Article on The God of Small Things
In my article on Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things I write about migrating, returning and the consequences thereof. Read the introduction on this page and the whole essay by clicking on the link in the menu on the top of the page.
01. Introduction
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. (Nelson Mandela)
Migrations and returns have been taking place since the beginning of human history. Whereas the motives were very diverse, the challenges that the migrants faced stayed roughly the same. Homesickness, not to be accepted in the new environment, unfulfilled dreams, in the end maybe the wish to return.
In this essay I want to examine, in respect of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, the characteristics of a migration, and the idea of home as the place that the migrant leaves and as a place he seeks at this destination. I will then go on and discuss the crossing of borders and boundaries, the features of a border and the reasons for trying to cross it. This includes the moral boundaries that a society imposes on its members and also the question to what extend the protagonists in The God of Small Things can be found guilty of transgressing borders and breaking the rules.
In the following chapter, the topic will be the process of returning to the origin and the reasons for that, as well as the consequences and problems that the returning migrant may encounter after his homecoming. Aspects of space and time will play an important role here.
In ‘the point of no return’ I will look at returning from another angle and ask the question what could have been done to prevent the disastrous events from happening or if they could have been prevented at all, looking for the point when the ‘Rubicon was crossed’ and a turning around was no longer possible.
A common subject of postcolonial studies is the topic of my sixth chapter, the formation of hybrid identities among the migrants in The God of Small Things and how they unfold, but also in respect of the novel’s language and form. This goes on in the last chapter, where I will take a general look at the language in matters of how the idea of migrating and returning can be applied to the form of the novel.