On my first attempt at reading this remarkable book, I failed to grasp the gist of the story. Perhaps this is because there are so many calamities, which assail the reader relentlessly until the end. But once the reader understands how to read the book, he is captivated by its beauty, each word like a pearl, as it rises beyond the sublime.
The story begins with the return of 31-year-old Rahel Kochamma to her home. House of Ayemenem, in Kerala. The house seemed deserted and was in total disrepair. The only signs of life other than her great-aunt Baby Kochamma, who was comfortably ensconced in front of a new television, were bullfrogs and a rattlesnake.
Raquel he came back to Aymenem to see his twin brother, Estha. The two were once inseparable, but had been apart for almost 25 years since the tragedy of 1969when your cousin sophie mole drowned in the river. The death of sophie mole is he’important thing’: the most important among many smaller things which ultimately leads to the ruin of the family.
The twins grew up in House of Ayemenem: once a beautiful house and owned by his grandfather daddyand her grandmother, mamachi ammunitionyour mother was daddy and mamachi’s only daughter. by mamachi her head is scarred and dented from her husband’s beatings. Ammu’s brother Shakowho was sophie mole father studied at London where he met and married an English woman, Daisy flower: the mother of sophie mole.
When Daisy flower divorced Shako He returned home, and for a while he took care of the family. pickles factory. As he flirted with women and communism, the family business slowly collapsed. When Margeret’s second husband, Joe, is killed in a car accident, Chako invites her and Sophie to visit the Ayemenem House. The other character, who contributes to the stale air of the family and the desolation of the story, is Baby Kochamma, papachi’s spiteful and lying younger sister.
ammunitionSick of her father’s violent temper, she left home for Calcutta where they met and got married, babu: an alcoholic, and as daddy, physically abusive. When the abuse affected his children, ammunition divorced him and went back to Aymenem House. due by ammu the situation with his own family is uncertain due to his marital disgrace. Even her children, the twins, do not feel loved by their grandparents.
The other main character in the story is velutha‘which means white in Malayalam, because he is black’. He is low caste. In House of Ayemenemhis kind weren’t allowed to touch anything’touchable’ touched. mammachi I knew a time when by Velutha Type’they were expected to crawl backwards with a broom, sweeping their tracks so that ‘ others would not contaminate themselves by accidentally stepping on their footprints.
This is the man who by Mammachi daughter, ammunition, Falls in love of. velutha gave ammunition the affection he never enjoyed, and he was for the twins the father they never had. by ammu romance with a low-caste Hindu was the spark that finally ignited the tragic events of the story: the death of sophie mole when the twins were 7 years old.
We finally hear, somewhere in the middle of the story, about the events leading up to sophie mole death. First, by Velutha the father comes to mammachi‘s door and offers to kill his son with his bare hands for having an affair with ammu Malachi responded to this with rage as she imagined by Velutha ‘thick black hand over the body of his daughter, and ‘his mouth on her. Velutha is fired from House of Ayemenemand banished from the estate on pain of death.
The narrative of Sophie Mol’s actual death is short. She is now visiting Kerala and staying at Ayemenem House with her mother, Margaret. She joined the twins as they fled after Ammu insulted them. After her boat capsized in the river, Sophie Mol drowned and the twins, ‘Who could swim like the seals?survived.
The twins remained in hiding after the accident fearing the wrath of their family. The next morning, the police arrested Velutha. He was nearly beaten to death on suspicion of kidnapping the twins and sexually abusing Ammu. This was the version of events that he gave them Baby Kochamma. In this way, she believed, they could finally erase the stain on his family caused by the affair.
After Estha he is pressured by his great-aunt, Baby Kochamma, in saying that Velutha is guilty of kidnapping him and Rahel, and he complied. After that, the family evicted Ammu from the house and forced Estha to go live with Babu, her father. With the death of his cousin, the twins’ childhood was aborted, their family was divided, and an innocent man was tortured to death in prison.
Just as the few hours leading up to Sophie Mol’s death completely changed the lives of the twins, tragedy was looming even before they were born. The Kochamma family is like a military force bent on self-destruction. They are more brutal and savage when dealing with each other. One of the many tragedies of the books is that what it describes boils over in many families not only in Kerala, but all over the world.
Mammachi’s scarred and jagged head is the symbol of the horrors and decline of the Kochamma family. Her children are doomed early in their lives. They are tormented by the death of their English and white cousin. even in life, sophie mole His presence haunted them because of his pale skin. His western color and mannerisms made the twins feel inferior.
Twenty-five years after his death, like the albino whale in moby dick that could not be killed, sophie mole I still had a hold on them. It is as if, although her twins were alive, they had drowned with her. One wonders what really happened on that fateful day. I was sophie mole Was the death an accident or was it something else?
Raquel returned home after a failed marriage in America. It is as if her ex-husband is repelled by the presence of a third party in her union: a swaying, swollen, wrinkled ghost. Estha To return to House of Ayemenem because his father was gone. The twins, now adults and searching for comfort and even love, end up in bed together.
my passion for The God of small things it is so strong that I have read it several times, and with each reading a new and painful theme is revealed in a way not unlike the dirty river in Kerala who vomited sophie mole:swollen’like a ghost in an empty auditorium‘.
one wonders why Arundhati Roy He never followed this masterpiece with another book. His novel tells the most heartbreaking truth about the power of evil. She is strident in her abhorrence of hate and prejudice. I am sure that very few debut novelists have given the world a book as memorable as The God of small things.