• Presentation relating PCSR (or other critical readings) with primary text:

Presenter: Linton Gilling Jr.
Respondent: Dale Marie Taylor
Recorder: Jennifer Thurik
Monday, 25 June

"...meaning needs to be explored in terms of mode. My interest is in the attitudes of the image, the strategies of the narrative, the placing of the reader, the cultural coding of those aesthetic principles that inform the whole process of the fiction" (PCSR 336).

God of Small Things is full of attitudes, narrative strategy, placing, cultural coding. The caste system and racial value are reflective of attitude. The layered construction, word repetition, and play on certain phrases are indicative of narrative strategy.

"...but the principle behind sacrificing the boy to the whiteman’s god is one of stability, or tradition. One might even see the two responses as relating to two different perceptions of time real and mythic, the one permitting individual innovation and the other sacrificing the individual to the tradition of community" (PCSR 338).

Velutha and Ammu are sacrificed for doing the impossible. The twins, Estha and Rahel are sacrificed, they have no value (their isolation= incest)

" A sense of rhythm and of balance is needed to activate the shifting patterns of metaphor and to relate the different faces of truth, where truth is like a Mask dancing and its characters are permutations of its essence..." (PCSR 339).

There are many faces in Roy’s novel and they all contribute to the truth. The non-linear construction is particulary effective it plays into the rhythm of the whole dance--the dance of truth!

"The process is one of socialization and constant renewal, functioning by an overlap of multiple perspective- individual and communal, call-and-response, solo-and-circle. This movement is in God of Small Things.

I read several excepts from the novel and then asked my question

Question: How does Roy’s non-linear, layered (onion) construction impact the novel? Does it add or take away from the novel? Explain.

Carolyn: Roy’s non-linear style is effective. Some important issues like politics are marginalized. Velutha’s an untouchable but he bonds with Ammu and the twins. Velutha is more of a financial threat than a sexual one. We are emotional impacted by Velutha, death of Sophie Mol and the incest of the twins.

Dr. White: The personal is political and vice versa, the poltical aspect is absorbed into personal lives.

Carolyn: What’s affecting Mammachi? Velutha is threatening her world.

Dr. White: importance of seeing Velutha in a street protest, starts a chain of events.

Carolyn: Agrees

Verena: onion layers shows aspect of love-hate relationship wherever local and English folk touch- locals can admire what English brought, the head is English, but the feet are Indian going across caste lines is an attempt to tie two worlds together. She has seen how this has divided society on all levels.

Dr. White: They see Velutha with the communists.

Saganthi: Communists attracts natives who are very poor, they join to gain a voice.

Verena: People are looking for what’s above them, not what’s left behind.

Dr. White: Frustrated that the only story they can tell is how devalued Indians are. Idea of closed family where else do they have to go? They don’t have another story that they know how to tell. The danger of incest represents a closed family but they have no where else to go.

Implicit in each quote that Linton gave is a layer of the onion, which has an attitude or gesture.

Carolyn: The act of incest is defiant because everything else has been taken away.

Sylvia: I thought the incest was a culmination of everything, an emotional explosion!

Verena: Two people with one body; you can’t have incest with yourself.

Dr. White: The conclusion sexualizes everything in the story. Colonization always involves sexuality. The men (authorities) get sexually excited in planning Velutha’s death.