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Longworth, Sarah Young. "Trauma and the ethical dilemma in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things /." Electronic version (PDF), 2006. http://dl.uncw.edu/etd/2006/longworths/sarahlongworth.pdf.
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CHAN, Wing Yi Monica. "A stylistic approach to the God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2007. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/eng_etd/2.
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This thesis presents a creative-analytical hybrid production in relation to the stylistic distinctiveness in The God of Small Things, the debut novel of Arundhati Roy. Roy’s text drew the world’s gaze after winning the Booker Prize in 1997. Many studies have been written on diverse aspects of the book, and much has been said regarding the writer’s style. However, those studies rarely focus on the minutiae of Roy’s writing and this thesis provides a greater degree of detailed analysis. The objective is to achieve a deeper understanding of the relationship between style and literary aesthetics in The God of Small Things by studying the stylistic patterns behind Roy’s resonating poetic prose.
The stylistic study is carried out adopting two approaches: the corpus-based approach (Part A) and the empirical-creative approach (Part B). The first section provides a stylistic analysis concentrating on the most significant stylistic features of the novel. The study is based on the list of style markers rendered by Leech and Short, Style in Fiction (1981) and elaborated according to the following key aspects that were extracted from the repertoire using my intuitive observation of the novel. These chosen style markers taken together represent key aspects of Roy’s style: (1) Lexis—Roy’s very frequent and particular utilization of adjectives; (2) Grammar—the high concentration of minor sentences and the listing of noun phrases in the text; (3) Figures of Speech— repetition and neologism. The second section presents a self-written pastiche which aims at imitating Roy’s style in literary prose and adapting its approach to a Chinese context. The creative process serves as an experiment on taking pastiche writing as an “experiential” approach to stylistics. In addition, since the resemblance of the pastiche to Roy’s style should not be the only value of the piece, some key themes in the original text are also reproduced.
The analysis in Part A illustrates patterns of Roy’s stylistic choices. On the use of adjectives, Roy tends to arrange adjectival elements in sequence, construct a fixed “like” sentence structure, and adopt combining word forms and affective adjectives. On minor sentences, Roy chooses to separate adverbial phrases, sentence fragments starting with “like”, “as though”, and clauses beginning with “that”, “which”, “and”, “but”, “or”. As for repetitions, there is repeated use of set phrases, sentence patterns and recurrent appearance of certain lines and images. Lastly, on neologisms, Roy’s patterns of creating new words include hyphenation, direct merging, and prefix/suffix building.
The pastiche is entitled Hong Kong Locust Stand I. By juxtaposing with the original, it is found that many stylistic features in The God of Small Things, are present in the pastiche, though with variation. While stylistic elements cannot totally be independent from the theme, the atmosphere, character and plot of the pastiche also demonstrate qualities representing those in Roy’s novel. The pastiche presents an innovative and respectful way to come to terms with Roy’s style through selective imitation and creative adaptation.
In conclusion, it is hoped that this study opens the way for further hybrid studies of style that incorporate both analytical and creative approaches.
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Olsson, Angelika. "Arundhati Roy : Reclaiming Voices on the Margin in The God of Small Things." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-8366.
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The aim of this essay is to critically consider Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things from a postcolonial feminist perspective, with a special focus on how she models different representations of women, taking as a background the discussions within postcolonial feminism about subalternity and the representations of women from the so-called Third World in theory and literature, as well as the concept of agency from Cultural Studies. This purpose is reached by studying and comparing three main female characters in the novel: Mammachi, Baby Kochamma and Ammu, centering on their different ways of relating to the male hero of the novel, Velutha, an Untouchable in the lingering caste system of India. The essay argues that Roy has contributed with diverse representations of subaltern women in the ‘Third World’ who—despite their oppressed and marginalized status—display agency and are portrayed as responsible for their own actions.
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Stockdale, Emily. "Language and the creation of characters in Arundhati Roy's The God of small things." View electronic thesis, 2008. http://dl.uncw.edu/etd/2008-1/stockdalee/emilystockdale.pdf.
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Camargo, Luciana Moura Colucci de [UNESP]. "The god of small things: uma voz poética entre o Oriente e o Ocidente." Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/102416.
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camargo_lmc_dr_arafcl.pdf: 4212129 bytes, checksum: 50fa4f58f8d18fc6016ee1ed375a6bc2 (MD5)Este estudo apresenta uma análise da obra The God of Small Things, da escritora indiana Arundhati Roy (1961), na qual ficção e episódios históricos, relativos às conseqüências da colonização inglesa na Índia, mesclam-se em um espaço e tempo míticos, favorecendo uma análise baseada na Teoria da Narrativa Poética, conforme a formulação de Jean-Yves Tadié (1978). Com esse enfoque, são examinados vários aspectos ligados à narrativa como personagem, narrador, espaço, tempo, mito, estrutura e estilo, buscando compreender as vozes lírica e social da obra, que ecoam em seu universo híbrido, composto de elementos da cultura oriental e da ocidental.
This dissertation presents an analysis of the book written by the Indian writer Arundhaty Roy (1961), entitled The God of Small Things, in which, fiction and historical facts related to the consequences of the British colonization in India are brought together in a mythical setting that favors an analysis based on the theory of the lyrical novel, as presented by Jean-Yves Tadié (1978). With this approach, aspects related to the narrative genre, such as, character, narrator, setting, myth, structure and style are explored in order to reveal the lyrical and social voices that eco in its hybrid universe that mingles eastern and western cultural traits.
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Schneider-Krzys, Emily. ""For practical purposes in a hopelessly practical world ..." towards a new postcolonial resistance in Arundhati Roy's The God of small things /." Diss., Connect to the thesis, 2005. http://thesis.haverford.edu/136/01/2005Schneider-KrzysE.pdf.
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Hera, Culda Lucia. ""...life had been lived" : Gender performance and woman objectification in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för didaktik och lärares praktik (DLP), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-80346.
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This essay investigates women’s situation at home and in society, in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, from a gender performance perspective. The essay also explores the pedagogical implications of using the novel in the EFL classroom. The gender performance perspective is explored through the analysis of three female characters, Ammu, Mammachi and Baby Kochamma, whose lives reflect women’s struggle to escape traditional caste values, patriarchy and colonial power. The pedagogical perspective focuses on existing trends in literature and language teaching and the possibilities that postcolonial literary texts have to offer in the EFL classroom.
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Moura, Taís Leite de. "Transgressões em O Deus das Pequenas Coisas, de Arundhati Roy: níveis e motivações em contraponto." Universidade de São Paulo, 2018. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8147/tde-03102018-134348/.
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No romance O Deus das Pequenas Coisas (1997) de Arundhati Roy, as transgressões são atitudes que se configuram como abundantes na narrativa, sendo realizadas em sua maioria pelos personagens marginalizados. A fim de obter uma compreensão mais profunda das razões que impulsionam tanto a narrativa quanto os personagens a cometer estas infrações, elas foram divididas em três níveis neste trabalho: pós-colonial, sociopolítico e afetivo. São aqui analisadas as transgressões dos personagens Velutha, Ammu, Estha, Rahel e Sophie. Os níveis das transgressões, suas motivações e os conceitos de trauma individual e cultural são colocados em contraponto para aprofundar a análise da narrativa do romance. No nível pós- colonial, são empregados conceitos de Panikkar (1969), Festino (2007), Forter (2014) e Outka (2011), enquanto Sztompka (2000, 2004), Alexander (2000) e Joseph (2010) permeiam o nível sociopolítico, finalizando o nível afetivo com Caruth (1995), Bose (1998) e Almeida (2002). A hipótese deste trabalho é de que Roy foca nas transgressões para, em primeiro lugar, criticar determinados elementos da sociedade indiana, e para provocar reações em seus leitores. Esta é sustentada através da citação de seus ensaios e discursos na análise do romance.In The God of Small Things (1997), from Arundhati Roy, the transgressions are substantial throughout the narrative, as the majority of them are performed by marginalized characters. In order to comprehend more deeply the reasons which propel the narrative and the characters to such violations, they were divided into three levels in this work: post-colonial, socio-political and affective. The transgressions analyzed here are the ones performed by the characters Velutha, Ammu, Estha, Rahel and Sophie. The levels of the transgressions, their motivations and the concepts of individual and cultural trauma are all correlated so that the intentions of the narrative are elucidated. In the post-colonial level, the concepts of Panikkar (1969), Festino (2007), Forter (2014) and Outka (2011) are applied, whereas Sztompka (2000, 2004), Alexander (2000) and Joseph (2010) are used for the socio-political level; the affective level is observed with notions from Caruth (1995), Bose (1998) and Almeida (2002). The hypothesis of this work is that Roy focuses on the transgressions of minor characters not only to criticize particular elements from the Indian society but also to trigger the reaction of the readers. This is supported by her essays and speeches quoted along the analysis of the novel.
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Hollis, Victoria Caroline Bolton Jonathan W. "Ambassadors of community the history and complicity of the family community in Midnight's Children and the God of Small Things /." Auburn, Ala, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10415/1668.
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Johansson, Emma. "Rahel : A Study of Self-Image in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-12627.
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Tasel, Linda. "Patriarchal Society : Three Generations of Oppression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, Södertörn University College, School of Language and Culture, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-225.
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Shakely, Naz. "Crossing Lines : The Theme of Transgressing Social Boundaries in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Thesis, Södertörn University College, School of Language and Culture, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-368.
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Patchay, Sheenadevi. ""The struggle of memory against forgetting" contemporary fictions and rewriting of histories." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002253.
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This thesis argues that a prominent concern among contemporary writers of fiction is the recuperation of lost or occluded histories. Increasingly, contemporary writers, especially postcolonial writers, are using the medium of fiction to explore those areas of political and cultural history that have been written over or unwritten by the dominant narrative of “official” History. The act of excavating these past histories is simultaneously both traumatic and liberating – which is not to suggest that liberation itself is without pain and trauma. The retelling of traumatic pasts can lead, as is portrayed in The God of Small Things (1997), to further trauma and pain. Postcolonial writers (and much of the world today can be construed as postcolonial in one way or another) are seeking to bring to the fore stories of the past which break down the rigid binaries upon which colonialism built its various empires, literal and ideological. Such writing has in a sense been enabled by the collapse, in postcolonial and postmodernist discourse, of the Grand Narrative of History, and its fragmentation into a plurality of competing discourses and histories. The associated collapse of the boundary between history and fiction is recognized in the useful generic marker “historiographic metafiction,” coined by Linda Hutcheon. The texts examined in this study are all variants of this emerging contemporary genre. What they also have in common is a concern with the consequences of exile or diaspora. This study thus explores some of the representations of how the exilic experience impinges on the development of identity in the postcolonial world. The identities of “displaced” people must undergo constant change in order to adjust to the new spaces into which they move, both literal and metaphorical, and yet critical to this adjustment is the cultural continuity provided by psychologically satisfying stories about the past. The study shows that what the chosen texts share at bottom is their mutual need to retell the lost pasts of their characters, the trauma that such retelling evokes and the new histories to which they give birth. These texts generate new histories which subvert, enrich, and pre-empt formal closure for the narratives of history which determine the identities of nations.
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Kannan, Sitara. "Unmournable Bodies: Gothic Postcolonialism and The Spectre of Loss in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and Anuradha Roy's Sleeping on Jupiter." Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2019. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/515.
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"My thesis compares Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Anuradha Roy’s Sleeping on Jupiter in order to demonstrate how a) each text is a product of its moment and a reflection of corresponding critical thought and b) how an inversion of gothic tropes in Sleeping reflects a changed world dynamic, a melancholic exploration of epistemological and traumatic loss that can be seen not only as a recognition of the continued power of oppressive systems but a reflection on the failure of cosmopolitanism to “rescue” the global subject from her own isolation and recolonization. I claim that this is not only demonstrated by a change in form and how gothic tropes are presented, but in how homosexuality and deviant sexuality in particular is treated, a reminder that even in texts that attempt to condemn and reject colonizing tendencies, the political moment and its theoretical appendages continue to haunt postcolonial discourse, enabling recolonization and restratifying spaces of resistance. I claim that this recognition need not be totalizing or nihilistic, but that in the recognition itself lies the possibility for resistance, an act of rebellion that must be constantly re-enacted in order to deterritorialize what has been captured and displaced, a fluid and imaginative negotiation that, much like literature, is limitless in interpretation and offers readers constant and multiplicitous possibilities for agency in the face of equally fluid oppressive systems."--Provided by the author.
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Chen, Po-hui, and 陳柏慧. "Love and Trauma: Arundhati Roy''s The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2007. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ew9q36.
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碩士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
95
Arundhati Roy’s debut novel The God of Small Things, set in a small village called Ayemenem in the southwestern India state of Kerala, where Roy was raised, tells a story of the Ipe family. Nestled insides the centre of the family chronicle spanning from the country’s colonial period to its independent present is a heartbreaking tragedy resulted from a profane romance involving a transgression of the Love Laws that takes the reader’s breath away. Love Laws, an oxymoronic term Roy creates for her novel, points toward the cultural basis upon which Indian society addresses its traditional and strict control of caste segregation and sexual discrimination. In the cross-border tension caused by the conflict between human desire and Indian socio-political constructs that suppress individual liberty Roy does not only depict the social reality in India but also proposes a scathing critique of the multilayer social restraints on Indians’ bodies and minds. Individual bodies attached to the culture, first of all, are the vehicles of various cultural signs that allotted according to the caste difference and gender asymmetry; at the same time, bodies are the specific location where the infliction of society’s power to discipline and to punish takes place. Body contact that pursues forbidden love as relief from the social oppressions leads to the ultimate penalty, death, which can destroy the body and also scar the witness’s mind. Focusing on two innocent children’s difficulty in piecing the memory fragments together to come up with a belated response to the tragedy and their melancholy fixation about the lost beloved, Roy tries to reveal the lingering effect of trauma and the symbolic death happening to the victims who can’t work through the trauma but trapped by it instead. Roy deliberately provides the novel a traumatic structure consisted of aesthetic poetics, sensual narratives, ungrammatical phrases, repeated images, fragmental passages, etc., to convey a literary experience of trauma to the reader as if they are dealing with trauma when reading the novel. Through discussing the Love Laws from a historical perspective, Roy purposes to suggest that the major trauma in The God of Small Things doesn’t belong to a particular age or place. All Indians in the past, the present and the coming future share the same trauma because the Love Laws have already been a significant part of Indian culture and the practice of Love Laws will continue to traumatize Indian people from generation to generation. Besides tackling the Love Laws as the cause of Indians’ national trauma by presenting the oppression of laws, the novel also offers a remarkable point of view to discuss the cruel nature of love when love is employed as a conditional reward for the obedient in the rhetoric to command, to regulate, to threaten, to bargain, and to inspire loyalty. People’s unceasing desire to win and to give love, against our common belief in love’s sublime value, may bring about hurt, pain, fear, jealousy, mistrust, quarrels, etc., all of which can make a deep cut in any human relation or even cause more serious destruction what is generally considered as the consequence of the exercise of the power of law in its tug of war with love.
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Martins, Margarida Pereira. "The search for identity and the construction of an idea of India in the novels The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai." Doctoral thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10451/26045.
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The main objective of this research project is to analyse how the novels The God of
Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy and The Inheritance of Loss (2006) by Kiran Desai can
help readers and scholars construct an idea of India and of the Indian cultural identity.
In order to develop this theory it is necessary to look into three aspects which are crucial
to the building of knowledge on a nation, its culture and people and these are, national history,
identity and cultural representation through different artistic production, including fictional
narratives. Historical processes are the key to the unfolding of present circumstances and
fundamental to the construction of a national identity that makes sense collectively. However,
the perceptions of the past change according to philosophical and ideological trends, placing
historical objectivity in the hands of its subjective counterpart. It is cultural theory and how it
evolves in simultaneity with the world and its social, political, economic and technological
development that in effect dictates the forms and expressions that give shape to societies,
nations and identities.
The function of narrative whether as text, visual arts, film, architecture, dance and other
creative expressions of the self, is to tell a story. And every moment of every living being can
be told in a story. History too is a story and though in the past it focused mostly on the grand
deeds of the European nations, with postcolonialism new stories began to emerge, revealing a
world of diversity and deconstructing traditional views of the shaping of the past and the power
relations involved. However, this new approach to the historical, cultural and political dialectic
was achieved through the effect of the postcolonial narrative which used Western forms and
structures, such as the novel and the English language, to achieve its aim. This appropriation
of language and form resulted in an inversion of power relations as a cultural metaphor.
For the purpose of such a debate, the present dissertation focuses on the two novels by
Roy and Desai and is divided into three main sections each of which deals with one approach
to the thesis. The first chapter contains the historical approach, in the second I discuss
postcolonial theory and the third analyses the relation between anthropology and fiction.O objectivo principal deste projecto é de analisar como através dos romances The God of Small Things (1997) de Arundhati Roy e The Inheritance of Loss (2006) de Kiran Desai é possível construir uma ideia da Índia e da identidade cultural Indiana. O desenvolvimento desta teoria implica a análise e o estudo de três aspectos fundamentais para o conhecimento mais aprofundado de uma nação, a sua cultura, e as suas pessoas. São estes a história nacional, a identidade e a sua representação cultural através da produção artística, da qual as narrativas fazem parte. Os processos históricos são primordiais como chave para o desenrolar das circunstâncias presentes e fundamentais para a construção de uma identidade nacional com um sentido do colectivo. No entanto, percepções do passado mudam consoante as tendências filosóficas e ideológicas que as nações atravessam, colocando a objetividade histórica à mercê da sua contraparte subjectiva. Portanto, é a evolução da teoria cultural em sintonia com o desenvolvimento social, político, económico e tecnológico do mundo que determina as formas e expressões que definem as sociedades, as nações e as identidades. A função da narrativa enquanto texto, artes visuais, filme, arquitectura, dança ou outra manifestação cultural criativa, é o contar de uma história. A disciplina de história também conta uma história. E embora no passado a história ocidental focasse principalmente os grandes acontecimentos das nações Europeias, com o pós-colonialismo novas histórias surgiram revelando a importância de um mundo de diversidade, servindo para desconstruir visões estáticas da história e das relações de poder. Esta nova abordagem à dialética histórica, cultural e política foi conseguida através do efeito das narrativas pós-coloniais que fizeram uso de formas e estruturas ocidentais como o romance e a língua inglesa para atingir os seus objectivos e alcançar um público mais amplo. A apropriação da língua e da forma resultou numa inversão de poderes transformando-a em metáfora cultural. Este debate foca-se nos dois romances de Roy e Desai e está repartido por três secções principais, onde em cada uma é desenvolvido um dos ângulos de abordagem desta tese. O primeiro capítulo contém uma abordagem histórica, o segundo é uma discussão da teoria póscolonial e no terceiro é analisada a relação entre a antropologia e a ficção.
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Fu, Ariel Sih Hua, and 傅思華. ""Becoming" in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/69475212012970993637.
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碩士輔仁大學
英國語文學系碩士班
103
The thesis analyzes Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things in terms of the marginalized characters’ resistance to caste system, imperialism and patriarchy in India. Ammu,Velutha, Rahel, and Estha are the characters disenfranchised by the system, so they, in Deleuze and Guattari’s term, are engaged in the processes of “becoming,” a passage away from the dominating to the dominated in terms of assuming the dominated parties’ thinking and behavioral modes. Instead of resorting to traditional political strategies and resources, the marginalized characters, in their becoming, gradually deviate from the stratified system by transcending their set positions in different stratifications, disobeying social conventions, allying with the other marginalized people, creatures and things, and breaking incestuous and caste-crossing taboos. Although the four characters sacrifice their lives or become severely traumatized as the system punishes them for loosening its structure, Rahel and Estha still continue to transgress the stratified structure. As a whole, these marginalized characters, albeit traumatized, demonstrate how to use language, gestures, imagination, and interaction with the other people and groups to subvert the solid social system. Chapter One elucidates how different hierarchical systems affect people’s desire and how some characters inflict their modelled desire on Ammu, Velutha, and the twins and traumatize them. This chapter interprets the twins’ incest as both their traumatic response and a necessary healing process. Although afflicted by the hierarchical system and its collaborators, the twins don’t choose to cooperate with the system and victimize the other oppressed groups. Instead, they can find liberation and free zones inside the system by not directly disobeying laws or social conventions and gradually participate in the processes of becoming inside or outside the system. Chapter Two argues Ammu, Velutha, Rahel, and Estha take various strategies, including various thoughts, discourses, and actions, to challenge racial, patriarchal, and the caste stratifications and undo the ideal images created by these organizations based on their identities. The four protagonists gradually evade from the ossified system’s manipulation and imposition on their desire, so they gradually establish emotional or erotic bonds with the other dominated people, even the bonds are inhibited by the system, such as Ammu and Velutha’s inter-caste intercourse which threatens the caste system. Thus, this chapter offers the twins’ incest positive meanings, defining it as inheritance from Ammu and Velutha’s taboo relationships and subversion to the patriarchal society.
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Bear, Weining, and 熊唯甯. "Violence in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2003. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48469071630895478064.
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碩士國立中正大學
比較文學研究所
91
Abstract Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a fantastic novel which describes a tragedy of a Syrian Christian family in India. Observing through women’s sensitive minds and children’s innocent tone, this novel wins the prestigious Booker Prized of 1997 and brings Ms. Roy to fame. However, this hauntingly wonderful novel makes its readers feel uncomfortable, draws them into a mesmerizing world, and remains enthralled all the way to its agonizing ending. The purpose of this thesis is to explore that violence is the real source of those unhappiness and sufferings in the novel. Violence has been classified into three categories: state violence, social violence and family violence. The first chapter, “State Violence,” puts much emphasis on the British imperial power revealed in India and its lasting influences. Not only the bloody military aggressions but also those hegemonic activities are considered as violence. In the case of The God of Small Things, the domination is not exerted by force or even by active persuasion but by a subtle and inclusive power over the state apparatuses, such as education and the media. Together with language and literature, the imperial education system brings the colonized people a new culture, and makes the colonized Indians and their descendants with a lack of identity and a limited sense of their own history. The men cannot get rid of their sense of frustration and turn their anger to other small things. The second chapter, “Social Violence,” aims to focus on women characters’ miserable lives and the plight of the Untouchables. The sources of women’s sufferings include the false belief that women are intellectually and physically less capable than men, women cannot earn reasonable wages while men are typically the bread makers in the family. Therefore, in this story, whether the women are married or not, they have to live dependent lives on their fathers, husbands, and sons. Besides, the miseries of the Untouchables are violence, too. The Indian caste system has been in use for many years and in the system people are born, marry and die and supposed to live in harmony and have the same interests. Although Velutha is educated and skillful, he cannot escape from his identity of being an Untouchable. The final chapter, “Family Violence,” includes child neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse and verbal abuse. The adults are too tired to cope with so many violent events and cannot take care of their children as well as possible, and make those children bring their childhood traumas into adult personality disorders. As the author mentions in her novel that a great story doest not surprise us with something unforeseen. Violence do exists around us. Do not be indifferent to violence , since it may hurt more than we can imagine.
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Pin-ChingHuang and 黃品菁. "An Allegorical Reading: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/11039838493321572329.
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碩士國立成功大學
外國語文學系碩博士班
100
Arundhati Roy released her debut novel The God of small Things in 1997, which is the year that India celebrated her fiftieth anniversary of independence and received enthusiastic accolade at the same time. The novel begins twenty-three years after the main events, with flashbacks to that earlier period which culminated in the funeral of Sophie Mol. A chorus of voices speaks through The God of Small Things. On the one hand, the novel consists of the adult character Rahel’s memories of her childhood and, on the other hand, it is also filtered through the perspective of an omniscient narrator who fills in, in a neutral style, other events that are not available to Rahel. The story fluctuates between two separate times, one is in 1969, and the other happens after twenty-three years when the twins—Rahel and Estha—grow up and get reunited again. Thus, examining what Roy wants to convey through the novel becomes my main concern. This thesis argues that Arundhati Roy uses The God of Small Things to scrutinize India in terms of the Ipe family’s internal conflicts, Baby Kochamma’s surviving techniques and the two-egg twins’ trauma and their traumatic awakening. Background knowledge of the author and the work will be surveyed in the Introduction. Next, in the first chapter, I will use Freud’s concept of the “family romance” to discuss how the main characters interact with their parents. Later, in Chapter Two, how Baby Kochamma survives through several tragic events will be analyzed. Furthermore, Baby Kochamma, will be treated as an allegorical figure who embodies the symptoms of India, both the India of the past and the India of today. In Chapter Three, concepts derived from Cathy Caruth’s trauma and traumatic awakening will be used to interpret how the tragic events impact on the leading characters, Rahel and Estha, and Roy’s expectation toward India will be brought out through the twins’ trauma narrative. Finally, the Conclusion will include a brief review of each chapter.
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Sun, Siao-Jing, and 孫筱菁. "Remapping the Small Things: Place and Life Space in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2009. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/45gbkv.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
97
In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy depicts a world constituted by small things, and each small thing attaches its significance with those who live in Ayemenem, especially for the twins Rahel and Estha. By remapping the small things scattered in Ayemenem, this thesis aims to explore the interrelation between place, people, and space. Place is meaningful for those who live there when their personal history, social relation, and personal experience produce life space and thus have the sense of place. Therefore, place is defined by the personal experience, not the changes of landscape or political history. The sense of place is developed from life space which is formed by small things that people perceive and conceive. Chapter One focuses that place is identified by personal history and experience, not by the changes of landscape. The twins are traumatized by the small things that trace Velutha’s death and are confined in the space constructed by the past memories. Even though the landscape and people of Ayemenem become different, the twins still sense Ayemenem consistent with its past. The small things are left in Ayemenem by the god of small things, Velutha, who belongs to subaltern group. Chapter two illustrates the social relation between place and people through the dilemma and oppression he faces. By remapping the small things of the novel, Chapter Three represents how people identify place to produce their life space. Life space is produced from the interrelation between people and place, while the sense of place is constructed by people’s life experience and life space.
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Wu, Su-ching, and 吳素菁. "Remembrance of Things Past: Representation and Transgression in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2001. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65614857999139004384.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立政治大學
英國語文學系
89
In the study of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, I focus on two essential aspects: representation and transgression. The first concern lies in the author’s linguistic and literary presentation that is closely related to Homi K. Bhabha’s colonial mimicry and hybridity in the novel. My second concern is related to Gayatri C. Spivak’s postcolonial feminist thoughts and Ammu’s transgressive behaviors. In the first chapter, I offer an epitome of the thesis. The themes of biology and transgression expressed by the author testify to the postcolonial tasks of demolishing the authorized norm and praising the indigenous aesthetics. The literary and sexual transgressions in and of the novel illustrate the abatement of confinements and the liberation of the mind and body. The second chapter of the thesis discusses literary issues in postcolonial India that are closely related to Arundhati Roy’s novel and writing. In the third chapter, I further develop Homi K. Bhabha’s theories of mimicry and hybridity that accentuate literary strategies in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The fourth chapter has deeply explored on Gayatri C. Spivak’s postcolonial feminist thoughts and analyzed the transgressors that break up the social bonds in the novel. In the final chapter, I explain the novel’s title with the stress on indigenous aesthetics and the ensuing change of little discourse.
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Hsieh, Chia-Feng, and 謝佳峰. "Subversive Woman’s Writing and Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2016. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/rmwc97.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中興大學
外國語文學系所
104
This thesis examines the relationship among the woman’s writing, caste system, patriarchy and the construction of woman’s subjectivity in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. By referring to Hélène Cixous’ theory of feminine writing in her essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” I intend to explore how the postcolonial Indian woman Ammu and an untouchable person Velutha could voice for them in Roy’s woman’s writing. The thesis is divided into three chapters along with an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction simply explains the literature review, my research purposes, the main argument, and the structure of the thesis. Chapter One deals with abstract narrative structure of this novel: non-linear narrative time, English wordplays, and a 1960s’ English film The Sound of Music, an object of ridicule in this novel. I will examine the relationship of this narrative style among the aftereffect of traumatic experience and the subversion of patriarchy and empire by referring to postcolonial theory and French feminism. Chapter Two focuses on two main social issues in the postcolonial Indian society: caste system and Indian Communist party. I will discuss the victimization of Indian untouchable person Velutha under the caste system and Indian communist party. Therefore, in the second chapter, I first analyze the complicated relationship among caste system and the British colonial Empire, Indian government and CPI. Moreover, I will reveal the sham and selfishness of Indian communist party in the portrayal of Comrade Pillai’s and Chacko’s personality. Chapter Three discusses the postcolonial Indian women Ammu’s disobedience and her mother Mammachi’s blindness to the oppression of women. More specifically, with reference to Luce Irigaray’s questions on Freudian theory of femininity, this chapter concentrates on Ammu’s refusal to patriarchal rules: woman’s femininity, the denial of her gender, children’s surname, marriage, and the nonexistence of mother. Furthermore, this chapter also echoes Cixous’ assertion “Women must write their own bodies” to argue that Ammu and Velutha’s transcaste and erotic love affair is a way to undermine the caste law, patriarchal order and gender codes. The conclusion combines all these discussions to conclude this research and to figure out the relationship among Roy’s writing, the articulation of Indian women and untouchables, and the subversion of social order.
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Yuan-ChihChuang and 莊淵智. "Caste, Trauma, and the Politics of Love: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2010. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/09043224477296714831.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立成功大學
外國語文學系碩博士班
98
Arundhati Roy’s debut novel The God of Small Things breathes despair. The narrative jumps back and forth between the past and the present, mapping out the tragic downfall of the Ipe family, whose members suffer the fatal consequence of the forbidden love affair between Ammu and Velutha, a transgression of the Love Laws. The Love Laws, a term coined by Roy, refers to the implicit social discrimination and sexual regulation of the caste system in India. The enforcement of the caste system delimitates people’s everyday life, restrains their personal freedom and potential, and further punishes those who attempt to temper with it. Focusing on Estha’s and Rahel’s inability to work through the trauma inflicted by Ammu and Velutha’s transgression, Roy structures her novel in terms of the “return of the repressed,” with reiterated traumatic scenes, fragmented passages, and ungrammatical phrases, etc., serving as both catalysts to trigger traumatic memories of unresolved familial conflicts and indictment of the oppressive power of the Love Laws. Other than demonstrating the disciplinary force of the Love Laws, Roy also proffers a different view to explore the underside of love as love is not merely a pure affection but it also involves the lovers’ calculating move to flee from the suffocating life each is respectively leading. Chapter One of this thesis elaborates on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s discussion on the subaltern agency to deal with Velutha’s and Ammu’s struggle to defy and escape the defiled social order and the psychic anxieties their subversive act of transgression has provoked in the dominant class. Even if their rebellion against the Love Laws fails to solicit the response from the dominant class, Roy, in dramatizing the terrific consequence of the society’s collective failure to listen to their mute demand for recognition, invites the reader to rethink the ethical possibilities of listening to the subaltern other, and to comprehend the urgency of such an ethical project. Chapter Two takes Cathy Caruth’s and Greg Forter’s perspectives on trauma as a point of departure to trace the characters’ traumatic experiences back to the two deep-rooted social evils, class antagonism and gender oppression, prevalent in the Indian society. The impossibility of redemption suggested in the young generation Estha’s and Rahel’s symptomatic responses to their previous generation’s trauma articulates Roy’s spirited critique of India’s social system, in which trauma unfortunately becomes a cultural legacy tormenting the Indian people from generation to generation. Chapter Three discusses the politics of love by juxtaposing Anthony Giddens’s assumption of the pure love relationship with Roy’s three tales of love. By doing so, I propose to contend that, whereas Giddens’s investigation of the human intimacy explains what intimacy should be, it fails to clarify why intimacy turns into hatred and how it becomes a justification for acts of violence. The three tales of love in Roy’s novel, by contrast, unveil the dark side of love and unmask its excess, proving that love is the “incalculable” something that goes beyond instincts and law. The excess of love which can transform the lovers either to be better or to be worse, displays itself as the true nature of the interpersonal relationships among people.
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Luo, Shan-shna, and 羅珊珊. "Recontextualizing Postcolonial Resistance: Politics of Transgression in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/83995955153710982000.
Full textAbstract:
碩士輔仁大學
英國語文學系碩士班
101
Arundhati Roy's award-winning debut The God of Small Things arouses heated controversies because it tackles various socio-politically sensitive issues, such as the prevalence of Caste hierarchy, the gender inequalities, the Communist hypocrisy, and the sexual transgressions of the "Love Laws." Aijaz Ahmad criticizes the novel for being historically and politically incorrect, reducing the political struggles of the subaltern characters to an escape into "erotic utopia." On the other hand, Graham Huggan sees Roy as a writer who strives to become an literary celebrity in the era of global consumerism to markets her "tourist novel" of exotic inter-caste romance. My thesis aims to refute and counter-balance the criticisms of Ahmad and Huggan under the premises that "reality" is a matter of interpretation, that authorial intention is unknown, and that commercial logic is often beyond writers' control. Moreover, with a detailed textual analysis, this thesis proves that the subaltern characters' postcolonial resistance is made possible via the recontextualization of the interlocking social structure and the meanings of their seemingly trivial acts of transgressions. Chapter One focuses on the interlocking social structure from outside the novel to within. I will prove that despite Ahmad's criticism of Roy's using sexual escapism as the solution to political struggles, the subaltern characters' acts of (sexual) transgressions can produce meanings to destabilize the social structure. Chapter Two deals with Roy's narrative strategies through which she allows her subaltern characters to speak in her novel, refuting Huggan's criticism of Roy's catering to Western readership with "aesthetic decontextualization" of exotic codes.
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Chu, Yu-Ru, and 朱玉如. "Recasting India: Caste, Trauma, and the Politics of Transgression in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2006. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53604560120554574428.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立清華大學
外國語文學系
94
Cultural plurality and heterogeneity have always been the main concerns in postcolonial studies. Arundhati Roy’s debut novel The God of Small Things examines India’s cultural transformation from colonial, postcolonial period to contemporary era of globalization. Read from this trajectory, the novel represents to us the hybrid elements of Indian culture and the oppressed, subordinate “cultural others” that require our deep concern. In this study of The God of Small Things, my task is twofold: (1) to re-examine the influence of the caste system in postcolonial India and investigate the cultural conflicts/differences in relation to the narration of trauma, history and transgression; (2) to re-think Roy’s appropriation of the imperial language, the discursive forms and modes of representation of the novel. Overall, this study aims to explore the “possibilities” within and beyond the postcolonial subcontinent of India by listening to the heterogeneous voices of its peoples. Among the characters in the novel, Velutha is prominent because his “casted body/status” signifies the cultural difference of India from other nations. The narration of Velutha reveals the intertwined relationship between caste and the social divisions in India. Yet the transgression between Velutha and Ammu poses challenges to the traditional norms and social hierarchy of India. Moreover, Rahel and Estha’s transgression brings out issues of hybridity, gender oppression, social taboo and incest. Apart from these characters, the narration of trauma is from Mammachi, Baby Kochamma and Chacko. The traumatic memories of the Ipe family remind us of India’s traumas of colonization. “The History House,” which is a place holding small events and traumatic memories, is also the haunted house of “her-stories.” By dwelling on the “small things” happened to the Ipe family, Roy actually is questioning the construction of empire, the lingering effects of colonialism and the global order in flux. In this way, Roy’s novel reveals to us the possibility of dismantling the western codes and performing postcolonial subversion through the process of literary decolonization.
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Ni, Chih-Sheng, and 倪志昇. "Women of In-betweenness: Female Sexuality, Identity and Subject Formation in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things." Thesis, 2009. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/40678307688755525926.
Full textAbstract:
碩士淡江大學
英文學系碩士班
97
This thesis aims to investigate the in-between subject position of the Indians, especially women depicted by Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things. It attempts to contextualize the dominant forces including the caste system, patriarchy, colonial hegemony and Western modernity in India, so as to trace the loss and difficulties that Roy presents in the novel. In light of Michel Foucault and Homi K. Bhabha, this thesis discloses the fluidity and instability of subject formation under the influence of diverse social and cultural discourses. It reveals the ambivalent and even in-between identity of the Indians who suffer oppression, displacement, loss and alienation as a result of transitions in contemporary cultural flows. However, instead of regarding the dilemma of struggling with these forces as Indians’ doomed life, this thesis explores the possibility of transformation for Indians. It takes the state of ambiguity caused by cultural hybridity as the opportunity of freeing from the suppressive manipulation. Chapter One makes clear that subject formation and women’s sexuality are results of cultural construction. In addition to unveiling the oppression of patriarchy, this chapter deconstructs the absolute truth by exemplifying the theme of transgression in the novel. Chapter Two investigates the in-between identity and discrepant subject position caused by cultural hybridity of the nation as a whole in a shifting society. It conducts the tensions inside Hindu and those with its Western conqueror. Chapter Three discusses the unresolved tension resulting from cultural impacts in post-independent India, showing the sense of alienation caused by Indians’ traumatic memory. Taking the form of hybridity, it explores the possibility of emancipation in the floating cultural space.