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| A river in Kerala, the region in India that is home to God of Small Things |
- Arundhati Roy, God of Small Things
Weeks 10, 11 and 12 discussed the concept of 'orientalism' depicted by postcolonial scholar Edward Said. Simply put, the idea of orientalism is a continuous perception of the orient, more specifically the central and southern Asian regions, as something fantastic...that is, something that supercedes the realities of a specific region. Examples Said gives of orientalism include such writings as Lawrence of Arabia and pictures such as the ones below, which depict the Occidental perceptions of the various societies and cultures that exist in this region of the world:
Perhaps the recent revolutions that have taken place in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria have opened the eyes of western society to the realities of such cultures, or perhaps not. Nevertheless, Said specifically addresses this dichotomy between the Occidental and Oriental, explaining the dominance of the Occidental in regard to literature and even 'factual' history. Said's work in Orientalism provides a significant breakthrough into an understanding of the way westerners have not only perceived the East, but also how they have attempted to shape the East into those perceptions.
The river pictured at the top depicts the realities of some of these orientalist regions. This specific river, located within the Kerala region of India, becomes a significant part of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things. Roy, a prominent political activist and a Marxist according to many, combines the changing nature of politics in India with its seemingly heirarchical cultural background. Although the book focuses mainly on two siblings, Rahel and Estha, many critics consider the main focus of the book to be on Velutha, an untouchable member of India's Communist Party, who is ostricized at the end of the novel not only by the family for which he was worked for years, but also by his own father and the local leader of the Communist Party, Comrade Pellai.
Velutha is thus depicted as the God of Small Things in this book, a sort of scapegoat at the end of the novel on which to blame the problems occuring in the land of 'big things' across the river. Velutha has a relationship with Ammu, Rahel and Estha's mother (a member of a higher class in India), and thus becomes ostricized and eventually gets arrested and beaten to near-death.
While the death of Sophie Mol, Rahel and Estha's cousin, becomes a prominent theme in the novel from the beginning of the book, the sections following her funeral treat her as sort of an observer and secondary character, an outsider who is invited into the society only to meet a tragic end, partially on the part of naivety for the physical landscape and society of the region in which she has travelled.
Thus, as we follow our theme of determining who 'the intended' characters are in each novel, we see Sophie Mol as the intended in God of Small Things.
