"Chacko told the twins that, though he hated to admit it, they were all Anglophones. They were a family of Anglophones. 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." (page 51)
All the works we've read so far have had a strong concern with history, the inheritance of the past, whether it be national or family history. There's not a sense in these stories that anyone can get a "fresh start." The United States being a rather young country, it is often said that Americans are not tied to history like people from other places. If this is true (I'm not saying it is), how is it that Americans are supposed to relate to the writings of Roy, Rushdie, or Naipaul? Not everyone in class regards themselves as American obviously, so this may be a silly question. But are we missing something?
This novel reminds me a bit of Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom or The Sound and the Fury. These novels are formal achievements with temporal leaps that show characters who are never free of what happened in the past, even before they were born. The above passage shows how Roy is obsessed with lineage, similar to Faulkner. Roy's style is evocative, and in this passage she compares the family to Untouchables (who had to walk backwards, sweeping their own footprints away). The difference between Faulkner and Roy is that Faulkner admired humans in spite of everything, and Roy seems to resent them.
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