In God of Small Things it seems one person’s conception of things and the overall perception of those things are frequently depicted as being influenced by the ideas or traditions of some other person’s beliefs. Chacko seems particularly influenced by his time spent at Oxford. This comes through his “Reading Aloud Voice” and perhaps his fascination with Communism. Pappachi’s role as Imperial Entomologist fluctuated according to the British presence. The validity of his finding of a new moth species was subject to forces outside his control.
On Page 79 there’s a passage in which Rahel notices a crushed dead frog in the road and wonders whether Ms. Mitten was also crushed in the same manner when she was hit by a milk truck. This prompts a flashback of sorts in which Vellya Paapen assures both the twins, Rahel and Estha, that there are no black cats in the world but only black cat-shaped holes in the Universe.
“There were so many stains on the road. Squashed Miss Mitten-shaped stains in the Universe. Squashed frog-shaped stains in the Universe. Squashed crows that had tried to eat the squashed frog-shaped stains in the Universe. Squashed dogs that ate the squashed crow-shaped stains in the Universe. Feathers. Mangoes. Spit. All the way to Cochin.”
To me this passage illustrates an inherent hierarchy of beings and things within the world and an inherent hierarchy of viewing things within world. It seems objectively that a stain is a stain and a hole is a hole. Only through being told what a “Miss Mitten” is or what a frog is can you describe a particular stain as being like a frog. These perceptions, dictated by people and traditions outside oneself, make up the distance between here and there or in Rahel’s case where she sits at the railroad crossing in the backseat of the sky-blue Plymouth and the movie theater in Cochin.
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