Rachel, Roy - 4/6

Although The God of Small Things does not directly comment on war, as "Come September" does, I think both pieces are written in the same vein.  Joe is right to call Roy a sentimentalist.  At the core of this novel is not Roy's desire to tell a story  - it is her need to express connection and empathy with a broad range of individuals, be they Americans or veshyas.  She urges us to realize the weight of our own actions on other people, whether they are acts of violence or charity.  I think that's the goal of many activists, is to get people to realize that.

In "Come September," Roy writes:

"War cannot avenge those who have died.  War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.  To fuel yet another war, this time against Iraq, by cynically manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for t.v. specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief - to drain it of meaning.  What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private, human feelings for political purpose.  It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people."

This same anti-authoritarian tone is adopted in Ammu's death scene.  (It's on page 154, if you'd like to take a look at it again...we also did a close reading on Monday.)  "Ammu always noticed them [veshyas] in the market, the women with vacant eyes and forcibly shaved heads in the land where long, oiled hair was only for the morally upright...everybody would know them for what they were...new policemen on the beat would have no trouble identifying whom to harass."

Ammu manages to sympathize and identify with prostitutes, even if it is only subconsciously.  They exist outside her moral circle, and yet she feels sympathy when she sees their shaved heads.  Like her, they are outcasts because of decisions that they have made.  Both of Roy's writings urge the audience to incorporate a similar approach in their own lives.  She wants us to realize the true, ripples-deep affect that violence we inflict on "non-persons" has...and maybe realize that the U.S. army isn't trying to "liberate women from their burkas."  Maybe the women even feel compelled to wear them out of religious obligation.  But first we have to imagine life from their perspective and their culture - and not ours.

On a more personal note, this speech was like a therapeutic brain massage.  "We are being led to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission."

Say it like it is.