"The God of small things": reflection, caste system, boundaries and barriers, hierachy, partiarchal society - letter format.

Essay by missbessHigh School, 11th gradeA, October 2007

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Dear Velutha,I recently read The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy and was awfully touched by your story. Before I started reading The God of Small Things I knew very little about Indian society and history and consequently I found many of the themes and ideas of the novel intriguing as well as confronting. I was amazed to discover what a significant role the Caste System plays in Indian society and I was astounded by the negative impact is has on many, if not all of the novel's characters' lives and the boundaries and barriers it creates that prevent characters form being able to find fulfilment. I found reading about the love laws like reading a horror story and I was astounded by the fact that somebody like you could be bashed to death for simply falling in love. The novel also made me question the importance of 'small things' and the effect they have my own happiness.

You are a very likeable character and one that I, as a western observer who knows no barriers as brutal as the Indian love laws, can sympathise with on many levels.

Throughout the novel Roy uses foreshadowing to suggest the idea that the characters futures have already been written. From the early stages of the novel we are aware that your affair with Ammu will bring an end to both of your lives. Yet the heart wrenching moments you shared were made all the worse by the implicit understanding that your love will eventually destroy you both. "The twins were too young to know that these were only history's henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws." Roy describes how in the face of this social hierarchy your ending was inevitable; the...