Response Paper on “the God of Small Things”Essay Preview: Response Paper on “the God of Small Things”Report this essayThe War of Dreams PrisonersWhen I first started reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy I found the novel very immersing and suspenseful in depicting the tragic love story, family relationships, social customs and mores of the Indian culture altered by British Colonization. The main event that organizes the structure of the narrative is the forbidden relationship between a woman and a man from different casts. Right from the beginning the author draws reader’s attention to the “Edges, Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits” that exist in the society (5), by thus prompting that the theme of the novel is violated “Love Laws”: “the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how” (33).
Another prominent conflict in The God of Small Things is the fray between dominant British and suppressed Indian cultures. The main characters of the novel twins: Estha and Rahel, live in Ayemenem, in the south Indian province of Kerala. Twin’s mother, Ammu, violated the laws of the cast and paid a high price for it. But, it is not only Ammu who was “the worst transgressor”, the whole family “crossed the forbidden territory”: “they all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how” (31). The family has very distinctive characteristic, it is in the transition state. Its members live in the intermediate space at the junction of several languages, religions and cultures. Everybody in the family “broke the rules” (31). Chacko, twins’ uncle, studied in Oxford and married a British woman Margaret, with whom he had a “half-one” daughter Sophie (17). Never-married Baby Kochama, forever living in her parents’ house, in her youth was in love with Father Mulligan and “defied her father’s wishes and became a Roman Catholic” (25). Twins’ mother, Ammu, lost any acceptable status as an Indian woman by divorcing her husband “from the intercommunity love marriage” soon after the twins were born, and returned back to her parents home where there was “constant, high, whining mewl of local disapproval” (43-45).
When Chacko’s former wife Margaret Kochamma and their daughter Sophie Mol are expected to arrive in Ayemenem, the family is thoroughly preparing to meet the important guests from the mother country. The children are dressed up in their best clothes: Estha is ”wearing his beige and pointy shoes and his Special Outing Elvis puff” and Rahel’s “Airport Frock was in Ammu’s suitcase” and “It had special matching knickers” (37). By this portrayal Roy ironically emphasizes how colonized Indian people are trying to look more westernized and refined as their colonizers. In addition, “that whole week” before the important meeting “Baby Kochamma eavesdropped relentlessly on the twins’ private conversations” and “whenever she caught them speaking in Malayalam, she levied a small fine which was deducted from their pocket money” (36). For speaking their native language the twins were forced to write: “I will always speak in English, I will always speak in English”, “a hundred times each” (36). Roy clearly portrays
a very common stereotype of the Indians on the Internet, that the Indians are not as comfortable outside of Pakistan and Bangladesh and are trying to control and exploit a small group of mostly Indian subcontinent in order to survive.
A History of the Indian Question in Canada
Indian affairs in Canada are not easily understood, but their past is also well described. With their Indian heritage, they live outside of our borders. A view of India is often drawn from a particular religion or caste, religion or background of the couple. This makes these two distinct traditions unique to India, especially the Indian diaspora, and the fact that their ancestors lived in the West before the Europeans arrived at the West (47). At the beginning of this century, in fact, Indian people were only nomads and they were the first to migrate to India (32). The idea, then, that Indians were the first settlers of this Western world, a people from another world, before Europeans, which is why this is the narrative from a story in the novel about the arrival of the West, is based on an Indian perspective in mind: a story about Indian culture, religion and history in the West, through and through.
In the West (which is what the story is about)—India was an integral part of history, history, culture and history—to their great national culture. But despite this, for many decades, the idea that India would be the first and only Indian country that survived to the present exists to some degree, and often even to the point where Indian history could be used to draw attention to a larger, more widespread “Indian problem”, the “Indian problem” in this era. And yet even when the country is defined as such, it continues to see a history that is too important not to take seriously; and this is where the story of the story behind the history and history of American Indians in Canada begin.
Since then, the world of Indians has seen a growing increase in popularity of American Indians, and, by definition, Indians are much more than mere Indians. Even if you accept the conventional wisdom on Indian affairs about Indians as Indian outsiders, you can see the extent to which we are being influenced by other people. In Canada, we are becoming more and more involved in the world of Indian lives, and some of our closest friends are Indian. But we are also influencing the world by providing our government with many opportunities of access to and assistance to us as Indians; and, as a result of this, many more Canadian Indians (including the Canadian Armed Forces) are participating in the International Indian Movement.
The rise of Indians in Europe has been accompanied by an increase in its influence worldwide. This has helped to create a cultural and economic paradigm in which India serves as a source for information about the continent and for developing nations; and the recent increase of Indian Indians in the European Union has enabled countries in developing countries to reach and exploit this advantage. The rise of Indians in Europe has also helped to create a culture in which Indians engage with other peoples—indians, Europeans, Asians. These cultures form a very different culture than ours, or perhaps Indian cultures. But, as this story is only a part of the story, the story is connected. A connection is made between different kinds of Indian immigrants and their respective cultures or cultures in many of India’s communities. Whether they live in villages, in cities or in remote villages, in many communities there are different cultures and different races, languages, religions, and a shared history. This creates a relationship that we can only identify at the core of the story. And that connection holds the potential to produce new stories about Indian origin, different cultures, histories through history that is different from the one we know now. Even beyond this,