IMPACT: International Journal of Research in

Humanities, Arts and Literature (IMPACT: IJRHAL)

ISSN(P): 2347-4564; ISSN(E): 2321-8878
Vol. 4, Issue 8, Aug 2016, 75-82
Impact Journals

ARUNDHATI ROYS THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS FROM AN

ECOCRITICAL VIEWPOINT
DEEPA MARY FRANCIS1 & M. THANGARAJ2
1

Assistant Professor of English, Anna University, MIT Campus, Chrompet, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
2

English Teacher, Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 1, DAE Township, Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, India

ABSTRACT
Human beings, in their hard chase to improve their standard of living, have brought in irreparable damages to the
environment. Creative writers, who were interested in nature, started to write about the impact of human activities on
nature and the elements of nature and they wrote in such a way to create awareness about the conservation of the
environment or to caution the readers about the impending dangers awaiting them. Ecocritical theory investigates the
relationship between human activities and the natural world, particularly in terms of the influence of each upon the other.
This paper highlights how Arundhati Roy has expressed her concern for nature which has been exploited by human beings
in the name of civilisation, urbanisation and modernisation and how the detrimental effects of humans' exploitation of
nature directly affect human life and living space.

KEYWORDS: Ecocriticism, Modernisation, Environmental Movement

INTRODUCTION
The world, on the whole, is in the tight grip of the adverse effects of what humans have been doing for centuries
together to develop their standard of living. In their craving to have a comfortable and sophisticated life, they, knowingly
and unknowingly, have harmed the environment to a great extent. Every step taken by humans to have development and to
accommodate comfort has eventually damaged one or the other component of nature. The present global situation makes
people realize the bitter truth that all their activities to foster development in every possible area have started to backfire.
The huge leap in the living condition of humans, right from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century is amazing
and jaw-dropping. All innovations and cutting edge technologies reveal the marvels of human brain. Humans have landed
on the Moon. They are exploring Mars. Many of the once dreamed or imagined things have become realties. Technological
innovations and developments have brought not only a lot of benefits for humans, but also an equal share of problems,
especially ecology related ones. Ecological problems bring in their way a lot of other related issues which affect humanity,
by and large.

AIM OF THE PAPER

The aim of this paper is to highlight how Arundhati Roy has expressed her concern for nature which has been
exploited by human beings in the name of civilisation, urbanisation and modernisation and how the detrimental effects of
humans' exploitation of nature directly affect human life and living space. This paper also analyses how the novel selected
for study falls within the framework of the literary theory, Ecocriticism.
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Deepa Mary Francis & M. Thangaraj

INTRODUCTION OF THE AUTHOR

Suzanna Arundhati Roy (1961- ) was born in Ayemenem, a village in Kerala. Arundhati Roy, a writer, an
environmentalist and a social activist, is rightly recognized as a multifaceted personality by her compatriots. When she was
two, her parents divorced. Being the child of a single mother, who sought financial and moral support from her brother,
Roy had an unhappy childhood. So scarcity and destitution were not new for her. After her schooling at Ooty and Kerala,
she studied Architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. Roy worked as a Research Assistant at the
National Institute of Urban Affairs, after getting the degree of architecture. She worked with great perseverance and she
was awarded scholarship to go to Florence to study the Restoration of Monuments and Historical Urban Centers. Though
trained as an architect, she dreamed of a writing career. She started her career by working for television and movies. Her
skill in screenplay writing made her win the national film award for best screenplay in 1988.
The publication of The God of Small Things, which is not only her debut novel but also her only novel,
catapulted Roy to instant international fame. The work was received with mixed responses. Alex Tickell, in the
Introduction to his book titled Arundhati Roys The God of Small Things says, The God of Small Things generated
controversy and encountered mixed critical opinion almost from the moment of its publication in 1997 (xiii). She was
given the Booker Prize for this novel in the year of its publication. After that, she started to focus on social and
environmental issues and wrote a collection of essays discussing such issues. Her gesture of donating her Booker Prize
money and royalties from her books on Narmada Bachao Andolan project speaks loudly about her great concern for
environmental conservation.

ECOCRITICISM
Literature is a written record of the thoughts and feelings of creative minds. Fiction writers reflect society and deal
with social issues in their works. Writers have been writing about nature and the elements of nature down through the ages.
Nature writing plays a significant role in depicting the beauty of nature, portraying the significance of the elements of
nature and narrating how the various elements contribute for the well-being of humans. Frank Stewart, in his book A
Natural History of Nature Writing, says:
Nature writing, in its most thoughtful, responsible expression, is an exploration of neither these important ideas
about nature, including the assumption that nature is separate from us neither biologically nor culturally an idea
reinforced by such academic disciplines as behavioural ecology. Indeed, as these disciplines would strongly aver, nature
writing, as part of human culture, is itself one of those natural forms. It is up to our nature writers, with their vivifying gift
for narration, to clarify and personalize the moral implications of this notion. (229)
Creative writers have been describing the beauty of nature since 300 BC and the writings of Theocritus bear
testimony to this fact.
Human beings, in their hard chase to improve their standard of living, have brought in irreparable damages to the
environment. Creative writers, who were interested in nature, started to write about the impact of human activities on
nature and the elements of nature and they wrote in such a way to create awareness about the conservation of the
environment or to caution the readers about the impending dangers awaiting them. Such collective thoughts of the creative
writers gave shape for the environmental movement. The environmental movement saw its dawn in the 1960s with the
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77

publication of Rachel Carsons Silent Spring. Louise Westling, in his Introduction to The Cambridge Companion to
Literature and the Environment, writes, Rachel Carsons Silent Spring dramatised the devastating ecological effects of
pesticides (5). The environmental movement paved the way for ecocriticism, as a movement and as a literary theory.
About the emergence of this literary theory, Peter Barry says, Ecocriticism as a concept first arose in the late 1970s, at
meetings of the WLA (the Western Literature Association, a body whose field of interest is the literature of the American
West). The term ecocriticism was possibly first coined by William Ruckert in his article, Literature and Ecology: an
Experiment in Ecocriticism.
This fact is substantiated by Peter Barry thus, In his introduction to a series of brief position papers (all entitled
What is ecocriticism?) Michael P. Branch traces the word ecocriticism back to William Rueckert's 1978 essay
Literature and ecology: an experiment in ecocriticism (240). Ecocritical theory investigates the relationship between
human activities and the natural world, particularly in terms of the influence of each upon the other. It pleads for a better
understanding of nature, and it interprets and represents the natural world. It seeks to protect the ecological rights of nature.
Ecocriticism, to go by the words of Cheryll Glotfelty, who is a pioneer in this theory, is the study of the relationship
between literature and the physical environment. She goes on to say, ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to
literary studies (xviii). She gives clarity on the fact that ecocriticism as a literary theory is different from other literary
theories in the way the word world is used. She says, Literary theory, in general, examines the relations between [sic]
writers, texts, and the world. In most literary theory the world is synonymous with society-the social sphere. Ecocriticism
expands the notion of the world to include the entire ecosphere (xix). She throws light on the broader spectrum which
ecocritics have to take into consideration when they speak about man and nature.
About the salient features of ecocriticism, Greg Garrard, in his book, Ecocriticism writes, Ecocriticism is unique
amongst contemporary literary and cultural theories because of its close relationship with the science of ecology.
According to him, the widest definition of the subject of ecocriticism is the study of the relationship of the human and the
non-human, throughout human cultural history and entailing critical analysis of the term human itself (5). Greg Garrard,
in his Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism, rightly points out the kind of responsibility vested on
ecocritics thus, Ecocriticism has given literary scholarsa meaningful role to play in addressing the most pressing issue
of our time the degraded environment (xii). In Ecocriticism, he discusses the following as the various aspects related to
ecocriticism: pollution, pastoral elements, wilderness, apocalypse, the living condition of animals and the dangers that the
Earth faces because of the indifferent attitude of human beings towards nature. Environmental pollution increases with
every passing year and causes grave and irreparable damage to the Earth. Shashi Bhushan Agrawal and Madhoolika
Agrawal, in their Preface to Environmental Pollution and Plant Responses write, In recent years, there have been changes
in our understanding of problems related to environmental pollution with new threats of climate change effects that have
triggered a wide range of apprehension among scientists and governments in different parts of the globe (i). Factors like
chemical and radioactive pollution, species extinction, the hole in the ozone layer and global warming drive home the bitter
truth that we live in an age of environmental crisis.
Pastoral and wilderness are two of the few important concepts related to ecocriticism. Pastoral, Garrard says,
implies an idealisation of rural life (Ecocriticism 33). Pastoral is a concept, writes Terry Gifford in his essay, Pastoral,
Anti-pastoral, and Post-pastoral published in the book, The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment,
that started to cream literary output even when the countryside was not environment and nature was not ecology (17).
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Garrard gives clarity about the concept of wilderness as well. He says, Wilderness has an almost sacramental value: it
holds out the promise of a renewed, authentic relation of humanity and the earth (Ecocriticism 59). Wilderness, pastoral
and artificially created parks show the gradation of the natural ambience from nature to culture.

ECOCRITICAL ELEMENTS IN ARUNDHATI ROYS THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

Human condition cannot be isolated from the environment as one complements the other. As a socially committed
person, Arundhati Roy extends her concern for nature. Hence, environmental issues do not fail to grab her attention. She
voices her concern for nature vociferously in her fictional and non- fictional writings and expresses the same in her
speeches. In The God of Small Things, she has presented environmental problems as some of the small things which have
been neglected for a long time in Indian society. She puts forth the idea that, like Indian women who remain silent against
patriarchal oppression, environment has been enduring a wanton destruction for ages. With great skill, Roy integrates
nature with her subject matter. She vividly presents how nature is being exploited by human beings in order to be
modernised. She gives expression to her thought that nature is being made the silent victim of human greed and
insensitivity and these, in turn, have reflexive effects on human life. The story, which is a series of flashbacks and flash
forwards, functions as a helping tool for the author to tell the readers how certain places were in the past and how they are
at present.
She opens the novel with the picturesque description of the month of May in Ayemenem, the place where the
incidents in the story happen. The colours and smells of the season are painted in a wordy picture at the outset. She writes,
The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst.
Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air (1). Roy explains the kind of climatic conditions that prevail in
Ayemenem. She narrates how people lead planned lives which go hand-in-hand with the changing seasons.
River Meenachal
River was the source that made early men changes their lifestyle by making them settle in river banks, thereby
ending their nomadic life. River is the chief source of water, which is one of the life sustaining elements in this planet. It is
closely associated with civilization. History exposes the fact that all civilizations flourished only in riverbeds. Riverbed
was the place that made human beings thinks about agriculture. Meenachal is the river of Ayemenam.
When Rahel and Estha, along with their family members, went to receive Margaret, Chackos former wife, and
Sophie Mol, his daughter, they stayed at a hotel and that night, they dreamt of their river, Meenachal (122). Thereby, the
author says how the river was once. River Meenachal was warm,Grey green. With fish in it. With the sky and trees
in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it (123). The river was rich with fishes. The river was so pristine that the
sky and the trees were reflected in it.
But the present condition of the river is presented by the author with great remorse and she writes, Years later,
when Rahel returned to the river, it greeted her with a ghastly skulls smile, with holes where teeth had been, and a limp
hand rose from a hospital bed. The river has a sick appearance now. And she adds, It had shrunk (124). Even the rains
cannot bring back the original depth and width of the river. She says:
Despite the fact that it was June, and raining, the river was no more than a swollen drain now. A thin ribbon of
thick water that lapped wearily at the mud banks on either side, sequinned with the occasional silver slant of a dead fish. It
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was choked with a succulent weed, whose furred brown roots waved like thin tentacles under water. Bronze-winged lilytrotters walked across it. Splay-footed, cautious. (124)
The river, which had had the power to evoke fear, is now a slow, sludging green ribbon lawn that ferried fetid
garbage to the sea. She adds, Bright plastic bags blew across its viscous, weedy surface like subtropical flying-flowers
(124). And this is the condition of most of the rivers in the country.
The horrifying effect of pollution is again stressed by the author, when she writes that Estha finds the banks of
the river... smelled of shit, and pesticides bought with World Bank loans. Most of the fish had died. The ones that survived
suffered from fin-rot and had broken out in boils (13). The pollutants spoil the quality of the water and kill the living
organisms in it. In addition to this kind of pollution, people pollute the river and the river banks by open defecation. The
river loses its purity not on its own, but because of the careless attitude and activities of the people of the locality,
especially those who live very close to the river.
If a river, the life giving source, is polluted, the whole area will be affected. The author, with a sense of shame,
writes, On warm days the smell of shit lifted off the river and hovered over Ayemenem like a hat (125). Such matters are
not exclusive for the river Meenachal and Ayemenem, instead, these are problems prevailing all through the country.
Technological Development and Nature
When technology and its products become the priority of people, they tend to ignore nature. Baby Kochamma, the
aunt of Rahels and Esthas mother, gained a diploma in Ornamental Gradening. About her involvement in gardening,
the author writes, To keep her from brooding, her father gave Baby Kochamma charge of the front garden of the
Ayemenem House, where she raised a fierce, bitter garden that people came all the way from Kottayam to see (26). About
her garden, the author writes:
It was a circular, sloping patch of ground, with a steep gravel driveway looping around it. Baby Kochamma turned
it into a lush maze of dwarf hedges, rocks and gargoyles. The flower she loved the most was the anthurium. In the centre
of Baby Kochammas garden, surrounded by beds of canna and phlox, a marble cherub peed an endless silver arc into a
shallow pool in which a single blue lotus bloomed. At each corner of the pool lolled a pink plaster-of-Paris gnome with
rosy cheeks and a peaked red cap. (26)
She took great care of her garden. Later, she lost interest in gardening when she installed a dish antenna on her
house roof. The satellite TV became her new love and she completely ignored her garden. Social status crumbled when
she allowed her maid, Kochu Maria, to watch TV along with her.
Population Explosion
Population explosion and better financial conditions are two major factors which lead to the conversion of
agricultural and pastoral land into residential and commercial areas. Population explosion is universally a threat to the
ecosystem. With more people, more space for accommodation is to be found. The city limits are extended and new
suburban areas are formed at the cost of the natural environment. More areas are urbanized. With less number of trees and
minimal greenery, air pollution increases drastically. Breathing impure and polluted air leads to a number of health issues.
Roy refers to these newly promoted residential areas and urbanisation, when she writes, the new, freshly baked, iced,
Gulf-money houses built by nurses, masons, wire-benders and bank clerks who worked hard and unhappily in faraway
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places (13). On the main road, behind the Ayemenem house, several houses have been constructed. Roy brings out how
Ayemenem was and how it is at present through the following lines:
Here too, houses had mushroomed, and it was only the fact that they nestled under trees, and that the narrow paths
that branched off the main road and led to them were not motorable, that gave Ayemenem the semblance of rural quietness.
In truth, its population had swelled to the size of a little town. (128)
She makes it clear that population explosion is a problem even in a village like hers.
Man versus Nature
Man versus nature is one of the key concepts of the theory of ecocriticism. The various characters of this novel
think of or view nature in different ways. Velutha is the god of small things in this novel. Though he is a man of low
origin, he exhibits great skills. When he was eleven, he could make intricate toys-tiny windmills, rattles, minute jewel
boxes out of dried palm reeds; he could carve perfect boats out of tapioca stems and figurines on cashew nuts (74). When
he was sixteen, he was an accomplished carpenter. He had his own set of carpentry tools and a distinctly German design
sensibility (75). His skills gain him entry in the Ayemenem house and the members of the house love him.
Velutha has a light brown birthmark, shaped like a pointed dry leaf (73). The author makes Velutha connect his
birthmark with nature. He claims, it was a lucky leaf, that made the monsoons come on time (73). But the mark does not
bring him good luck. In spite of being so skilled and talented, he ends up doing only manual labour.
When he has a difference of opinion with his father, he avoids going home and he leads a life that harmoniously
blends with nature. The author describes, He caught fish in the river and cooked it on an open fire. He slept outdoors, on
the banks of the river (76-77). When he does not have a home to live, he very comfortably becomes part of nature. When
he makes himself homeless, Meenachal river bank becomes his home.
Modernisation and Animals
Roy speaks about the adverse effects of modernisation on animals as well. When the family returns to Ayemenem
after receiving Margaret Kochamma and Sophie Mol from airport, they see a dead elephant. Roy writes, Near Ettumanoor
they passed a dead temple elephant, electrocuted by a high tension wire that had fallen on the road. An engineer from the
Ettumanoor municipality was supervising the disposal of the carcass (153). Generally, high tension wires are laid a little
away from residential areas. When such a thing is done, care for human beings is taken, but safety of animals is out of
question. And this elephant had become a victim for it. This reflects how animal safety is an ignored area. She brings out
the irony of the situation. High tension wires which are laid for the sake of having certain facilities for human beings have
harmful effects on animal and at times, the lives of animals are at stake. But Chacko stops the car to enquire whether the
dead elephant is Kochu Thomban, which is the, Ayemenem temple elephant (154). When they learn that the dead
elephant is not the elephant that they know, in a way, they are relieved of the tension. When the engineers of the
concerned municipality cremated the electrocuted elephant, they carefully sawed off the tusks and shared them
unofficially (219-220). Roy presents the sympathetic and empathetic stand of the modern people as far as animals are
concerned.

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CONCLUSIONS
Arundhati Roy, being a socially aware intellect with deep concern for the environment, expresses her thoughts
that human beings need to express a concern for the environment in order to make this earth liveable for generations to
come. About Arundhati Roys intention of bringing in so much of ecocritical elements in her writings, Debarati
Bandyopadhyay, in her book titled Arundhati Roy: Environment and Literary Activism, comments, Roy writes to instill
knowledge and fear in her audience; she tries to warn so that it creates a possibility of collective awareness and action
which might yet help in survival and sustenance of life, both at the global and local level (4).
Arundhati Roy presents every minute information about Ayemenem from the viewpoint of a person who laments
the human exploitation of nature and its elements. The parts of Ayemenem that are being damaged by human intervention
and mishandling are carefully interwoven with the story. Roy tries to make the readers realize the impact of the damage
caused to the environment.

REFERENCES
1.

S.B. Agarawa and Madhoolika Agrawal. ed. Environmental Pollution and Plant Responses. Boca Raton: Lewis
Publishers, 2000.

2.

D. Bandyopadhyay. Arundhati Roy: Environment and Literary Activism. Kolkata: Institute of Development
Studies Kolkata, 2011.

3.

P. Barry. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rded. New Delhi: Viva Books,
2010 (rpt.) 2013.

4.

G. Garrard. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004.

5.

____. The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

6.

C. Glotfelty and Harold Fromm ed. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: The
University of Georgia Press, 1996.

7.

Roy. The God of Small Things. Haryana: Penguin Books, 1997.

8.

F. Stewart. A Natural History of Nature writing. Washington: Island Press, 1995.

9.

Tickell. Arundhati Roys the God of Small Things. New York: Routledge, 2007.

10. L. Westling. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2014..

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