Will - Roy - 4/6

Roy's speech, she says, is about the same thing her novel is about:  "The relation between power and the powerless."  The evil that swoops down at the end of the book to destroy Velutha, Ammu, and the twins is a manifestation of the same power that Roy describes in her speech.  The brutal authoritarian power that installs military dictators in Latin America, the power that subdues Kashmir, the power that oppresses Palestinians, to use Roy's examples.  The power that kills people but also steals lives from the living.

The powerless in the novel are Ammu, Velutha, and the twins Rahel and Estha.  Ammu and Velutha are wiped out, but Rahel and Estha live broken lives.  The family unit can be seen as a metaphor for a nation.  The facade of "good breeding" that Mammachi has nourished is broken by Ammu's lust for Velutha.  Baby Kochamma could be construed as a metaphor for a thoughtless politician, "pillaging even the most private human feelings for political purpose."  She uses the catastrophe of Sophie Mol's death, Chacko's rage, and the love (or lust) between Velutha and Ammu for her own advancement.  The family/nation is eventually reduced to two broken children, Baby Kochamma and a cook who are both addicted to the fantasies of television and have let the Ayemenem house fall to ruin.  The empire has crumbled because a circumscribed way of life has been promoted to the exclusion of all other ways of life.  "Flags are used by governments to shrink wrap people's minds then shrouds to bury the dead."