The concept of belonging is not known to the human race. Everyone belongs to something or someone at least once in his or her lives. A person receives a sense of fulfillment, that everything is right with the world when they fit into a certain place with a group of people. There are people who are born with a multitude of nationalities. Most people receive the genes from both their mother and their father and with that they also revive past nationalities or genealogies as they are called. Then there are people with multiple races, like people of mixed Indian and British heritage that developed after Britain’s colonial conquest of the area during the nineteenth century. The ruling British class shapes the society of India in Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things. Even though their rule ended long ago they still rule India in their believed superiority, believed both by the British themselves and even the Indians still in India. Due to the strict confines of their society the main characters in this novel struggle to conform. Through an analysis of the four main characters, Ammu, Esta, Rahel, and Sophie Mol, the idea of belonging in Roy’s novel is expressed further with their expulsion from being a part of the group.
Ammu is the mother of the two egg twins in the novel. She seems to make an effort throughout her entire life not to fit in with her culture. While growing up she could not wait to leave the home of her mother and father who denied her the right to further education. She was treated as second best when compared to her brother not even given a dowry for marriage, a fact that made her escape even more desperate. It was while visiting the wedding of a cousin that the married her husband, what Baby calls a love marriage even though it was not made out of love. But she marries outside of her caste, actually thinking herself worthy enough to warrant the affection from a person better off in life than herself. She joins the Planters Club and owns things she only dreamed of while living at home. That makes her divorce even more the shocking incident (Arundhati 58). The fact that she asks for it because he is a drunk makes it even worse. Not only does she think she can marry above herself in the social order but for her to actually believe that she is better than her Brahman husband. She never tried to obey the laws of the land around her. Even her affair with Velutha can be seen as an act of defiance against the strict code of the love laws. She dared touch an untouchable, but not just touch but have sex with and risk the disgrace of a child being born from this unholy union. Ammu refused to give her children a last name the only choices afforded her were that of her father’s or her husband’s. Neither choice appealed to her so her children were just as outcast as herself being illegitimate.
Rahel, one of the twins in the novel, never really fit in anywhere she went. After Esta was returned she was sent to a convent where she proceeded to cause severe havoc, the third incident of which got her expelled for her first school. She was a free spirit and ran wild like someone with whom restrictions simply did not apply. She was not afraid to ask the question no one else dared to ask or to speak her mind. It is this quality that made her husband fall in love with her while she was in college (Thormann 300). Both Chacko and Mammachi were heartbroken after the death of Sophie Mol and did not care what Rahel did with her life. She was well taken care of in relation to money, clothing, and tuition, but there was a lack of love and affection in her life after her mother was forced to leave her when she was still young. She married an American simply because she wanted to and moved to Boston with him. They lived there for a while and she fit in to her surroundings enough to survive. But she still carried Ayemenem with her in her eyes. Even after her divorce she worked in New York, but still she longed for the river near the Ayemenem House. And most of all she longed for her brother. It is only the news that Esta has been Re-returned that brings her home after years of wandering.
Esta did not go out of his way like Rahel to not belong in India. After her was Returned to his father after The Terror, he was an average student, who did not speak out in neither a positive nor a negative sense (Arundhati 34). He kept to himself after the terror for which he blamed himself. It was him that had to see Velutha in that terrible state on the floor of the police station, beaten and utterly broken for something he did not do. Both twins were terrified. Either they betray a man they desperately love or live with the thought that it was their fault their mother was thrown in jail. Esta had to choose between two people he loved. That incident stole his words right out of him. It began with the molestation scene in the movie theatre lobby when he became Esta Alone. Then Esta Alone progressed to Esta of no Words. He had a duel role in the family. He had both a little man role and that of a more feminine role. He did not fit in to either because he refused to speak. It is his refusal to speak that makes him an outcast; it is even assumed by most people that he is a little slow because of this. He never left the country to live but still he was an outcast within his own country because he was different, he was silent.
Sophie Mol, on the other hand, was from another country. She had two nationalities. She was half British and Indian. She grew up in England, received an English education and even considered her mother’s second husband, Joe, her father. She knew next to nothing about her true father, her mother possibly embarrassed by her slight indiscretion of the past. She does not know any of the Indian customs at the airport and cannot understand why Chacko picks her up like a child in the terminal. She’s confused and doesn’t know what to do. She was raised one way her entire life and then she comes to India where she is treated as superior. Her mother is a waitress; nothing special in England but her British background raises her above everyone else. The elaborate play they put on for her effect at the house makes everyone sick. Rahel, Esta, and Ammu are pushed farther down the social ladder to make room for Margaret and her daughter. Sophie didn’t get enough time to fit into the Indian culture. She was just making friends with her cousins when she was untimely killed.
In conclusion, the main characters in this novel struggle to fit in with something, whether it is their families, the culture, or that of a different culture. Both Ammu and Rahel gave up on fitting into their surroundings and just lived their lives the way they wanted to. Ammu was forced to leave her children and die alone in a dirty little room. Rahel returned to Ayemenem divorced, disgraced, to confront a complete stranger that was once half of herself. Both Esta and Sophie Mol tried to fit in. Esta became quiet and alienated from all those around him retreating into silence as a safety mechanism and Sophie Mol died at a very young age, before she could develop into something like the twins. The consequences of conformity and nonconformity are quite similar as seen through the lives of these four people. None of them truly belonged and didn’t live very happy lives resulting from this slight ostracism from their peers.
Works Cited
Arundhati, Roy. 1998. The God of Small Things. Harper Perennial: New York.
Thormann, Janet. 2003. “The Ethical Subject of The God Of Small Things”. Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society.Ohio State University
