The document provides an outline and summary of the novel "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. It discusses the author, setting, characters, plot, themes, and symbols. The main events of the plot involve the love affair between a low-caste worker and an upper-class woman, which results in tragedy for their families in 1969 Kerala, India. The novel explores themes of class, politics, cultural identity, family, and sexuality through the lens of two young twins.

1. AN EYE
on
The God of Small Things
SOHAIL AHMED
Benazir Bhutto Shaheed University
Lyari, Karachi
Acknowledge to
Dr. Tanveer Anjum
PhD, The University of Texas, Austin, America

2. OUTLINE
 Importance of Novel?
 Author of this Novel
 Setting of Novel
 Characters in this Novel
 Plot Overview
 Themes in Novel
 Symbols In Novel
2Sohail Ahmed

3. Why this Novel?
 Most Selling book of 1997
 The book won the Booker Prize in 1997
 One of the best novels written by Contemporary
Writer
 Author is included in our course 
 Attractive title!
 Suggestion from a Friend lives in Manchester
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4. Author
Arundhati Roy:
goddess
of
big ideas
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5. Author (Arundhati Roy)
 born as Suzanna Arundhati Roy on 11/24/1961
 mother--Mary Roy (Christian)--a well-
known social activist
 father (a Bengali Hindu tea planter)
 1 year old— parents split
 10 years Old –She Went School (she was
alone, no family member at all)
 Age 16 -- left home and lived in a squatter’s
colony in Delhi
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6. Author (Arundhati Roy)
 She studied architecture in Delhi
 where she met her first husband, the architect
Gerard Da Cunha.
 acted in several independent films, and later
married filmmaker Pradip Krishen.
 First worked with a TV company:
 a role in Massey Saab
 The Banyan Tree--TV series
 In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones
/Electric Moon
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7. Author’s Literary Career
 Early in her career, Roy worked for television
and movies. She wrote the screenplays for
In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989)
 Roy won the National Film Award for Best
Screenplay in 1988 for In Which Annie Gives
It Those Ones
 he Grabbed attention in 1994, when she
criticized Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen,
based on the life of Phoolan Devi
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8. Author’s Literary Career
 Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small
Things, in 1992, completing it in 1996. The book is
semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her
childhood experiences in Aymanam.
 It received the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction
 It reached fourth position on the New York
Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction
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9. Author’s Inspiration Writing Novel
 For me (the novel) was five years of almost changing
and mutating, and growing a new skin. It’s almost
like a part of me.”—but she claimed that she never
revised. (source)
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10. HISTORICAL AND LITERARY
CONTEXT
 Influence of Salman Rushdie on her work
 Rushdie is a famous British Indian contemporary writer
(famous for Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses)
whose style is similar to Roy’s.
 The God of Small Things, Roy references such diverse
works as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and
Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
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11. Setting Of This Novel
 The action is set in the village of Ayemenem
in Kerala, in South India in 1969
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12. Sohail Ahmed 12
Papachi
Main Characters
Mammachi Baby Kochamma Ammu Baba
Chacko Margaret Sophie Mol Velutha
Rahel Estha

13. Characters
FIRST GENERATION
Papachi + Mammachi & Baby Kochamma ->Mulligan
2ND GENERATION
Margaret + Chacko & Ammu + Baba
3RD GENERATION
Sophie Mol Esthappen (Estha) & Rahel
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14. Plot Overview
 The events of The God of Small Things are revealed in
a fragmentary manner, mostly jumping back and
forth between scenes in 1969 and 1993
 The story focusing on the seven-year-old twins Estha
and Rahel, who live with their mother Ammu, their
grandmother Mammachi, their uncle Chacko, and
their great-aunt Baby Kochamma.
 Marriage and Relation of Pappachi and Mammachi
 Their pickle factory, Paradise Pickles & Preserves.
 Death of Pappachi and Blindness of Mammachi
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15. Plot Overview cont….
 Baby Kochamma is Rude Woman , Anagonist
of this Novel.
 Baby Kochamma is a bitter, jealous old
woman who once loved an Irish missionary,
named Father Mulligan
 Chacko went to Oxford and married Margaret
Kochamma, an English woman. They had a
daughter, Sophie Mol,
 Margaret left Chacko for a man named Joe
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16. Plot Overview cont….
 Chacko returned to Ayemenem and took over
the pickle factory.
 Ammu married Baba, Baba turned out to be
an abusive alcoholic.
 After the twins were born the two separated
and Ammu moved back to Ayemenem.
 Velutha( Intouchable), a young man who
works for Chacko and is beloved by the twins.
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17. Plot Overview cont….
 The main action centers around Sophie Mol’s
visit to Ayemenem
 Visit to Cinema , Estha is molested by the
Orange drink Lemon drink Man
 Estha fears that the Orange drink Man will
come for him, so he and Rahel find a boat and
row across the river to the “History House,”
 Ammu and Velutha meet by the river and
have sex. They continue to meet every night
for the next two weeks.
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18. Plot Overview cont….
 Vellya Paapen (Velutha’s father) comes to
Mammachi and confesses his son’s
relationship with Ammu. Mammachi and
Baby Kochamma lock Ammu in her room,
 where she screams that the twins are
“millstones” around her neck.
 Twins run away to History house
 Their boat tips over as they cross the river
and Sophie Mol drowns.
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19. Plot Overview cont….
 The twins reach shore and, terrified, fall
asleep in the History House, unaware that
Velutha is there too.
 Baby Kochamma goes to the police, telling
Inspector Thomas Mathew that Velutha tried
to rape Ammu and kidnapped the children.
Six policemen find Velutha and beat him
brutally in front of Estha and Rahel.
 When Mathew finds out that Velutha is
innocent, he threatens to charge Baby
Kochamma
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20. Plot Overview cont….
 she convinces Estha to “save Ammu” by
telling the police that Velutha killed Sophie
Mol.
 Velutha dies in jail that night.
 After Sophie Mol’s funeral Baby Kochamma
convinces Chacko to throw Ammu out of the
house,
 Ammu is then forced to “return” Estha to
Baba.
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21. Plot Overview cont….
 The twins are separated for twenty-three
years, during which Estha stops speaking
 When he is thirty-one Baba “re-returns” him
to Ayemenem.
 Meanwhile Rahel is kicked out of many
schools,
 Ammu dies when Rahel is eleven.
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22. Plot Overview cont….
 Rahel marries an American and lives in
Boston, but then gets divorced and returns to
Ayemenem when she hears Estha is there.
 The twins are reunited in 1993.
 Mammachi has died and Baby Kochamma
and the cook, Kochu Maria, spend all day
watching TV as the house falls apart.
 Rahel and Estha (who still doesn’t speak) sift
through some old trinkets and notebooks and
end up reaffirming their closeness by having
sex.
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23. Themes
 Life of Indian Women
 Class and Politics
 Cultural identities
 Small Things
 Family and Social Obligation
 Love & Sexuality (even Oedipus Complex)
 Children
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24. Symbols
 The Sound of Music (1965)
 Love-in-Tokyo
 Coca-Cola sign
 Pappachi’s Moth
 Paradise Pickles & Preserves
 Mol
 the radio (Changes Ammu’s Life)
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