Arundhati RoyÆs first novel The God of Small Things details the ups and downs, mostly downs, of a Hindu family in the village of Ayemenem. Throughout the novel there are a variety of disasters that plague the family including the drowning of a nine-year-old girl, Sophie Mol, the cousin of the two twins from whose perspective the story largely unfolds. Rahel and her fraternal twin Estha are the children of Ammu and Baba, a couple who divorced because of BabaÆs beatings of his wife. The Syrian Christian family also includes a behemoth old woman name Baby Kochamma. Chacko is the uncle of the twins, a butt-pinching Oxford educated man who has returned home to run his motherÆs chutney business. His ex-wife is an English woman named Margaret Kochamma and it is their daughter Sophie Mol who drowns on an outing with the twins. Despite the doomed destiny of the characters, RoyÆs main theme is that meaning and fulfillment in life stem from taking appreciation and pleasure in the small things.
The main theme of the novel is spelled out fairly early in the book through the character of the adult Estha. He is tending to an old dog when he notices the shadow of a bird in flight as it moves across the dogÆs body. He sees this small thing as a miracle, because he knows the tragedies that exist in life, ôTo Esthaùsteeped in the smell of old roses, blooded on memories of a broken manùthe fact that something had been allowed to exist, was a miracle,ö (Roy 1998). In large measure, Estha feels this way because he knows the history and that of his family, one during which happy things did not often exist.
Rahel and Estha were treated poorly by their uncle who refers to them as a ômillstoneö around his neck. The children and their mother Ammu have returned to live with AmmuÆs parents at Ayemenem. Ammu is disgraced because of her divorce and she eventually dies an early death, after facing enormous rage and scorn for having an ...