HISTORY IN LIVE PERFORMANCE: REVISING HISTORY’S SCRIPT IN ROY’S THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

Author (s) : S. Aswin Raj & B. Arul selvi, A.Soundarya

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Abstract :

While reviewers such as Alex Clark of The Guardian feel "Roy's big theme is inexorability, and how individuals often unwittingly contribute to the relentless progress of events which comes later to seem as their fate," my paper will argue that Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997) emphasizes the performance of those events to illustrate the possibility of challenging, if not immediately changing, the course of History. Roy's novel does invest "History" with the power to shape characters' lives, but through metaphor, allegory, and non-linear narrative form, her novel encourages readers to see "History" as a script written by those in power for others to enact. Chako's metaphor for India's post-colonial history -- "history was like an old house at night," "the ancestors whispering inside," but from "which we have been locked out" by the Anglo enemy (51-2) -- has a literal referent for the seven-year old twins, Rahel and Estha: they think of the History House across the river, once owned by "Ayemenem's own Kurtz" (51), its beauty now fallen into disrepair. This History House is the stage from which their divorced mother Ammu and the Untouchable family servant Velutha challenge the Love Laws, but their brief attempt to re-script India's caste system fails.

The tragic result of Ammu and Velutha's challenge to the Love Laws would seem to insist not only upon a determining link between private acts and public histories, but to identify their attempt to usurp the authoritative script as quixotic. But if the events at the History House represent "human history masquerading as God's Purpose" -- "History in live performance" (293) -- then Roy's narrative insists upon the human authors of that script: the twins' aunt, Baby Kochmama, with the help of a willing police department. The "inexorable" force of History exists, but it is not absolute, and its power comes from the power of narrative, not fate. And it is not where Roy ends her story: on the last page, we read not of their impending deaths, but of Ammu and Velutha imagining their next meeting, "tomorrow."

Keywords : inexorable, authoritative, masquerading and Untouchable

Conference Date : 17/09/2021

Pages : 251

Paper ID : IESMDT249