Throughout the novel, God of Small Things explicitly says that Sophie Mol’s death is the catalyst for the destruction and subsequent dissemination of Rahel and Estha’s family. However, it is possible that the subtext of the novel suggests an underlying cause of this dissemination: trauma. Each and every character experiences unspoken trauma in their own way, manifesting itself into brittle family ties, the breaking point being Sophie Mol’s death. Although her death ultimately did lead to its dissemination, trauma was the underlying cause of the state of the family after Sophie Mol’s death, exhibited by how all of Rahel, Estha, and Ammu’s actions leading to Sophie Mol’s are predicated by each of their individual traumas.

Early on in the novel, Arundhati Roy explains that Ammu moves in with Mammachi and Pappachi because her alcoholic husband was abusive. At first, Pappachi has a hard time believing this because he was a wealthy Christian Englishman. Additionally, she was physically emotionally abused by her father who was also a wealthy businessman. Ammu began resenting her children because, “…their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn’t really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them…,”(42).  Her trauma from her past relationships is part of why she acts in the way that she does. She begins resenting wealthy Englishmen, which may have been part of why she fell in love with and had an affair with Velutha, who was a dark-skinned, lower class and Marxist man. This is significant because this leads to Mammachi and Baby Kochamma locking her in her room so that she would not see Velutha any longer, which leads to her lashing out at her children, saying that she did not love them and blames them for her situation. Her anger at this moment at them clearly is rooted in her resentment toward her children due to their naivety and connection to her ex-husband, despite them clearly having little to do with Mammachi and Baby Kochamma’s actions. This leads to them running away and rowing a boat down the river, the boat tipping over, and Sophie Mol eventually drowning. Sophie Mol becomes a symbol of how when trauma is unspoken, it can cause great distress to a person’s relationships. So much so in this case that it leads to Sophie Mol dying and Estha and Rahel having to move away, and their family to be destroyed as Ammu goes to “fend for herself”.

This is also exhibited by Estha’s trauma within the story. When Estha is at the movie theater to see The Sound of Music, he is sexually assaulted by the “Orangedrink Lemondrink Man.” Estha is traumatized by this and becomes afraid of the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man because he knows where he lives. This becomes a significant part of his decision to run away, besides Ammu telling him to go because he realizes that, “(1) Anything can happen to anyone. and (2) It’s best to be prepared,” (186). He realized the best preparation to protect himself from Orangedrink Lemondrink Man is to leave the place where Orangedrink Lemondrink knows he lives. It is his and Rahel’s combined efforts of running away, and heading to the History house. Sophie Mol tags along, and ends up drowning, causing her death. This decision making caused by Estha’s effort to avoid trauma, because of his past trauma.

Rahel’s trauma is somewhat smaller but still important to the accumulation of trauma that led to Sophie Mol’s death and the subsequent dissemination of her family. After seeing The Sound of Music Rahel makes a snide comment about how Ammu should marry the Orangedrink Lemondrink man, unaware of his encounter with Estha. To this, Ammu responds, “‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less…’,” (107). This is traumatic to Rahel because it makes her believe that Ammu does not love her. She continues to think this when Sophie Mol arrives and is adored by everyone in her family. This thought process is the precursor to her, Estha and Sophie Mol’s decision to leave because of both her ideas that Ammu didn’t love her, and Estha’s ideas that lead them to leave and try to get to History House by boat.

The accumulation of trauma here is clearly the catalyst for the dissemination of Rahel and Estha’s family rather than merely Sophie Mol’s death.

Arundhati Roy’s novel, The God of Small Things, while heralded as a part of the modern literary canon, has often been criticized for its sexual themes and plot points. On pages 97-100, Estha is sexually abused by an adult man. Pages 316-321 depict the sexual relationship between Ammu and Velutha side-by-side with Estha and Rahel’s sexual encounter, which has been called disturbing by some. What these critics fail to realize, though, is why Arundhati Roy includes so much sexual content. The Answer? To deliver a message. 

Nearly all the conflict in the novel – from Ammu sleeping with an Untouchable to so many of the story’s women being physically abused. From Baby Kochamma’s desire for Father Mulligan – to even Estha being molested, is all caused by people succumbing to the body’s inclinations toward sex, violence, and physical indulgences. The body, Roy claims, governs the mind, and consequently, it writes the ever-repeating story of History itself. 

A person’s body is their most powerful force of communication. It can make love, it can hurt others, it can drown and leave a family devastated. It is a catalyst for so many happenings in one’s life, plagued by desire and rage and it’s constant teetering between life and death. Roy’s explicitly sexual content, along with her emphasis on physical description (the depiction of Comrade Pillai’s body on pages 257-258 as disgusting and ugly directly mirrors his character), show the reader that the body and its needs comprise much of what drives the novel’s plot – what drives history itself, and the story of mankind. Hence, these sex scenes are justifiable: they are instances of a greater theme manifesting, of something bigger than sex taking place. They are moments in which lives and families are torn apart, all at the hands of the human body and its power.

One of the main themes in The God of Small Things is society and class. Margaret Kochamma plays a big role in this since she is English and that makes her of high social class. Chacko met Margaret Kochamma during his time at Oxford and during a flashback the narrator states, “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 for Margaret Kochamma and had no room in his heart for anyone else”(234). The text says that Chacko was deeply in love with his love for Margaret Kochamma so does this mean the he did not actually love her?

I think that this text shows how caught up in class Chacko became with Margaret Kochamma which forced him to fall in love with her. He fell in love with her because she was a white British woman and that is what society told him to value. While he may have loved her I think that it is more likely that he fell in love with her status and the status that he would receive if he married her. The Kochamma family is largely composed of Anglophiles which is why Sophie Mol’s arrival is so important. They are treated like royalty and the whole family goes out of their way so that they will think highly of them.

I do not think that Chacko truly loved Margaret and think that he was in love with her status. If Chacko truly loved Margaret he probably would have tried harder to keep their marriage alive instead of spiraling and giving up. If Chacko loved her then Margaret probably would have loved him back and would not have fallen in love with Joe. Chacko was in love, but he was in love with status instead of Margaret.

As I continued reading The God of Small Things, one recurring symbol I noticed was the moth that Pappachi had discovered but not received any credit for. Pappachi’s “greatest setback was not having had the moth he discovered named after him” (23). At this moment, the moth became a symbol of failure, “which tormented Pappachi and his children and his children’s children” (24). 

The next time we are introduced to the moth is once Estha and Rahel leave the theater and Rahel makes a snarky comment about Ammu marrying the Orangedrink Lemondrink man. Ammu responds by telling her that hurting people with words will make them love you less. 

Once she says this, “A cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts landed lightly on Rahel’s heart. Where it’s icy legs touched her, she got goosebumps” (107). Hearing something like this from your own mother at such a young age completely terrified Rahel, and I would’ve been worried about it too. Rahel knew she shouldn’t have said what she did, and immediately after her mother responded she felt like a failure- like she wasn’t loved as much anymore, and that stuck with her for the rest of her life. 

Pappachi’s moth returns each time Rahel feels as if she has done something wrong, and the moment she heard Sophie Mol’s silence from the river, “On Rahel’s heart Pappachi’s moth snapped opened its somber wings” (277). Rahel is blaming herself for the death of her cousin and not being able to save her. This cold feeling of failure never leaves Rahel, and she takes it with her for the rest of her life. 

When you first begin to read ‎Arundhati Roy’s novel “God of Small Things,” it is hard to tell what is going on. It jumps from one point of view to the next seemingly randomly, and it can be hard to follow. Once you get used to this third-person omniscient style of writing, however, it is clear how much of an impact it has on the story.

Each character has a unique perspective on the events in the story, as each of them experienced things differently. For example, each of them view Sophie Mol’s death in a different way because they all know different versions of the truth. Rahel and Estha were actually present, so they have a much different understanding of what happened than Ammu or Baby Kochamma. The fact that the point of view changes so often before the actual cause of Sophie’s death is revealed builds suspense because it’s clear that none of the characters know the same things. It also helps the reader fully comprehend the true extent of the confusion and complications around the death because we get to see it through multiple characters’ eyes.

The changes in point of view also helps us empathize with each of the characters. Every one of them does something questionable in the story, so if it was told exclusively from one perspective, some of those characters would turn into antagonists. Instead, we get to understand the reasoning behind their actions and why it made sense to them, so no one is truly a “bad guy” or a “good guy.” They all have their flaws, but they all believed they were acting correctly, and we are able to see that because of the multiple points of view.

When initially reading The God of Small Things, I remember thinking how many heavy topics seemed to be brought up in the first chapters of the book.  This society was concerned with “Big Things” such as marriage, the caste system, and politics. However as I continued to read, Roy points out the “Small Things” that give the book its meaning.

One of the first examples that stood out to me is when Ammu tells Rahel that she doesn’t love her as much as she used to.  Although Ammu doesn’t seem to think about this situation again, Rahel is inconsolable. “A little less her mother loved her” is a phrase that is repeated many more times throughout the book.  This statement is a “Small Thing” to Ammu, but it consumes Rahel.

At many points in the book, Roy takes a lot of time to acknowledge something that seems insignificant.  She says, “Just outside Ayemenem they drove into a cabbage-green butterfly (or perhaps it drove into them.)”  Roy uses this description of a “Small Thing” to show that the perspective of the reader is not the only one. Even an insect could have a point of view, and even a suicidal intention.

Because of their youth, Estha and Rahel seem not as tied to the “Big Things.”  But this may mean that they carry the weight of the small things, or the secrets and lies of their family.

“The God of Small Things” is a book filled with complex relationships between lovers, friends, and family. In a society that is heavily influenced by politics, it gets messy when navigating these relationships. As Roy demonstrates, obeying these laws might mean betraying the ones you love, and disobeying them could lead to death.

Throughout the book, there are many instances in which we see this conflict. One of the most significant examples is the affair between Velutha and Ammu. Despite Velutha being an untouchable and Ammu being of a higher caste, they engage in an affair. They ignore the system that prohibits romantic relationships between castes. This ultimately leads to Velutha’s death when his own father exposes the affair to Baby Kochamma. Their love was not enough to surpass the rules of society. Velutha was born an untouchable and he died as an untouchable too. His label was his downfall.

It is also important to note that Velutha’s own father was willing to expose his own son in order to follow the “Love Laws” of society. Vellya Paapen betrays Velutha by choosing his obligation to follow rules over familial love.

This is just one of many examples of the impact that politics has on the relationships between characters. Overall, based on the events in the book, societal obligation does indeed trump love. But I feel that this is not always the case. India is a special case because the caste system is extremely strict. However, in other places throughout the world, we see mixed class relationships all the time. After reading this book and seeing just how strict the caste system in India is, I feel lucky to live in a place where I can love whoever I choose.

When reading novels, getting invested in the story is the thing the author wants the reader to do. However, while taking AP Literature and Creative Writing in the same year, I have really started to realize the beauty of writing, the different ways authors write, and the “rules” that can be broken throughout a book and the “rules” that are followed.

Rules consist of every basic period after a sentence, a capital letter at the beginning every sentence, commas when you need them and so on. Many authors including Arundhati Roy who wrote God of Small Things practices these. However, one technique that Roy uses that I absolutely adore, is that she uses capital letters on not just pronouns but nouns as well. For example, at the very beginning of the novel there is a sentence where words that shouldn’t be capital, are capital that would take a reader by surprise; “In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us” (4).

The first time reading that sentence, the words, “Beginnings, Ends, Everything, Forever, Me, We, and Us” were read with emphasis. Roy wanted me to look at those words and know that the narrator thinks these words are important and/or have a higher meaning. Also, the twins in the story, Rahel and Estha use capital letters for words that they find important like “Unsafe,” or “Let Her Be” (44) while they are narrators. As this book is centered around life of these two twin children, the capital letters put attention to those words because the kids find them meaningful. It allows the reader to try and empathize with the naiveness and vulnerability of children.