the Untouchables Vellya Paapen Velutha Paapen
• Communists Comrade K. N. M. Pillai

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Timeline

• 1969--communist march (p.62-69) Sophie Mols
  visit, death, and funeral Ammu and Velutha
  Veluthas death
• 1973--Ammus death (31), p.5 a viable die-able
  age
• 1992--the narrative present--Estha (the
  quietness, re-Returned) Rahel (divorced, back
  for the States) Baby Kochamma (satellite TV and
  diary)

19
Chapter 2

• time 12/1969 (the day before Sophie Mols
  arrival)
• place Ayemenem Cochin
• pop culture The Sound of Music (1965) Elvis
  puff, Love-in-Tokyo p.37
• language p.37 Malayalam vs English (Pre NUN sea
  ayshun--example of small transgression)/
  cuff-link p.50
• p.38 the Terror--p.74

20
Language and Structure

• Repetition I love, and used because it made me
  feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have
  rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take
  away the shock of the plot.
• ...for me the book is not about what happened
  but about how what happened affected people.
• in some way the structure of the book ambushes
  the story. In the first chapter I more or less
  tell you the story, but the novel ends in the
  middle of the story.--p.32 Suddenly they
  become the bleached bones of a story.

21
Children--Two-Egg Twins

• P.4-5 In those early amorphous years when memory
  had only just begun, when life was full of
  Beginnings and no Ends, and everything was
  Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of
  themselves together as Me, and separately, as We
  or Us. As though they were a rare breed of
  Siamese twins, physically separate, but with
  joint identities.--now she thinks of Estha and
  Rahel as Them, because, separately, the two of
  them are no longer what They were or thought
  Theyd be.--p.81-82

22
Children--Twins

• "I'm not a twin, and I've never known twins. The
  book really delves, very deep I think, into human
  nature. The story tells of the brutality we're
  capable of, but also that aching, intimate love.
  And for me the twins are what that is about...the
  ability to actually dream each other's dreams and
  to share each other's happiness and pain."

23
Childhood Trauma

• The twins routes of migration
• Estha AssamAyemenemCalcutta (Returned)Ayemenem
  (re-Returned) quietness
• Rahel AssamAyemenem (3 expulsions)DelhiBoston
  (married to Larry McCaslin)New YorkWashington,
  D.C.Ayemenem emptiness
• P. 60 the children treasured the moment when Ammu
  were getting alone with Chacko (precious beads
  on a necklace)/ p. 76 Rahel pleased to have
  Chacko mistaken for her father/ P.80-81 pushed
  around by the parents / p.82 milestones

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The Love Laws/ Caste System

• p.33 That it really began in the days when the
  Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who
  should be loved, and how. And How much.
  
• caste is the defining consideration in all
  Indian politics, (and) in all Indian marriages,
  (but) the lines are blurring. India exists in
  several centuries simultaneously. (p.71 on the
  Untouchables)

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Women in Kerala

• Relative freedom for women in Kerala
• assertive, energetic, courageous women
• instances of patriarchal oppression
• How are the women being characterized in the
  novel? (Mammachi, Baby Kochamma, Ammu, Rahel)
  What are their relationships with the men around
  them?

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• Ammu--life had been lived married the wrong
  man--p.38-44 Unsafe Edge (p.44)
• Why do you think Ammu has this unsafe edge?
• The fate of the wretched man-less woman. (p.
  44-5)
• Paradise Pickles Preserves (Mamachi as the
  Sleeping Partner p. 55)
• Mammachis pickles (and violin) vs Pappachis
  moth (p.48)colonized (internal colonization)/
  power and knowledge
• other (post)colonial issues CCP and Anglophile
  p.50-51

27
History

• The History House (p.51-54)
  Chackos--an old house at night.
  (p.51)--abstract childrensa physical
  spaceKari-Saipus house--in 1990s Toy
  Histories for rich tourists to play in. Like the
  sheaves of rice in Josephs dream, like a press
  of eager natives petitioning an English
  magistrate, the old houses had been arranged
  around the History House in attitudes of
  deference. Heritage, the hotel was called.
  (p.120)
• geological time the Earth woman (p.52)
• Intertextual reference--Kurtz and the Heart of
  Darkness (colonialism)

28
Symbolic Language--questions

• Analyze these figurative expressions.
• Rahels watch (p.37 ten to two)
• The twins like frogs (p.42)
• Chacko--airplanes and pickle baron (p.55-56)
• reading backwards--Satan in their eyes (p.58)
• ambulance (Sacred Heart Hospital) and wedding
  party (p.58)
• Murlidharans keys and cupboards, cluttered with
  secret pleasure (p.61)