Within the Family, Western influences seem to have near equal footing within their perception of the world. Chacko’s time spent at Oxford seems to be an underlying reason for the existence of his “Reading Aloud Voice,” what seems to be a kind of overly accentuated intellectuality and need to present himself as above everything and everyone around him. There seems to be a similarity between this type of behavior and the way the children, Estha and Rahel, are forced to engage in pronouncing English words “properly” with the correct “Prer NUN sea ayshun.”
A strain of Chacko’s Westernness, forced on them by Baby Kochamma, seems to be acting as a constraint or restraint on the children’s means of interacting with language with are ultimately things outside of themselves. It seems to be a kind of tool for identity formation. Ammu does a similar thing when she takes Rahel aside after she’s wrapped herself up in a dirty curtain to avoid Sophie Mol and Margaret Kochamma at the airport.
She (Ammu) “informs” Rahel what is “DIRTY” and what is “CLEAN.” It seems behind this distinction that Ammu demands Rahel understand is a struggle of Rahel’s innate personality versus Sophie Mol’s foreign worldly superiority (that everyone of the adults in the family places on her). In other words, there’s a conflict between Indianness and Englishness or Darkness vs. Lightness, good and evil. Still, Rahel and Estha already have many parts of their identity determined according to Western sensibilities. Estha’s fascination with Elvis and Rahel’s (and Estha’s) love for Velutha who seems to embody this interrelatedness of Eastern and Western as an untouchable who seems to have the power to rise above his circumstances.
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