1023

A POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE IN THE GOD OF

SMALL THINGS BY ARUNDHATI ROY

MOHAMMADZADEH, Behbood
KUZEY KIBRIS/NORTH CYPRUS/СЕВЕРНЫЙ КИПР

ABSTRACT
This paper examines the cultural and social implications which exist in
The God of Small Things written by Indian postcolonial writer Arundhati
Roy. The study analyzes Roy’s work according to the postcolonial theory and
gives importance to the premises of main theorist in this field. Postcolonial
literary texts like Roy’s are rewritings of colonial and postcolonial
images. Roy’s protagonists Rahel and Estha grow up in a village in Kerala
influenced with Elvis Presley, Broadway musicals, peppermint candies,
Love-in-Tokyo hair bands, Rhodes scholarships, Chinese Marxism, and
Syrian Christianity. Most of these cultural images are foreign, yet all of
these are their own. Thus, while in one sense these children, as Roy’s hybrid
characters, are Malayalam, in another sense they are not. This turmoil of
identification forms the basis of the plot, the children aren’t certain who or
what they are.
Key Words: Postcolonial Literature, cultural and social implications,
colonial and postcolonial images, hybrid identities.
-----
The history of colonialism began in the 15th century with the age of
discovery, led by Spanish and Portuguese explorations of Americas and
other continents, but, in the eighteens century Europe, the advent of the
Industrial Revolution led to great changes in the industrial transformation
of economies and an enormous development in the traditional trade.
European countries in order to provide themselves with raw materials
and markets for their goods colonized many non-European countries.
Europeans on behalf of colonialism making their way to non-European
countries came in contact with the non-European landscape and nation.
Identifying with Eurocentrism let them to observe themselves as superior
and the colonized and their land as inferior and uncivilized. Consequently,
1024

they tried to transform the colonized landscape into the civilized countries
similar to home country. In spite of this fact that European regarded
themselves superior to the non-European countries in all aspects, and aimed
at turning this inferior land into civilized one, the deep understanding and
close interaction always resulted in a deep fear for the colonizers.
The colonizers preoccupied by the possibility of being contaminated
on account of deep interaction with these uncivilized people were always
afraid of this interaction, thereby leaving behind their purity and superiority
over the colonized, as a result, the colonizer always regarded the interaction
with the colonized as a threat and they camouflaged their fear every time.
The deep interaction between the colonizer and the colonized despite
being a menace to the colonizer had another impact on the colonized which
resulted in losing self respect and devaluing image of themselves among
this people. Thus, the oppressed people, uprooted from their own selves,
struggled to become a member of another culture.
During the colonial period written text favored the Europeans and
their superiority over the non-Europeans. It was the system of power that
determines the representations. Terry Goldie maintains that “the indigene is
a semiotic pawn on a chess board under the control of the white signmaker”
(Goldie 1995: 232). Thus, in oriental discourse the Europeans were
portrayed as “masculine”, “democrat”, “rational”, “moral”, “dynamic”, and
“progressive”. Otherwise, since the writing was under the direct control of
the Europeans the non-Europeans were described as “voiceless”, “sensual”,
“female”, “despotic”, “irrational”, and “backward”. Colonial discourse
never depicted the anxiety and the suffering of the colonial stemmed from
the underestimated image of themselves. Throughout the colonial period
and the aftermath, the west had cultural and economic hegemony over the
non-Europeans through orientalists discourse. According to Bill Ashcroft
the colonizers who believed themselves as “a high level of civilization”,
fabricated the colonized lands in colonial discourse as “civilizations in
decay, as manifestations of degenerate societies and races in need of rescue
and rehabilitations by a civilized Europe” (Ashcraft, 1998: 158). Upon
settling down, therefore, the colonizers desired to bring the best of their
country to the colonized territory, and to change this native country to a
civilized one. Colonial discourse fabricating the native cultures as both
primitive and degenerate was because fearing of contamination amongst
the colonizers. Bill Ashcraft highlights that “expressed through a fear
amongst the colonizers of going native, namely losing their distinctiveness
 1025

and superiority of contamination from native practices” (Ashcroft 1998:

159).
Consequently, despite the fact that the colonizer had gone to the
colonized land to change things; they themselves, however, were at the
risk of being changed by the colonized. The deep interaction with the
native people and under the effects of climate of the colonies in hot areas,
the colonizer degenerated both morally and physically, and slipped as
Ashcroft claims, “from European behavior, to the participation in native
ceremonies, or the adoption and even enjoyment of local customs in terms
of dress, food, recreation and entertainment” (Ashcroft, 1998: 115). In
fact, the colonized encountered and experienced what they always scared;
that is they were debased and contaminated by the native life and customs,
and they uprooted. Upon the arrival in the colonized land, the colonizer
acknowledged the difficulty of surviving in that land. On the whole, these
are some of the themes the postcolonial discourse aims at discussing and
exploring.
However, the colonized people after obtaining their dependency, who
acknowledged the importance of their identity and who learned not to be
embarrassed about their culture and past, started to create their own text
called postcolonial literature. Then, postcolonial text began to abolish the
Eurocentric assumptions created by the Europeans, although the colonized
had not the privilege to break the European domination and to portray
the Europeans the same way they were illustrated through the colonial
period. To put it more precisely, they have had the opportunity to present
Europeans as “immoral”, “irrational”, and “sensual”, just as they were
pictured during the colonial period. Moreover, the colonized, having been
neglected for a long time, and tolerating the suffering for decades, upon
starting to write the text began to imitate the colonizer.
On the whole, all these cultural and social implications mentioned above
encompass the main themes of the postcolonial novels. This study examines
the Indian Arundhati Roy’s postcolonial novel The God of Small Things
which presents and reflects the issues of the postcolonial period. Arundhati
Roy was born, grew up and educated in India. Roy in her celebrated novel
The God of Small Things tells the story of a Syrian Christian family in
southern province of Kerala, India. The main plot is constructed around
this family; retired imperial entomologist Pappachi Kochamma is the
father of the family. Upon retiring from his job in Delhi he returns back to
his hometown Ayemenem with his wife, Mammachi Kochamma, and his
1026

two children Ammu and Chacko. Ammu their daughter several years after
their arrival experience an unhappy marriage with a Hindu man, which
end in divorce. Ammu after divorce comes back to her parental house with
her twin, Estha and Rahel. Ammu and her twin begin to live in Ayemenem
with Mammachi, Chacko, and their aunt, Aunt Baby. Chacko Pappachi,
family’s son is sent to Oxford to continue his education, where he meets
his future English wife Margaret but their marriage ends in divorce in the
same year, then, Chacko leaving Margaret and his daughter Sophie Mol, in
England, comes back to Ayemenem to his father’s home.
Roy’s story revolves around the events surrounding the visit made by
Sophie Mol Chacko’s daughter and his ex-wife Margaret and the drowning
of Sophie two weeks after their arrival, leaving behind a disintegrated
family. The family’s suffering from Sophie Mole’s drowning become great
when Ammu the daughter of the family experience a love affair with Velutha
the families carpenter, a man from the “untouchable” or Paravan caste.
Ammu’s love affair with a member of an untouchable caste is considered
a forbidden love according to the caste system in India, which divides
people into classes and makes the lower class people “untouchable”.
Risking to interact with one of these untouchables, Ammu violates the
caste system, which also causes the family to fall apart and also, Ammu’s
twins, Estha and Rahel to be separated from each other. Sophie Mol’s
unfortunate drowning, though, occurs in 1969, Roy’s story begins twenty
three years later, when Rahel comes back to home in India, to Estha where
there is desire that the love of the twins for each other will heal their deep
suffering. Rahel comes back to Ayemenem as an adult to “a decimated
household, a dysfunctional twin and a decaying house” (45).
Much of Roy’s third-person narrative is told mainly from the point of
view of the two fraternal twin protagonists, Rahel and Estha. She constructs
her narration moving backwards from present-day India to the fateful
drowning that occurred twenty three years earlier, in 1969. With flashbacks
from the present to the past; Roy fabricates her plot with an increasing
suspense till the end of the novel. She structures her narration so skillfully
that the malignant tragedy is not fully illustrated until the final scenes of
the novel. Roy tells and reveals gradually the story of all characters and the
shocking series of events throughout her text.
As at the outset of the paper has been pointed out, Roy’s The God of
Small Things is the story of the visit and the drowning of Sophie Mol
resulting in the destruction of the innocent lives and their splitting up from
 1027

each other when she comes to see her Indian father, Chacko, during her
Charismas holiday. Upon coming to India, Sophie Mol is not aware of the
disaster waiting for her. One they she is out with her Indian cousins, Estha
and Rahel, on the mysterious river in Ayemenem, she suddenly drowns
which makes the family, especially, Margaret grieved. The catastrophic
event occur even if English Margaret, who is “traveling to the Heart of
Darkness, has been acknowledged by her friends to “take everything” and
to “be prepared” on the grounds of the fact that “anything can happen to
anyone” in India (267).
As Sophie’s mothers friend’s have estimated, the most horrifying incident
she might experience in her life happens, and “green weed and river grime
were woven into her beautiful redbrown hair” of her daughter, and her
child’s eyelids were “nibbled at by fish” (251). Margaret never forgives
herself for not listening to her friends, and taking Sophie to India but she
understands her mistake very lately after her losing her daughter in India.
Sophie Mole’s drowning is a metaphoric sign of the hegemony of the Eastern
over the European, which has the power to swallow up the colonizers easily.
This is also the power of the wilderness and primitiveness of Eastern that
the colonial elements always fear and never resist. Postcolonial discourse
maintains that the threat of the Eastern for the European is either to devour
the European in the wilderness or to make the Europeans go wild. The
death of Sophie Mol in Roy’s story metaphorically illustrates that there is
no escape from the tragic fate waiting for the colonizer in the colonial land.
As previously mentioned, the deep interaction with the colonizer creates
not only the suffering of the colonizer but also that of the colonized that
recognized and felt upset and anxious about the inferiority of their own
culture when compare to that of the colonizer. The feeling of the inferiority
created a community that was not glad about his existence, and that had
no peace anymore. The colonized having felt their inferiority, appreciated
everything that belonged to the colonizer and forget their own history,
culture, and language.
To be precise, they transformed into a nation who had not culture of
their own, and felt second-class thereby struggling to become a member of
the superior culture of the colonized. Thus, as it is stated in novel several
times “things can changes in a day” (32), implies the day on which the
colonizer’s arrival has changed everything in the land of the colonized.
In The God of Small Things, Chacko Kochamma, the uncle of the twins,
describes the colonized people as “prisoners of war”, as a result of which
1028

their “dreams have been doctored” and they “belong nowhere”. According
to him, it is a kind of war that has occupied their minds that they “have
won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams
and re-dreams them. A war that has made them adore their captures and
despise themselves” (53) Frantz Fanon in his A Dying Colonialism (1965),
argues that “the challenging of the very principle of foreign domination
brings about essential mutations in the consciousness of the colonized,
in the manner in which he perceives the colonizer, in his human states in
the world” (Gandhi, 1998: 130). Seeing themselves inferior, the colonized
people recognized that the only way to make their situation better is to
become similar to the colonizer, and thus, they try to imitate the colonizers
ideas, values and practices. They appreciate and value the colonizers way
of living and try to imitate their culture in view of not having of their own.
Roy in narrating Chacko’s thoughts reports:
Chacko told the twins though he hated to admit it, they were
all anglophile. They were a family of Anglophiles. Pointed in the
wrong direction, trapped outside their own history, and unable to
retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept away. He
explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With
all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside. ‘To understand
history, ‘Chacko said, we have to go inside and listen to what they’re
saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And
smells the smells.’ (52)
Roy in her novel narrates clearly how the colonized people appreciate
the English culture and their considerable effort to become like them by
way of imitation. There are seen perfectly in different behaviors of the
natives in the novel toward the half English Chacko’s daughter Sophie
Mole and her Indian twin cousins, Rahel and Estha. When Chacko’s half
English daughter Sophie and her mother Margaret come to India, every
body in the family is impatiently awaited for their arrival. Sophie Mole’s
half English identity is important both for the members of the family
and for the people outside. The importance of an English cousin can be
obviously presented in the speech of a man from outside the family where
Roy illustrates the scene as the following:
The twins squatted on their haunches, like professional adults gossip in
the Ayemenem market.
They sat in silence for a while. Kuttappen mortified, the twins
preoccupied with boat thought.
‘Has Chacko Saar’s Mol come?’ Kuttappen asked.
 1029

‘Must have Rahel said laconically.

‘Where is she?’
‘Who knows? Must be around somewhere. We don’t know.’
‘Will you bring her here for me to see?’
‘Can’t, ‘Rahel said.
‘Why not?’
‘She has to stay indoors. She’s very delicate. If she gets dirty she’ll die.’
(209, 210)
The appreciation in his question about the Sophie Mol is more like to that
of the Orgerndrink Lemondrink man, who sells beverages at the cinema,
when he learns that Sophie is coming he says “‘from London’s? A new
respect gleamed in uncle’s eyes. For a family with London connections”
(110).
Roy’s protagonists, Rahel and Estha are suffering from the great
admiration of their family for the English language and culture. They obtain
their love of the family if they behave in English manners and hold English
values. They are the children who are forced to neglect their own language
and does not have any importance, and who “had to sing in English in
obedient voices” (154). Baby Kochamma, the twin’s aunt corrects Estha
when he makes a mistake in pronouncing an expression where he say
‘Thang God,’ (154). For Rahel and Estha speaking in English is a kind of
obligation. They have been deprived of their own history, culture, values
and language for many years by the colonizers, and they cannot survive
themselves from the facts of colonialism. The twin’s aunt always forces
them to talk in English. Roy narrates this situation as the following:
That whole week Baby Kochamma eavesdropped relentlessly
on the twins’ private conversations, and whenever she caught them
speaking in Malayam, she levied a small fine which was deducted
at source. From their pocket money. She made them write lines
–‘impositions’ she called them - I will always speak in English, I
will always speak in English. A hundred times each. When they were
done, she scored them with her pen to make sure that old lines were
not recycled for new punishments.
She had made them practice an English car song for the way back.
They had to form the words properly, and be particularly careful
about their production. (36)
1030

The important fact here is that the contamination of the colonized is

not their admiration for the English or their efforts to imitate them, but
their inability to belong to neither the culture of the colonized nor that of
the colonizer and they experience an identity problem. The colonized is
alienated by imitating the culture of the colonizer from their own culture
and at the same time the skin color and national origin of the colonized
estranged them from the English culture. Thus, they gain a hybrid identity,
a mix between native and colonial identity, neither fully one nor the other.
Most of the problem about hybrid identities lies in its existence, which
is, as Bill Ashcroft highlights, “the corss-breading of the two species by
grafting or cross-pollination to form a third, ‘hybrid’ species”. (Ashcroft
1998: 118).
In other words, this ambivalent cultural identity does not belong
definitely to the world of either the colonizer or the colonized. It is presented
an ‘other’ from both cultural identities. This mixed identity, hybridity, “has
been recently associated with the work of Homi Bhabha, whose analysis
of colonizer/colonized stresses their interdependence and the mutual
construction of their subjectivity. Bhabha maintains that all the cultural
statements and systems are structured in a space that he ‘names third’ the
third space of the enunciation’ (1994: 37). Cultural identity always comes
out in this contradictory and ambivalent space which for Bhabha constructs
the argument to a hierarchical ‘purity’ of cultures. Bahaba puts this in this
way:
It is only when we understand that all cultural statements and
systems , are constructed in this contradictory and ambivalent space
of enunciation, that we begin to understand why hierarchical claims
to the inherent originality or ‘purity’ of cultures are untenable, even
before we I resort to empirical historical instances that demonstrate
their hybridity. Fanon’s vision of revolutionary cultural and political
change as a ‘fluctuating movement’ of occult instability could not
be articulated as cultural practice without an acknowledgement of
this indeterminate space of the subject(s) of enunciation. It is that
Third Space, though unrep­resentable in itself, which constitutes the
discursive conditions of enunci­ation that ensure that the meaning
and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even
the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and
read anew. (Bhabha, 1994: 74)
Roy in her story presents perfectly her twin protagonists Rahel and Estha
as two hybrid characters. Notwithstanding, the twins, try not to imitate the
English values and language, but they cannot escape from feeling inferior
 1031

when they compare themselves to their half English cousin, Sophie Mol,
since they are just the imitation of English, not real ones. Roy depicts
the difference between the twins and Sophie Mol throughout the novel.
She describes Sophie Mol as one of the “little angles” who “were beach-
colored and wore bell bottoms”, while Rahel and Estha are depicted as
two evil where we are told: “Littledemons were mudbrown in Airport fairy
frocks with forehead bumps that might turn into horns with fountains in
love-in-Tokyos. And backword-reading habits. And if you cared to look,
you cold see Satan in their eyes. (179).
Baby Kochamma twin’s aunt also gives an expression on the difference
between Sophie Mol and the twins. She describes Sophie Mol as “so
beautiful that she reminded her of a wood- sprite. Of Ariel.” Ariel in
Shakespeare’s The Tempest (144). While in describing the twins she say, “
‘They’re sly. They’re uncouth. Deceitful. They are growing wild you can’t
manage them” (149). This point maintains that such a great appreciation
that they love even their children as long as they imitate the values of the
other culture, and dissemble to be a member of that culture. Roy’s another
character who suffers from being a hybrid aspect is Pappachi Kochamma,
the grandfather of the twins whom with his strong passion to be an English
man in manner and appearance.
Pappachi Ammu’s father is a man who after retiring from Government
service in Delhi having worked for many years as an Imperial Entomologist
at the Pusa Institute, and who come to live in Ayemenem with his wife,
Mammachi, his son Chacko and his daughter Ammu till he dies. Pappachi
tries always to imitate the English way of clothing and as Roy illustrates
“until the day he died, even in the stifling Ayemenem heat, even single day,
Pappachi wore a well prepared three-piece suit and his gold pocket watch”
(49).
It is his strong passion to another culture that makes him dress a suit,
not his traditional clothing, mumudu and “khaki Judhpurs though he had
never ridden a horse in his life” (51). Ammu his daughter in describing
such a great appreciation of the other culture where we are told “Ammu
said that Pappachi was an incurable British CCP, which was short for chhi
chhi poach and in Hindu meant shit-wiper” (51). Chacko also as Ammu is
aware of how his father is keen on the English culture where Roy reports:
Chacko said that the correct word for people like Pappachi was
Anglophile. He made Rahel and Estha look up Anglophile in the
1032

Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary. It said Person well

disposed to the English. The Estha and Rahel had to look up disposed
…. Chacko said that in Pappachi’s case it meant Bring mind into
certain state. Which, Chacko said, meant that Pappachi’s mind had
been brought into a state which made him like the English. (52)
Although Pappachi’s admiration to English culture is great but he is not
able to the reality that he is not English in origin. Despite his big endeavor
to be similar to English culture, he does it just in appearance, not in his
manner, his way of thinking and attitudes. For instance, he is against to
her daughter’s education where he “insisted that a college education was
an unnecessary expense for a girl” (38), thereby, he let his daughter finish
her school life the same year that he retires from his job in Delhi and
moves to Ayemenem. Regarding to his wife’s , Mammachi’s, during a few
month day spend in Vienna, she takes a violin course, the situation is quite
similar to that of Ammu’s, teacher, Launskuy Tieffethal, made the mistake
of telling Pappachi that his wife was exceptionally talented and, in his
opinion, potentially concert class” (50). To sum up, Pappachi does not
tolerate any kind of success she achieves inching her talent in playing the
violin.
Upon Pappachi’s recognition that the jam and pickle is sold quickly
and his wife’s business getting better, he becomes irritated, so, he not only
prefer not to help her with her works, but also beats her every night. Roy
describing the scene concerning Pappachi’s thoughts and attitudes states
that:
Chacko came home for a summer vacation from Oxford. Her
had grown to be a big man, and was, in those days, strong from
rowing from Balliot. A week after he arrived he found Pappachi
beating Mammachi in the study. Chacko strode into the room, caught
Pappachi’s vase-hand and twisted it around his back, ‘I never want
this to happen again’ her told his father. ‘Ever’” (48).
Although Pappachi tries to be appear as a civilized man, he cannot
overcome to his other identity which makes him beat his wife, “with a
brass flower vase” every night, and who “broke the bow of her violin and
threw it in the river” (48).
The situation is the same for Chacko, Pappachi’s son, because he also
is another character who suffers from the hybridization process in terms of
 1033

not belonging to either the culture of the colonized or that of the colonizer.
Roy in reporting Chacko’s suffering of hybridization states that: “our minds
have been invaded by a war. A war that we have won and lost. The very
worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war
that has made us adore our conquerors and despite ourselves” (53). This
point highlights that the colonized always look down upon and scorns their
own culture, thereby they are uprooted from their culture and appreciates
whatever the colonizer has; therefore, they try to imitate them without
being to be a member of it on account of not being European in blood.
Chacko educated at Oxford University, realizes that their country and
mind have been captured by the colonizer and he depicts his own people
as “anglophile” “a person well disposed to the English” (52). However,
he himself is aware of being an anglophile, when he comes to loving
something that belongs to the English culture. His anglophile identity
is approved when he gets married to an English woman. As Ammu, his
sister, regards it on as marrying “our conquerors”. Chacko like his father’s
admiration of the English way of clothing appreciates the manners and
attitudes an English woman has. Roy in portraying Chacko’s admiration
of his English wife states:
As for Chacko, Margaret Kochamma was the first female friend
he had ever had. Not just the first woman that he had slept with, but
his first real companion. What Chacko loved most about her was her
self-sufficiency. Perhaps it wasn’t remarkable in the average English
women, but it was remarkable to Chacko.
He loved the fact that Margaret Kochamma didn’t cling to him
that she was uncertain about her feeling for him. That he never know
till the last day whether or not she would marry him. He loved the
way she would sit up naked in his bed, her long white back swiveled
away from him, look at her watch and say in her practical way –
‘Oops, I must be off.’ He loved the way she wobbled to work every
morning on her bicycle. He encouraged their differences in opinion,
and inwardly rejoiced at her occasional outburst of exasperation at
his decadence. (245-246).
Roy in giving the reason why Chacko admires Margaret, which is a
kind of looking up down on Indian women, reports that, “He was grateful
to his wife for not wanting to look after him. For not offering to tidy his
room. For not being cloying mother. He grew too depend on Margaret
Kochamma for not depending on him. He adored her for not adoring him”
1034

(246). Although Chacko appreciates his English wife for not wanting to
look after him, unlike his Indian mother, the same English woman leaves
him just because he is not used to looking after himself, which is quite
clear in the following description:
That it was impossible for him to consider making the bed, or
washing clothes or dishes. That he didn’t apologize for the cigarette
burns in the new sofa. That he seemed incapable of buttoning up
his shirt, knotting his tie and tying his shoe laces before presenting
himself for a job interview (247).
The important point that arises here is that his marriage to a married
woman becomes successful to the extent that he is able to hide his real
Indian Identity and plays his role successfully as the husband of an English
woman. The reason their marriage ends in divorce results in the interaction
between his own culture as the colonized and the culture of his wife as the
colonizer and his belonging to neither of them.
Although Chacko and Pappachi do their best to look like the colonizer
both in manner and attitudes, they become the victims of the interaction
with the colonizers’ culture that is regarded as superior. Despite their
endeavor to imitate the colonizer, considering their behavior throughout
the novel it is impossible for them to escape from their own identity, being
Indian in blood, not English. Roy, as a postcolonial writer, in her novel tries
to focus on the sufferings of the colonized originated from the interaction
with the colonized.
Besides Roy’s hybrid characters which can be understood as an evidence
of the contamination arrived with the colonizer, in order to prove how
dreadful suffering the arrival of the colonizer has brought to the colonial
land, the day on which Sophie Mol come to India is used as metaphorically,
and it stands for the coming of the colonizers. Sophie Mol with her English
mother Margaret comes from England to India to see her Indian father,
Chacko. Her coming to India is important because it stands for that of
the colonizer and in what ways it has brought about the sufferings of the
people in the colonial territory. Roy explains throughout the novel the great
influence of Sophie Mol in disturbing the tranquil situation in India and the
destructive effects of her visit. The most shattering effects can be seen in
the Estha and Rahel character, both of whom “hadn’t seen each other since
Estha’s return in a train with his pointy shoes rolled into his khaki hold
all”(32). Rahel immediately after separation of Estha from Ayemenem
loses her mother Ammu, too. Rahel also loves her Ayemenem and her twin
 1035

brother and wander from school to school. On the whole, Sophie Mol’s
arrival to India changed their faith and caused all these disastrous events.
The life in Ayemenem before her arrival was peaceful and tranquil. Roy in
illustrating the Ayemenem maintains that “Here, however, it was peace time
and the family in the Plymouth traveled without fear or foreboding”(35).
Sophie Mol’s arrival representing the colonizer disturbs the peaceful life in
Ayemenem. This is obviously observable when Roy portrays the situation
as, “You couldn’t see the river from the window anymore… and their has
come a time when uncles became fathers, mother’s lovers and cousins died
and had funerals. It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and
the impossible really happened” (31).

REFERENCES
Ashcroft, B. (2004). “England through Colonial Eyes in Twentieth-
Century Fiction”, CLIO, 34(1-2), 207-224.
Ashcroft, Bill, et al. (2002). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge.
Ashcroft, Bill, et al. The Postcolonial Studies Reader. London:
Routledge, 1995.
Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London and New
York: Routledge, 1994.
Gandhi, L. (1998). Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. St.
Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin.
Moore-Gilbert, B. (1997). Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices,
Politics. London: Verso.
Moore-Gilbert, B. et al (Eds.). (1997). Postcolonial Criticism. London:
Longman.
Needham, A. D. (2005), “The Small Voice of History in Arundhati
Roy’s”, The God of Small Things IJPS, Volume 7, N 3, 369-391.
Roy, Arundhati (1997). The God of Small Things. London,
Falmingo.
Tickell, A. (2003). “The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy’s
Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism. The Journal of Commonwealth
Literature, 38-73.