Michael Rushdie

In mukherjee's  "the management of grief"  i get a sense of attempting to preserve a cultural identity but failing in the mists of western momentum. For instance when the girl says shed rather go to wonderland, or the boy is lost in his walkmen. It seems  the only reminder of india remaining is left in the brittle sounds of tea and teapots. the story maintains its grounding by holding on this thread of keeping hope, especially from the standpoint of a mother, but can be related to maintaining hope in other aspects than death. the narrators tone is also quite different than the others weve dealt with. The character is less fantastical yet keeps almost two separate standpoints in her narration. the things she does and says and the things she would like to. It also shows the effect of returning to culture after leaving and the alienating aspect of such a reality.

Jason-Mukherjee-4/13

I thought the family in The Management of Grief was one of the most, if not the most, Western-seeming depiction of any Indian character(s) we’ve read so far. Because of this the emphasis on “particularly Indian” things, like the sound of a tea pot being filled with water, stood out, as the narrator described them, as things that were almost “other” even though they were, in some ways, really the things that were most familiar.

            I had a hard time figuring out what role Hope played in the story. It seems like, in the context of other stories and novels we’ve read, Hope is something could be seen as misguided and maybe even particularly Western. Either way, it seems to serve as both a lifesaver to some, like Dr. Ranganathan who the narrator sees as having some insight into the possibilities of life because he is an electrical engineer, and a “millstone” for others, like the husband and wife that Judith Templeton takes the narrator to visit. It’s hard to say whether Hope is shown as being particularly Western or Eastern. It seems Hope is pretty universal, though the circumstances in which it is grasped, and the background of the “graspee” seem to have a lot to do with how a particular hopeful person is affected later in life by it.

            Much of the story seems to have to do with accepting the fact that “God” takes things and gives them. To me, in the context of what we’ve read, that seems like a kind of Westernification of the Eastern way of seeing the world, which is that things are beyond the control of the individual. Fate more or less determines when things come and when they go. This idea is then related to the narrator’s grieving period, and probably all grieving periods in the story, and represented by the visions she has of her family deciding for her when she can move on and continue her life.

            A variation of this idea comes up during the narrator’s talk with the husband and wife. The narrator says that her husband and son “are not coming back.” The old woman says, “who’s to say? Man alone does not decide these things.” They’re ultimately “holding out” in the hopes that they family might resurface some how. They’re not willing to accept their fate. Though, in the end it seems the narrator’s acceptance of her fate actually provides the possibility for a hopeful future.

Anna-April 13- Mukherjee

Themes I saw in The Management of Greif as related to S.S. Diaspara:
1. Family
2. Customs, pg. 93, "I was too much the well brought up woman. I was so well brought up I never felt comfortable calling my husband by his first name."
3. Americana talk words : Mcdonalds, Walkman, Wonderland
4. Food motifs
5. mysthical element "swami in Toronto" Toronto making it more interesting..(like a visiting guru with a website)

Eidia.Mukherjee.4.13

In Bharati Mukherjee's "The Management of Grief", there is a strong sense of cultural preservation. This theme is prominent in many ways. Varying from elements such as the saris worn by the women, in an Western country such as Canada, even Ireland, the Indian notion of retaining "hope", and the concepts of remarrying...given the right circumstances...all of these components are branches of a somewhat traditional Indian society. Along with these details, there is the constant references to Indian hospitality; specifically, in the case of constantly preparing tea/chai for visitors. An example of this tradition, continued even in the western backdrop:
       "I hear the most familiar sound of an Indian home, tap water hitting and filling a teapot." (pg. 105).

While Mukherjee implements these anticipated Indian themes, there is something strikingly different in her approach to Indian people as part of an Indian community. There is a strong sense of detachment, present most densely within Shaila's insistence upon not interfering with the lives of the Sikh couple:
      "They are Sikh. They will not open up to a Hindu woman." (pg.104)
Despite sharing a common grief, or rather, unified through one- in terms of being impacted with the sense and reality of loss, there is still a political difference being suggested by the author. This brings forth a dimension, a multiplicity of layers, the Indians abroad, unified by the reality of diaspora, and the divided sense of political differences within this one culture (Hindu vs Sikhs).

Karol -Mukherjee -04/13

Richard Rodriguez in his book Brown makes reference to the fact that only in the U.S. (and maybe Canada) do otherwise unconnected ethnographic groups connect by calling themselves Asians or Pacific Islanders or maybe East Asians. I believe in Baby steps, unfortunately, with every step closer to people considering themselves earthlings something is lost. This story made me sad. The interruption of hope by duty and duty by hope is a terrifyingly tautologous. It folds over and over itself like ripples in certain body of water in Ireland where our protagonist finds herself looking into the beyond. The interruption of individual hope by Judith Templeton, who groups the suffering of those she is trying to help with a repetitive use of the word "some," is "partially" from the "multiculturalism" wing of the provincial government. (94-95) As a South Asian story there is a strong emphasis on presenting the characters as educated middle class elite and a strong preference to Europeans over North Americans (not that there's anything wrong with that). Literature does in many ways teach the middle class how to brush their teeth (So says Updike). In a story about grief it would be too obvious to mention the piece has tones of escapism but hope is not an illusion without utility. Mukherjee's poetic styling turns several scenes into absolute works of art. The image of Kusum's 'sari ballooning in the wind' is especially vivid and indicative of the writers affiliation.

Will - Mukherjee - 4/13

The tone of this story is more mythic than others we have read.  Rushdie uses elements of myth, but always self-consciously or winkingly.  At least the ending of this story is mythic with Shaila the narrator beginning a quest after hearing the voices of her family:  "I do not know which direction I will take.  I dropped the package on a park bench and started walking" (108).  The whole story seems to happen for the reader through a haze of grief, and maybe the mythic tone is suitable because grief is anti-rational.

This story is also notable because it shows alienation from family life in a way other stories we've read never do.  Shaila's husband and children die, and upon returning home her mother offers no consolation.  Shaila does however find some support from the larger Indian community living in Canada, like Dr. Ranganathan.  So unlike the claustrophobic world of a single family, like in Rushdie and Roy, Mukherjee portrays a single woman among a community.  At the same time, Shaila doesn't really feel a connection with most of those people besides the fact that they share a homeland or lost family-members in a crash.  Shaila is more alone than other protagonists we've read about.

Joseph-Mukherjee-4/13

Notions of cultural limbo run throughout Mukherjee's 'The Managment of Grief'. I found the most immediately striking dissonance to be that between Judith and the rest of the community. Judith is earnest, but she cannot bridge the essential gap between cultures. Most strikingly, she states ""We have interpreters, but we don't always have the human touch, or maybe the right human touch." Just writing "We don't always have the human touch" would have gotten across the message. However, Mukherjee adds or maybe the right human touch to support her most powerful proposition: Grief is universal, but the treatment of it cannot escape age old cultural divisions.

The story is full of twisting double bind sentences such as the one above:


*Pam, a heavily westernized girl, expresses her desire to waitress at McDonald's. She comments "If it's a choice between Bombay and Wonderland, I'm picking Wonderland."(It's particularly ironic that McDonald's is seen as the Wonderland, given that 'do you want fries with that?' has become the joke towards those who are at the lowest rung of the capitalist dream).  She ultimately ends up giving make-up advice to Indian and Oriental girls in Vancouver.

*Shaila's freedom from the traditional roles of women in Indian culture is only achieved through a kind of stained branding: Due to the fact that she is a widow, she will not be pressured or desired in regards to a new marriage.

*The doubling that exists in the meeting between Shaila and the Sikh family. A shared grief is expressed(at one point the narrator remarks that the grieving are now 'relatives'), but communication is irrevocably limited. Mukherjee writes, "I try to explain to them that the government wishes to give money, not take." He raises his hand. "Let them take", he says. "We are accustomed to that. That is no problem." The couple only hear the take fragment of Shaila's dialogue. Moreover, the only way that Judith knows how to cope is to give,give,give. She needs to be constantly working in order to cope, and this contrasts with the coping responses of the families. In actuality, Judith's attempts to manage the grief of others only serve to reinforce the isolation of her own response.

*The stoic narration justifies the appearance of mystical forces. It's introduction is unapologetic. The narrator's decision to return to Canada(and continue with her life) is motivated by a mystical appearance of her deceased husband.

Bharati Mukherjee

Post on Bharati Mukherjee's story in the same manner as you did on Ondaatje, looking for thematic or stylistic traits of South Asian contemporary fiction.

Jason-Ondaatje-4/11

In The Passions of Lalla, Lalla possess an everlasting sense of youth or at least a youthful approach to living her life. After marrying and having children at an early age, its as if she seems to feel that she’s done with “adultly” concerns and focus primarily on what she wants for herself. In this sense, it’s interesting that she is particularly generous to children. Maybe it’s because she thinks she owes them something, for not being as adult as maybe she feels she should, or because she sees herself as having something, maybe a world view, in common with them. Though her concerns seem to be frivolous, she seems to be aware of being able to enjoy things fully for “that one moment” where pleasure is most complete and presumably most satisfying.

            Either way, these characteristics seem similar to a few features of Roy’s God of Small Things. The focus on a perspective that is so child-centric and a figure who provides generously for those in need (a Jesus-like figure), are all pieces held in common with Roy’s work and this one (maybe even with Rushdie’s).

            Lalla seems to not want to be attached to anything physically, not even her own grandchildren when they want to hold her hand. Maybe this is a representation of a child-like naiveness in that she regards herself as being a whole being separate from all others, one who’s capable of making decisions for themselves according to their desires. Her love for drinking may be what perpetuates this belief but ultimately she’s dragged away by a flood, containing all types of things and objects, to her death. She’s basically mixed back into “everything else.”

            This last bit seems to be particularly relevant to South Asian lit. In this story, “Westernness” and “Easternness” seem to be somewhat blurred. But in the end it seems that the Eastern side, the one that sees the world as being infinitely connected with all other things, claims all others and subsumes them not matter the circumstances or opposing beliefs held by those who are subsumed.

Jane-Ondaatje- 4/10/11

"There is no information about Lalla growing up. Perhaps she was a shy child, for those who are magical break from silent structures after years of chrysalis" (Ondaatje, 157).


In terms of character study a found a few parallels between Lalla and other women in the books we've read so far. This particular passage reminds me a great deal of Rahel in The God of Small Things. Both are playful and indifferent- two things that seem to distinguish them socially and cause them to be viewed as the exotic other, in Rahel's case this is especially true in her marriage to Larry Mccaslin. I know I've mentioned it before, but I think it is interesting that all novels and stories seem to have the similar figure of the coquettish wife. Lalla's wit and charm harkens back to Lahiri's short story, This Blessed House. 

Karol -Ondaatje -04/10

I think what is clutch to Ondaatje's story is that Lalla married into insanity and took it as her own, became a Dickman. Her love affairs all seem to be acts of becoming as is her relationship with Catholicism. "Shortly after Willie began the dairy he fell seriously ill. Lalla, unable to cope, would run into the neighbours' homes, pound on their beds, and promise to become a catholic if Willie recovered." (158) Her promises (or should I say her lies) are also dormant acts of becoming that act as gestures signifying what she would become if she could ever get past herself. Her knowledge of becoming is limited to the costume she wears to play a role, which leaves her at the end trying to make a spectacle of her death in order to become in death what she couldn't become in life. Haha. I just got it.

Will - Ondaatje - 4/11

Similar to characters in Midnight's Children like Aadam Aziz, Ondaatje's grandmother Lalla doesn't change or progress throughout the story.  She doesn't learn a lesson by overcoming early difficulty in her life.  Another similarity with Rushdie's characters is that Lalla goes through periods of peculiar obsession such as her obsession with fashioning ornate dresses for her daughter to wear:  "The crowning achievement was my mother's appearance at the Galle Face Dance as a lobster" (161).  If anything Lalla becomes more herself as she gets older.  After her husband dies and her children grown up, she is described as "in her prime" (165).  She has to sell her house and after that "She was free to move wherever she wished, to do whatever she wanted" (164).

At the same time Lalla's life is touched by the fantastic:  "My Grandmother died in the blue arms of a jacaranda tree.  She could read thunder" (157).  She reads her death in thunder one day, and she dies when she is carried away in a flood after going on a bender with her brother.  Apparently they were so drunk they didn't notice the monsoon:  "For two days and nights they had been oblivious to the amount of destruction outside their home" (169).  There is also a moment when similar to Saleem in M.C. Lalla's life is intertwined with the life of the nation when Ondaatje writes, "During the forties she moved with the rest of the country towards Independence and the 20th century.  Her freedom accelerated" (167).

Ondaatje's style is pretty interesting.  He's not bombastic like Rushdie or dreamy like Roy.  But every once in a while he writes something beautiful and strange like "She gazed and listened but there seemed to be no victim or parabola end beyond her" (168) or "What was moving was rushing flood" (169).  In that way he isn't stoic like Naipaul.

Hannah-Ondaatje-4/11

"The Passion of Lalla" by Ondaatje echoes other authors we have read in terms of religion and superstition. "Shortly after Willie began the dairy he fell seriously ill. Lalla, unable to cope, would run into neighbours' homes, pound on their beds, and promise to become a Catholic if Willie recovered" (158). Catholicism is often representative of "Western" culture, so in this case, Lalla saw it as a chance to get what she wanted from it. On page 162-163, she is seen "flirting" with Catholicism, but decides to leave the church when her brother abandons his fiance (the priest's sister). Mentioned before in class, people often pick and choose what they need from religion and culture. Lalla seems very attached to nature and helping others, but grabs what she can from a non-traditional Eastern culture, such as stealing. But Lalla is a different character, still keeping in touch with everybody, even her ex-fiance and his wife. She dressed her daughter in crazy costumes and hid a murderer from the police.

"A good many of my relatives from this generation seem to have tormented the church sexually. Italian monks who became enamored of certain aunts would return to Italy to discard their robes and return to find the women already married" (163). This was the opposite for Baby Kochamma in Roy's novel because she ended up pining for Father Mulligan and ending up bitter and alone.

"A year later the husband lapsed into total silence and the only sounds which could be heard from his quarters were barkings and later on the cluck on hens. It is believed he was the victim of someone's charm" (158-159). Rene's husband ends up shooting himself and before his death, he acts like an animal. This reminds me of Naipaul and his criticisms of superstition. As if believing his insanity to be because of someone's charm isn't logical at all. But Ondaatje's use of language is very detailed and not slow at all. Naipaul's style of writing was very dry, but Ondaatje uses so many details in each paragraph that it flows  along with the story.

Like Rushdie (and maybe Roy), Lalla's life and her journey to her death was so outlined and elaborate, but once she met her death, that was it. "... and she hit it and was dead" (170). No other explanations. But I guess that's how death really is to some people. You die and that's that.

Rachel - Mukherjee, 4/13

Perhaps the theme I’ve chosen to write about it too easy.  Nonetheless, I think it’s germane to the course.

South Asian writers respond to India’s struggle to adapt in a “modern” – or perhaps simply “Westernized” – world.  Where does cultural tradition fit in, when wants to attend an American university and become a doctor?  Who wants to wear traditional saris when everyone around you is in Levi’s jeans and American Eagle tee-shirts?

On page 101, we see this theme directly commented on.  Mukherjee seems to be directly addressing:

“The zamindar’s daughter kept stubborn faith in Vedic rituals; my parents rebelled.  I am trapped between two modes of knowledge.  At thirty-six, I am too old to start over and too young to give up.  Like my husband’s spirit, I flutter between two words.”

Since her husband died in India Air Flight 182, over the Atlantic Ocean, he was literally between the Eastern and Western worlds when he died.  Where did his true identity lie?  And where is his final resting place to be?

Note how the first sentence is broken into two halves via semicolon.  The next sentence is declarative, unbroken.  The next two are broken into two halves by commas.  Personally, I think this is no coincidence.  Mukherjee did this as an intentional, rhetorical choice, and it works.  It makes the rhythm of the prose match the feelings the Mrs. Bhave expresses.

This same sense of being caught in-between is also explored in “This Blessed House.”  The protagonist struggles with his wife’s Westernized eccentricities and freedoms.  He wonders if it might have been better to marry a girl who was actually born and raised in India.  The traditional Indian view of gender is also incorporated into "Bahadur" on page 102:

"Already the widowers among us are being shown new bride candidates.  They cannot resist the call of custom, the authority of their parents and older brothers.  They must marry; it is the duty of a man to look after a wife.  The new wives will be young widows with children, destitute but of good family.  They will make loving wives, but the men will shun them."

So where does his new life in the bourgeois suburbs of North America fit in?  Especially one in which women are expected to be college-educated and financially independent?

I’m not sure…but I think I may try to answer that very question in my final paper.

Rachel - Ondaatje, 4/11

Lalla is antithetical to "Eastern values."  By seeing how she does not conform to Indian ideas of what a person should be, we gain insight into what qualities the local cultures deems important.

In most Eastern countries - from India, to Japan, to Cambodia - the dead are venerated.  Sure, here in the West we have grave stones too.  America is full of ghost stories that involved Indian cemeteries being dug up, or a grave being defaced, and poltergeist activity occurring as a consequence.   But in the East it goes a step further.  There, there is a strong tradition of ancestor worship, the importance of one's family being "of good repute," and the idea that one's actions in previous lives affects one's caste.  From what I can gather, these beliefs probably came out of some hybrid "Buddhism/patriarchy/Confuscian" ideals.  Potestant Europe and America often do not assign the same weight to respect for the dead.

This makes it particularly offensive when Lalla steals flowers from graves.  On page 164, Ondaatje has her saying to her husband:

"Darling, I've just been to church and I've stolen some flowers for you.  These are from Mrs. Abeysekare's [grave], the lilies are from Mrs. Ratnayake's [grave], the agapanthus is from Violet Meedeniya and the rest are from your garden."

He goes on to describe her:

"She stole flowers compulsively, even in the owner's presence.  As she spoke with someone her straying left hand would pull up a prize rose along with the roots, all so that she could appreciate it for that one moment, gaze into it with complete pleasure, swallow its qualities whole and then hand the flower, discarding it, to the owner."

This shows that the main character 1.) has no sense of veneration or respect, 2.) cannot be trusted around delicate things, and 3.) will recklessly destroy beauty.

So Lalla is a particularly low-down character to a South Asian audience.  Between her constant lunches and bridge games, she's lazy, which solidifies her image as a "bad character."  (And most of us know, laziness = death in Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korea, etc., culture.  Statistically, students whose ancestors hail from the East are overrepresented in major colleges/universities and score highest on IQ tests and the SATs.  Do I think this is attributed to innate ability?  No.  But to the Confuscian ideal that you MUST work hard to achieve, as Kam Louie once wrote, "cultural attainment?"  (Better known as the ancient Chinese philosophy of "wen?")  Absolutely.

Lalla doesn't push herself at all.  Rather, she simply floats through life, trying to maintain her contentedness through Ajoutha card games.  (According to Ondaatje, these games take at least eight hours to complete.)  That character trait seems to be the reason why he picked her name.  "Lalla?"  Seems like a revealing choice to me.

For this week: Ondaatje & Mukherjee

I'd like to read both of these stories as providing examples of the South Asian style and outlook - in different ways.
for Mon: Michael Ondaatje, the most commercially successful author we've read, writes a character study. How does this presentation of a character and a life seem typical of storytelling that comes out of South Asian traditions? How does Lalla represent an "Eastern" life, an example of "Eastern" values? In what ways does this story echo books we've read? How does this concept of a life differ from that found in what Roy calls the "Great Novels"? As always, use examples from the story.

for Wed: Bharati Mukherjee writes an allegory of being Indian and away from home. This story of the aftermath of a tragedy, although similar in some ways to The Sweet Hereafter, aims to describe the experience of being a stranger - a Hindu - away from one's home country. It has in common with the books we've read a theme of death and the many rituals through which we try to cope with it. However, the tone is different than anything we've read, I believe. Comment on these things or whatever strikes you, but you may use these responses as an opportunity to start exploring your theme for the final essay - on South Asian Diasporic literature generally.

Anna-Roy 4/6

"Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told"


This combined with the quote by John Berger at the beginning of the novel, " Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one." explains to me the structure and the circular time and Rushdie-like all encompassing narrative. 


I think the emotions and the evocative nature of the story comes from the political side of Roy eeping out through the story tellers lense. 


She is much more than just a writer which was explained in the pre-speech introduction (from the transcript) . She only has one novel- for her it is less about writing lots of novels, tan saying what needs to be said, which she is doing through screenplays and essays, and once did through a novel. I had a very different idea of the novel actually before I heard this speech, which gives it a much more political slant. The speech puts her up on a level with Naipaul and Rushdie, whereas I might have thought her more passive wrongly equating her, from her writing as a gentle poetic- this though is more interesting- more productive. But now what what can the novel mean?

Jason-Roy-4/6

            The ways in which the powerful and the powerless appear in Roy’s novel seem to be split along lines one would assume they would be split along. Class position, religion, political alignment, skin color, age, etc. Sophie Mol seems an embodiment of all that is deemed powerful, at least by the family. Though the love she is the focus of (which she seems to not reciprocate or even be interested in) ultimately doesn’t save her from drowning. Though in some way her place in the family’s “heart” does appear to haunt Rahel and Estha endlessly.

It seems that the greatest determining factor, in terms of who’s powerful and who’s powerless, is the degree or amount one is loved. This didn’t seem to come up in Roy’s speech specifically but does in the novel. Rahel and Estha (though particularly Rahel) seem to be focused on the amount they perceive their mother to love them. In their eyes, this entity, love, is what can give them power. The weighing Rahel and Estha do, to determine their moth’s love for them, seems to be set against the perception they have that Sophie Mol is ubiquitously loved by everyone in their family perhaps to a “larger amount” then anyone loves them. Only Velutha seems to unconditionally love both Rahel and Estha.

            In terms of a political perspective, maybe this child-like rendering of power dynamics is really at the heart of all political discourse. The state or the status quo, or the traditional manners of hierarchical structure, embodied by Inspector Thomas Mathew and the police, Baby Kochamma and Mammachi, Comrade Pillai, seem to all be in the business of determining who can be loved, how much, and by who. By doing so it is possible to dictate who interacts with who, who has relationships with who, and determine what the structure and face of social dealings look like. This is made clear by Ammu’s relationship with Velutha (a touchable and an untouchable) one that’s forbidden by societal traditions as well as Rahel’s relationship with Estha and what it culminates in. It’s possible that in Roy’s depiction of the interference of political systems and traditions on interpersonal relationships, specifically Ammu’s and Velutha’s, she implies that it sets a dangerous precedent for the generations that follow. That these types of restrictions are the source of all ensuing problems.

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."

Karol - Roy -04/05

"Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling." Roy's talk is very broad on the system's of oppression in the world  but I have a hard time seeing it in the book. Perhaps it shows in the character's lack of agency. I can definitely see her interests in power dynamics but since everything is on the subjective level the state level (as her theme here represents) is not visible. There is an anarchic tone to her rhetoric which she represents in her book.

"I believe that the accumulation of vast unfettered power by a State or a country, a corporation or an institution - or even an individual, a spouse, a friend, a sibling -regardless of ideology..." I agree what she says about the branding of anti-Americans but that is not representative of the whole or even the majority.

"The term "anti-American" is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride...is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination." Saying that calling someone racist for calling you anti-American is just tit for tat. Overall, I found her speech is very interesting but the pessimistic approach is what I find unattractive about her work. Not to say that she is wrong but she offers no solutions (it's easy to point out the problems).

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.

Joseph-Roy-4/6

Arundnati Roy,when speaking about the unfavorable political climate in India, expressed hope for an anarchist spirit. The exchange is as follows:

Zinn: But I liked what you said about the...that in India there's a kind of inherent anarchism which will save India.

Roy: We hope. I think it's like... trying to corporatize India is like trying to put an iron grid on the ocean. I just think even though Fascists are not disciplined, they're...hopefully they'll mess it up.

Roy became aware of the need for political disturbances/awareness from a very young age. She comments that her mother(who married a man outside of tradition)  “ made the mistake of marrying him and then divorcing him and came back to the village. And so we grew up sort of outside the realm of all the protections that that society chose to offer its members. So from a very young age, one was aware of the fact that you were not going to be given those protections.”

If we look at the text, we can see a similar ostracization towards the character of Ammu. Roy writes, on page 256(of my version), that Ammu is “The Unmix-able Mix—the infinite tenderness of motherhood, the reckless rage of a suicide bomber.”

Ammu refuses prostitution, and is shamed by the patriarchal community. This is a label she cannot escape( i.e,  after Velutha’s arrest, Ammu is called a veshya by the police.) Ammu is seen as a wild card. She is not the traditional, doting mother or wife. She is someone who is attempting to transcend the ‘double colonization(introduced by Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford’ of colonalism and indigenous patriacharal structures. Roy writes of Ammu on page 44: “They senses somehow that she lived in the penumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous.”

Protections may have to be sacrificed, but it is ultimately worth it. At the heart of the matter, Roy is a sentimentalist in the age of irony. She is not a kind of sentimentalist that is content to learn coping mechanisms and accept things as they are. She is the other kind of sentimentalist: the kind that risks losing power in order to gain strength. The last statement in her interview is the perfect mix of sentiment and sober thought:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

 Beauty and truth are not all around us. They must be sought out, and chased down. If literature is to be the oppostite of a nuclear bomb(as Roy states), it must properly cultivate its explosive power.  

Roy: Poet and Pundit

Watch Arundhati Roy's speech at the Lanaan Foundation, "Come September." Here is a link to the transcript. Then post on the way her political and philosophical ideas shed light on the intents of her novel. She claims that her novel-writing and her political activism share a common message and purpose. Referring specifically to the film, can you find Roy's political perspective in her famous novel? How do her convictions perhaps explain the novels' style and choice of topics - even its details?

Anna- Roy-4/4

I noticed that both Roy and Rushdie have employed the tactic of false suspense. With Rushdie we wait until halfway through the book for the main character to be born. While we wait we are given a whole bunch of lead up, then it happens like nothing. In Roy's book, we are waiting too. We are waiting and waiting foremost for Sophie Mol to arrive (pg. 157) We already know she will arrive and she will die from very beginning of the book. Kind of like we know Saleem will be born on the stroke of midnight from his first page. In Roy's we are also waiting for the forbidden love.

Will - Roy - 4/4

One technique used in Roy that is similar to Rushdie is the use of prophetic dream.  In Midnight's Children on page 238, Saleem has a fever dream that begins "No colors except green and black the walls are green the sky is black . . . . "  The dream continues:  "the children run and scream the Widow's hand curls round them green and black."  The dream, though dreamt by Saleem in the present after drinking Padma's love elixir, comes at a point in the novel when Saleem is nearly-nine.

On page 205 in The God of Small Things, while Estha and Rahel visit Velutha and Kuttappen, Ammu dreams:  "Ammu traveled upwards through a dream in which a cheerful man with one arm held her close by the light of an oil lamp."  She dreams of Velutha, but Ammu and Velutha can't touch because "in the shadows, there were metal folding chairs arranged in a ring and on the chairs there were people, with slanting rhinestone sunglasses, watching."  Roy even uses the same color combination that Rushdie used:  "The sea was black, the spume vomit-green."

The dreams come at points in the narrative when the reader knows that things are going to go very badly but not why and act as a preview.  Both dreams depict people at the mercy of forces much larger than them.  With Rushdie it is the Widow (Indira Gandhi) who represents the government and history, and in Roy it is the people in sunglasses who represent society, or opinion, or what-would-the-neighbors-think.  For Roy even the most intimate moments, like dreams, are invaded by oppressive societal forces.  On a side note, this is the second time in the novel that Velutha's abs have been described as the ridges of a chocolate bar.  Whose description is that?  Would a grown woman describe abs that way?

Jason-Roy-4/4

            To me that the focus on recurring images and/or objects in both The God Of Small Things and Midnight’s Children holds a similarity somewhere. It may even be present in A Bend In The River in the fact that Salim is a dealer of things. Though comparatively, Roy’s and Rushdie’s usage of the idea seems to be a much clearer parallel.

Throughout Roy’s novel the narrator picks out particular objects, types of reactions or impressions to things and events, onomatopoeic descriptions, animals, and other points of focus that is in a way similar to Rushdie’s usage of recurrent images and objects. In Rushdie’s case, through Saleem, he (Rushdie) takes these continually surfacing things and uses them as the literal (as in the words he uses on the page) and metaphoric material for building the story that Saleem’s history consists of.

So, it seems to me that in the case of Midnight’s Children things/objects/images, in other words, the fragments of memory, are the basis for weaving a narrative. It seems also that within these things there is a meaning within them being discovered, maybe re-discovered, or at the least being applied to them by an imaginative individual. On page 121, Rushdie shows Saleem describing a list of things that he (Saleem) says made him.

            In Roy’s novel, I think a similar thing is happening though in a different way. On page 215:

           

At the time, there would only be incoherence. As though meaning had slunk out of things and left them fragmented. Disconnected. The glint of Ammu’s needle. The color of a ribbon. The weave of the cross-stitch counterpane. A door slowly breaking. Isolated things that didn’t mean anything. As though the intelligence that decodes life’s hidden patterns – that connects reflections to images, glints to light, weaves to fabric, needles to thread, walls to rooms, love to fear to anger to remorse – was suddenly lost.

In this passage it shows a struggle to link things together to build an understanding of a moment, a family, and an individual life or a memory of a life. This passage comes after a description of Chacko’s grief after Sophie Mol’s funeral and Ammu asking Rahel and Estha to always love each other. What seems to be an inability to connect things together to make meaning out of them could relate to the structure of the narrative, how it frequently interrupts itself and the flow of time.

Though the opposite could just as well be said that the intercutting structure could be a sign of consciously splicing things/objects/images/ideas together to make meaning – though in Roy’s novel there doesn’t seem to be a self-aware narrator. Either way, this kind of style, of piecing together fragments (or the inability to do so) could be a defining characteristic of South Asian Literature.

Eidia.Roy.4/4

Rivers

In both V.S Naipaul's A Bend in the River, and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, there is a strong underlying presence of nature; specifically, rivers. Both novels have a similar attitude regarding this natural element. There is a sense of mystery attached to it, as well as differing viewpoints towards humans, those incapable of as well as capable of interacting with the capricious characteristics of both rivers. In Naipaul's A Bend in the River, while Saleem, the protagonist, is mystified as well as intimidated by the river by his village, Zabeth, a merchant woman, is depicted as a character capable of defying the impossible and confronting the currents of its forces. With her interaction with the river, the danger of its currents as well as its varied channels, Zabeth manages to survive via her courageous demeanor. At the same time, with a sense of admiration, but a much stronger sense of fear, Saleem describes his viewpoints regarding the river as:

"In the darkness of the darkness of river and forest you could be sure only of what you could see--- and even on a moonlight you couldn't see much. When you made a noise---dipped a paddle in the water---you heard yourself as though you were another person. The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder."

As Saleem felt like an intruder, most of Roy's characters were intrigued by the river Meenachal. While Naipaul only occasionally mentions the river in his novel, Roy references the element several times in her work. She also establishes a certain of characters with this natural force, such as Estha, Rahel, Velutha, and Ammu. These four characters have been greatly impacted by the Meenachal. Along with their constant interaction with this natural force, a foreigner, Sophie Mol, interacts with the river once--resulting in her death. Essentially, Roy's Meenachal is a ruthless river, she does not pardon a single being, even the natives are foreigners to her. She serves as a bridge who allows, easily for the Touchable platoon of officers to cross her, reaching the History House, ultimately bringing an end to living and death---both at once.
Both Naipaul and Roy established a common sense of Indian culture and mysticism via nature. They have allotted the rivers human qualities, transforming them into characters. While Naipaul's work lacks further insight upon the river, only sparsely mentioned, almost always admired for its mystery, Roy presents a contrasting situation in which her characters are so enthralled by the Meenachal, that they interact with it, study it, and immerse themselves in it.

Karol - Roy -04/04

While Roy uses the same symbol systems as Rushdie (nose, pickles, often Freudian symbols) her tone is closer Naipaul's because in many ways hers is an angry novel and Rushdie's is not. Roy mentions sex and death in a Freudian way like Rushdie would but I think her protagonists leanings are closer to destruction than creation. Whereas, Rushdie's protagonist has an equanimity of perceptive reasoning between the two. Joseph makes a good observation on the temporally defamiliaritve factors that separate the two authors.

I decided to compare Naipaul's and Roy's mentions of money and I was surprised with what I found because both author's mention money a lot and Rushdie only seems to mention in terms of luck and th horse races (could be wrong. Money is often associated with scholarships with both authors. Naipaul seems to have a better understanding economics but in Roy the characters are always influenced by it.

He had no pressing reasons to stay in touch with his

parents. The Rhodes Scholarship was generous. He

needed no money. He was deeply in love with his love...

along with the pressures to living together came

penury. There was no longer any scholarship money,

and there was the full rent of the flat to be paid." (Roy, 212-213)

 
"Young men, not all of them from the lycée, took to

turning up at the shop, sometimes with books in their

hands, sometimes with an obviously borrowed Semper

Aliquid Novi blazer. They wanted money. They said

they were poor and wanted money to continue their

studies. Some of these beggars were bold, coming

straight to me and reciting their requests; the shy ones

hung around until there was no one else in the shop." (Naipaul, 56)
 
I am tempted to call both of these authors materialist but I'm not sure I'd have to give it more thought.  

Joseph-Roy-4/4

I wanted to discuss the repetition of certain images in both books. Multiple images are repeated throughout the texts, but they acquire a different meaning according to their temporal setting.

 In God of Small Things'we can observe, for example, the repetition of things like 'blue church-sky" and "dum dum". Roy writes (at the beginning of Chapter 11): "She could have touched his body lightly with her fingers, and felt his smooth skin turn to gooseflesh. She could have let her fingers stray to the base of his flat stomach. Carelessly, over those burnished chocolate ridges. And left patterned trails of bumpy goose flesh on his body, like flat chalk on a blackboard, like a swath of breeze in a paddy field, like jet streaks in a blue church sky. She could so easily have done that, but she didn't."

Compare that to this passage later on in the novel: "That first night, on the day that Sophie Mol come, Velutha watched his lover dress. When she was ready she squatted facing him. She touched him lightly with her fingers and left a trail of goosebumps on his skin. Like flat chalk on a blackboard. Like breeze in a paddy field. Like jet streaks in a blue church-sky." Observe the change in style here, even though many of the phrases are identical. In this passage, the repetition of "like" is separated by periods. It is not a climbing on top of one another, all at once event like in the previous example. The action here unfolds in a staccato, more careful manner. It is interesting that   frames it this way, because the second example is the active one. The first example is all imagining: She “could” have done this, she “could” have done that. Yet, it is written in a much lighter use of punctuation and prose mechanics. The second example is active, but it is stunted and suggests the weight of taking action.

The weight of taking action and reconciling ones self with time is a central concern of 'Midnight's Children', and Rushdie uses many instances of repetition and alternating meanings to manipulate time. I will use 'perforated sheet' as the example:

Saleem first remarks (at the beginning of the chapter 'Mercurochrome'): "But what is so precious,” Padma demands, her right hand slicing the air up-downup in exasperation, "to need all this writing-shiting?" I reply: now that I've let out the details of my birth, now that the perforated sheet stands between the doctor and patient, there's not going back." There is clearly a concession to forward motion here, to linear timekeeping. Yet, this belief in time being linear is subverted when we examine further mentions of the perforated sheet.

Let's observe the mention of the perforated sheet that concerns Jamila and Mutasim. Rushdie writes:

"But when Jamila Singer, concealed within a gold-brocaded burqa, arrived at the palace, Mutasim the Handsome-who owing to his foreign travels had never heard the rumors of her disfigurement-became obsessed with the idea of seeing her face; he feel head-over-heels with the glimpses of her demure eyes he saw through the perforated sheet. (p. 402(in my electronic version) In essence, the perforated sheet has found new life. It has found another worldly traveling man who falls in love piece by piece with a woman. The perforated sheet does not become clearer as the story evolves (as one would expect in a strictly linear narrative).  This is another example of an active voice, but it appears that it is unaware of the tale that has come before it.

In the final chapters of the novel (the fourth paragraph in the chapter entitled "A Wedding") Saleem writes:

"In a blind landowner's house on the shores of a Kashmiri lake, Naseem Aziz doomed me to the inevitability of perforated sheets; and in the waters of that same lake, Isle Lubin leaked into history, and I have not forgotten her death wish." Here we get a passive, reflective mention of the perforated sheet. It is no longer the thing that drives the narrative (the first example), or the thing that has inspired a new one (the second example). It is now, in fact, the thing that prevents a narrative from ever fully forming. '

Rachel - Roy, 4/4

So for my theme, I'm choosing how "adult" issues are explained to children within South Asian diaspora literature.  If there's one thing different cultures tend to view differently, it's how children should be raised.  Obviously, a significant aspect of raising children is discipline.  If a kid throws a tantrum in a grocery store, is it okay to smack them across the face?  In the small supermarkets of Korea, yes.  In liberal, yuppie Whole Foods of NYC, no.  Is it okay to talk to them about safe sex?  In Korea, DEFINITELY NO.  With a resounding "NO!"

In liberal, yuppie NYC, kids get "the sex talk" and an anatomy book before they're ten.

One particularly illuminating passage is on pages 112 and 113 of The God of Small Things - it's probably remembered as the exchange between Chacko and Rahel.  Here's the extract, in which they discuss the human condition:

"Chacko?" Rahel said, form her darkened bed.  "Can I ask you a question?"
"Ask me two," Chacko said.
"Chacko, do you love Sophie Mol Most in the World?"
"She's my daughter," Chacko said.
Rahel considered this.
"Chacko?  Is it Necessary that people HAVE to love their own children Most in the World?"
"There are no rules," Chacko said.  "But people usually do."
"Chacko, for example," Rahel said, "just for example, is it possible that Ammu can love Sophie Mol more than me and Estha?  Or for you to love me more than Sophie Mol for example?"
"Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice.  Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece.  "Love.  Madness.  Hope.  Infinite joy."
Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest.  Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.
Infinnate Joy.  With a church sound to it.  Like a sad fish with fins all over.
A cold moth lifted a cold leg.
The cigarette smoke curled into the night.  And the fat man and the little girl lay awake in silence."

Again, this passage just shows the innovative diction that makes me love Roy so much...everything is always compared to a fish.  Why is that?  I don't know, but I like it.  Also, there's a fish stamped on the front cover of the God of Small Things edition I've got.  Just because I got it hardcover from Fogelman Library...weird.

Anyway.  Back to child rearing...Rahel manages to ask Chacko about the human condition - probably the world's most "adult" matter - without realizing it.  The even initiates the conversation.  So how does he, being an adult and a father, react?  Even if he isn't Rahel's father specifically, his reaction would certainly be influenced by cultural upbringing.

First, he speaks realistically - if not bluntly - in this passage.  Clearly, Rahel does not comprehend everything he says on a literal level.  It would be difficult for a child to truly grasp the concept of "Human Nature," or even the definition of "infinite."  But he goes on and says it anyway.

And somehow, at least on a phonetic level, Rahel understands.  The intonation of his voice, the sound of "Infinnate (capitalized, italicized, with three n's) Joy" explains the meaning to her.  Nothing is really left unexplained.  The child is left to decipher meaning on their own, but the adult is honest.  At the end of the passage, he smokes a cigarette while she contemplates, trying to process what has just been explained to her.

Things are handled differently in Midnight's Children.  Saleem is practically dumped at his aunt and uncle's house on page 275, and he "blames [himself] not a little for his banishment, attributing it to his "bandylegs cucumbernose horn-temples staincheeks."  The adults seem to be reluctant to discuss their reasoning at all.  It just kind of happens; but then, this is Rushdie, and the entire text of Midnight's Children just "seems to happen."  Nevertheless, adult matters are kept between adults - parents and aunts/uncles.

So, in conclusion, parenting methods seem just as varied in South Asian literature as they are in American literature.  You get parents who are either honest or secretive, strict or lax.  It all depends on which family you're born into, I guess.

ROY up to 225

As we forge on in Roy's elliptical novel, we should keep in mind the final task of this course: to gather ideas about S. Asian diasporic literature in general, drawing examples from the works we've read. With that in mind, try this for your post: pick a theme, character, motif, or stylistic quirk from the passages we've read and compare it to  a specific and similar feature of Naipaul's or Rushdie's book - or one of the stories. Such a theme could be the play (perforance, articiality); the "wisdom exercise notebooks" (archaic ideas about human development); Ammu's and Velutha's love (secretive love that defies religious strictures); the Ayemenem House; the History House; the role of accident; filmic or pop culture references; depictions of the body; instances of memory being unreliable, etc. Your post should contain two passages: one from Roy and one from another text - include a quote and page number from Roy: just a page number from the non-Roy text is fine. 

Jason-Roy-3/30

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.

karol- roy - 3/30

6. The story, like Rushdie's book, makes liberal use of foreshadowing. There is a suggestion of a motive for Rahel and Estha's involvement in Sophie Mol's death. Comment on this suggestion and its possible meaning or reason for inclusion.

"The backs of Rahel’s legs went wet and sweaty. Her skin slipped on the foamleather upholstery of the car seat. She and Estha knew about millstones. In Mutiny on the Bounty, when people died at sea, they were wrapped in white sheets and thrown overboard with millstones around their necks so that the corpses wouldn’t float. Estha wasn’t sure how they decided how many millstones to take with them before they set off on their voyage." (80)

The audience definitely knows Sophie is going to die well in advance of the event. After the capsizing of the boat the anticlimactic reaction is definitely a clue; paired with what Sophie says to them the night before pairs motive with opportunity. The term accidentally on purpose comes to mind. The mutiny on the Bounty reference evokes a colonial/imperial thematic content synonymous with their relationship.

Will - Roy - 3/30

If you remember the first reading from class, "Intro to the Indo-English Novel," a modernist ideology is supposedly morally untenable for a post-colonial writer.  Modernism represents a break with history and emphasizes solitariness and alienation as the human condition.  If that is true, then family and community have no meaning, which would not sit well with, say, Rushdie.  It is also an apolitical stance that will never help "liberate" people living in places with colonial history.  So, according to the writer of that essay, critical realism is the correct aesthetic for post-colonial writers because it shows the conflict between the individual and the social world.  But can we really say that Roy is morally wrong in using a modernist style?  Can't a modernist style be liberating?


If modernist heroes are alienated loners, Rahel and Estha seem to be perfect examples.  Estha, mute, sits out in the rain looking at the river, while Rahel is incapable of real human interaction (see her failed marriage, her interaction with Comrade Pillai on p. 122).  Another aspect of modernism which may have influenced Roy is the use of every-day, mundane subject matter for art, for example in the poetry of W.C. Williams.  Roy's novel is made up of ordinary, "small" moments.  The terseness of her sentences owes something to Hemingway.

Eidia. Roy. 3/30

9. Ammu, the twin's mother, is in some ways a different type of female character from the ones we've seen. Expand on this idea.

"In the Plymouth, Ammu was sitting in the front, next to Chacko. She was twenty-seven years that year, and in the pit of her stomach she carried the cold knowledge that, for her, life had been lived. She had had one chance. She made a mistake. She married the wrong man." (Roy, The God of Small Things, pg. 38)

Ammu, in a sense is a non-conventional sort of woman. She definitely did not conform to the traditions of her family, disregarding cultural and religious constraints, she married a man of a different caste as well as a different religion. Despite coming from the same nationality, Ammu and her husband were culturally different; hence, their children - Estha and Rahel were referred to as "hybrids". Yes, her life had been lived, for she married the wrong, but still managed to undergo the complete course, in a traditional sense, womanhood: daughter, wife, mother. Another striking impression brought forth via Ammu courageous confrontation with her life situation is her ability to endure and undergo her fate. She divorces from her husband, and once again returns to her maternal home, knowing the cold frontier that it has become for her, yet still obstinate to survive amidst the scorn and negative scrutiny of her own character and her baba-less children. I think Ammu's biggest attribute is her ability to accept her situation, yet confront the odds, still pushing forward through the thick air of failure.

Jane- Roy- 3/29/11

"Even her walk changed from a safe mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore  flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes" (Roy, 43).

This passage is striking because it illustrates just how uncharacteristic Ammu is compared to what we've seen of the mothers figures in what we have read thus far. In the last two short stories as well as in Midnights Children, as I mentioned in a previous post about Mistry, that women are often portrayed as coquettish and child-like while maintaining some sense of self-awareness that leads the reader to think they know more than their husbands give them credit for. Ammu is a largely unsympathetic woman, although some of her attitudes towards her children, though they may seem harsh, are unrelatable and human. It could be Roy's way of challenging our traditional expectations of mothers in that Ammu can set aside her motherly responsibilities and be more fulfilled being her own person in a "better, happier place" (Roy, 43).

Joseph-Roy-3/30

1. in class we discussed connections between Roy's style and modernism? Firstly, what makes it quasi-modernist? 


I first wanted to talk about the issue of time and modernism in this work. One clear example is the twins habit of reading backwards and their love for palindromes( word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction). Writing in a palindrome form would be an example of "constrained writing", which is a favorite of modernists(I'm thinking of Nabokov using acrostics in 'The Vane sisters', or Walter Abish's Alliterative Alphabetical Africa). In 'The Vane Sisters', such a technique is used to go backwards in time(or at least retrieve something that was once lost) as, through deciphering the acrostics, the reader discovers that the deceased Vane sisters are controlling the narrator from the grave.  The twins in 'God of Small Things' also seek to turn back the clock. Emilienne Baneth-Nouailheta comments: "reading a word or a phrase both ways allegorizes the universal desire for the reversibility of action. In this sense, language is the children's own field of power in which they can bring forth their fantasies--and for that reason, characters like Miss Mitten or Baby seek to confiscate them."


I also wanted to consider a point made by Cecile Oumhani, who observed 'God of Small Things' in a Bakthinian view("the Russian critic famous for his theory of the novel as a modern, hybrid literary form in which a multiplicity of voices coexist and intermix 'dialogically'). She posits that "the Ipe twins occupy a liminal zone in TGST, reminscent of the 'interrogatory, interstitial space between the act of representation(....) and the presence of community'. The structure of the novel as a whole could also be read as a continual intertwining of liminal viewpoints and marginal details." Just something to consider, and perhaps something more skilled than I can lend their thoughts to this critique.

Rachel, Roy - 3/29

4. Find examples of some of Roy's characteristic stylistic flourishes - capital letters, lists, quoted language - and discuss when they are used and what effect or meaning they have.


Here it goes!  Here's a chunky excerpt from page 108:




"The sticky neon night rushed past the taxi window.  It was hot inside the taxi, and quiet.  Baby Kochamma looked flushed and excited.  She loved not being the cause of ill-feeling.  Every time a pye-dog strayed onto the road, the driver made a sincere effort to kill it.
The moth on Rahel's heart spread its velvet wings, and the chill crept into her bones.
In the Hotel Sea Queen car park, the skyblue Plymouth gossiped with other, smaller cars.  Hslip Hslip Hsnooh-snah.  A big lady at a small ladies' party.  Tailfins aflutter."




Its this rhetorically-packed language that makes me appreciate Roy so much.  (As Robin pointed out...I can't really discuss her without sounding like a positive book review, haha.)


Some things that jump out at me right away:


1.) "the sticky neon night" = some alliteration, but how can night be sticky, or even neon?  Not sure what highbrow Greek term you'd use to describe this.


2.)  "Every time a pye-dog strayed onto the road, the driver made a sincere effort to kill it."  Did anyone else laugh at this line?  I thought it was funny, even though animal cruelty is totally not funny.  Didn't Freud do studies on that?  I think most jokes are supposed to be a way of tricking the superego into releasing the id, if only for a split second.  Whatever.  Freud was amazing, but in 2011, his theories are outdated.


3.)  Personification of the cars.  (And even using a neologism to describe how they talk!)  The brand name (Plymouth) and color of the car suggests the socioeconomic status of the people inside it.  Obviously, they are well off, and it shows, as their car is the fanciest in the lot - or, in Roy's metaphor, "at the party."  "Tailfins aflutter" almost implies that the vehicles are taking on the form of fish-like creatures...huh.  Not sure why that is, but it's interesting.


4.) Rahel's moth, I think, it the most beautiful image in The God of Small Things.  Although it is a delicate insect, it becomes a haunting motif that symbolizes failure.  (Her grandfather - I think it was the grandfather - tried to have the moth named after him, and failed.  This is Roy "setting her audience up" to comprehend the moth's meaning.)  Later, Ammu tells Rahel that when she is mean to people, they "love her a little less," which causes her pain.  After this scene, every time Rahel experiences failure - especially in her personal relationships - the white moth inside her appears, chilling everything it touches.  Personally, I would have put a white moth on front cover of this book.  Thematically, I think it is one of the most important motifs Roy offers.


Gotta love a wordsmith who knows what she's doing.

God of Small Things to p. 147

ideas for your posts - read them all: most questions can be used by more than one student, as they refer to a range of events: 1. in class we discussed connections between Roy's style and modernism? Firstly, what makes it quasi-modernist? 2. Secondly, how are modernist techniques to be understood differently in the post-colonial context? 3. As we see the past and the future in chapters 1-5, Ayemenem, the Kochammas' chidhood home, remains a constant, although it changes over time. Comment on this landmark as a symbol. 4. Find examples of some of Roy's characteristic stylistic flourishes - capital letters, lists, quoted language - and discuss when they are used and what effect or meaning they have. 5. The story contains many instances of interrelatedness between the characters living in Kerala, India, and European influences: Christianity, Christian figures like Father Mulligan, the former owner of the History House, the "Anglophile" family itself... Pick one or more instances of these relations to the colonizers and comment on it. Does it show a struggle for identity? A kind of endurance of Indian culture? Or the complicatedness of all these things? (Point to specific passages.) 6. The story, like Rushdie's book, makes liberal use of foreshadowing. There is a suggestion of a motive for Rahel and Estha's involvement in Sophie Mol's death. Comment on this suggestion and its possible meaning or reason for inclusion. 7. Forbidden love appears in many different forms in the book. Find some instances of this and comment on them. Be specific. 8. Also, hopeless love (Baby-Mulligan, Chacko-Margaret) appears repeatedly. Comment on instances. 9. Ammu, the twins' mother, is in some ways a different type of female character from the ones we've seen. Expand on this idea - try pp 42-43 for examples. 10. Discuss the arrival of Sophie Mol as a scene and as a disruptive influence on the family. 11. How is Communism presented? Unlike in other books we've read, it is a dominant political force in the beginning of the story. Is it seen as bad or just not perfect?

Anna- Roy-3/28

Roy is like a little rushdie to me. The only way to understand the story is to mind the details. But there is no shorttage of ashtonshing details, and because of this you can read a line like, "Rahel's new teeth were waiting inside her gums, like words in a pen." And not even remember to think how much you like it. This is very distractin for me, to read something this bright. I am also interested in the way Roy writes as if shes writing one long prose poem. She indents new paragraphs to say one liners like,
Not old.
Not young
But a viable die-able age.
She also capitalizes terms as object-things. Like Rahel opens the window to get a Breath Of Fresh Air. (and told to close it when she was done) I am very interested in her style. So instead of quoting a passage here I showed the aspects I liked. My favorite passage was the spitting woman on the nyc subway.

Will - Roy - 3/28

"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.