LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Student Text-Dialogue Presentation, 2003

Dialogue between A Passage to India and The God of Small Things (34-177)

Presenter:  April Davis
Respondent:  Kristi Pawlack
Recorder:  Ashley Salter
Date: Monday, 16 June

Presenter’s Readings and Interpretations:  Identity in the novels

Perhaps the silence in The God of Small Things and the echo in A Passage to India represent the same thing. Both stem from a sort of primal nothingness in which all things are equal. Hindu life embraces the circular cycle of the echo while Western culture largely denies it. The idea of the equality of all things can be threatening in terms of identity because many people define themselves based on what they are not in relation to other people and things. According to Kimberly Jones (course webpage), “…the link between the echo and the hollowness of the human spirit is depicted…” and “…the echo is a physical representation of human disconnectedness…” When confronted with the echo in the caves, Mrs. Moore loses certainty because the caves “robbed infinity and eternity of their vastness.”  She also ponders that whatever Christianity has to say will lose it’s significance in the face of the caves.  This knowledge leads to despair and causes Mrs. Moore to lose the will to communicate with others.  Her oneness with the universe is based on an uneasy understanding of the futility of life.

A Passage to India

Page 165 (Mrs. Moore): “…but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life.  Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur, “Pathos, piety, courage-they exist, but are identical, and so is filth.  Everything exists, nothing has value.”

When confronted with his insignificance in the universe, Estha ceases to think or feel in terms of language.  He loses his need to communicate using the symbolic nature of language, and instead silently embraces the silence of oneness with the universe. It is interesting that his silence is described almost as though it is a natural state, as a blending in with his surroundings. It is also interesting that on the whole, people who come into contact with him are accepting of it. In the process of losing language, Estha seems to lose any sense of an individual identity that is separate from others.

The God of Small Things

Page 13 “ Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha.  It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms.  It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat.  It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue.  It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked.  Unspeakable. Numb.”

      Others identification with and interpretation of ourselves help to shape our identity. We often think of ourselves in terms of alliance with or in opposition to others. We exist in the minds of others through the filters of their own perceptions, which are then communicated back to us through the imperfect nature of language. The sum total of a person’s identity may be loosely based on the biased perceptions of others. In The God of Small Things, Estha and Rahel’s entire existence is based on one another. Their identity is a single unit, which mirrors the concept of oneness with nature.  In the beginning they exist free of the boundaries imposed by society. When at last society rips them apart, rather than forming individual identities, they seem to merge into oneness with the universe.

The God of Small Things

Pages 4-5 (Rahel remembers): “The confusion lay in a deeper, more secret place. 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. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities…Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha’s funny dream.”

Fielding’s horror at the idea of Adela having to pay compensation brings him to the idea that people only exist in the minds of others.  Perhaps this is because he realizes that he sees her in a different light than the Indians do and realizes that neither perception is really any more accurate than the other. He also sees the same seemingly innocent Indians that he has supported turn ugly and sinister. This brings on the realization that perceptions are not always accurate and that things are not always as they seem. Fielding also reveals to the reader that he had this same thought on the day after the purported rape when he chanced to gaze upon the caves from his porch. Somehow even the look of the caves, which mix and mingle with the horizon, projects the idea of good and evil existing only in the minds of men.       

A Passage to India

Pages 277-278 (Mr. Fielding): “…he lost his usual sane view of human intercourse, and felt that we exist not in ourselves, but in terms of each others’ minds-a notion for which logic offers no support and which had attacked him only once before, the evening after the catastrophe, when from the verandah of the club he saw the fists and fingers of the Marabar swell until they included the whole night sky.”

Within the caste system, Untouchables are used by Touchables to elevate their own sense of superiority. However, this may start to break down in the face of an unusually intelligent, talented, or beautiful untouchable.  When the laws of nature fail to coincide with the laws of man, sometimes people catch a glimpse of the oneness of every human. In A Passage to India Adela is struck by the unassuming air of an Untouchable at the trial.  Situated across from the self conscious and prententious assistant magistrate, the Untouchable’s unawareness and aloofness sparks a realization inside of Adela.  She begins to question the idea of British superiority and nearly begins to speculate on the equality of all.

A Passage to India

Page 241 (about the untouchable): “…He had the strength and beauty that sometimes come to flower in Indians of low birth.  When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god-not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her…he seemed apart from human destinies…”

In The God of Small Things, Velutha does not allow his social status to completely determine his identity. Therefore, he does not act the way in which society expects him to act.  He does not look the way society expects him to look. This inspires strong emotions in all those he comes in contact with. Jealousy erupts in the workers who consider themselves superior to him on the basis of birth alone. Charity is inspired in those who want to foster his many talents. Desire is evoked in Ammu at the sight of his beautiful features. Love is evoked in the children in response to his own loving nature. While the very presence of Velutha sparks the idea of equality of all, in the end society often feels the need to destroy that which it does not understand.

The God of Small Things

Page 73 (about Velutha): “Perhaps it was just a lack of hesitation. An unwarranted assurance.  In the way he walked.  The way he held his head.  The quiet way he offered suggestions without being asked.  Or the quiet way in which he disregarded suggestions without appearing to rebel.”

QUESTION: How much of our ‘self’ or identity is determined by others, especially in terms of society’s use of class and caste? How does the silence in Estha’s head and the echo in Mrs. Moore’s head affect each one’s sense of identity?

Class Discussion:

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White: Is it Mrs. Moore or Ms. Quested with the echo?

April: Mrs. Moore goes in first and is haunted by the echo

Kristy: Your identity is always affected by society.  You either fit in or struggle to fit in.  Like the unmarried women in God of Small Things - "the wretched manless woman" (pp. 44-5).  Some people will accept an identity. Some will struggle against it.  We tend to think of self as good and other s bad.  But sometimes this is reversed and we want to be the other.

White: Ammu quarreling with her fate - for the most part we like characters who struggle

Kristy: they seem more enlightened to us

White: The novel valorizes characters who question tradition

Rosalyn:  No character in God of Small Things has their own identity. 
Defined by relationships to others.  Even Ammu's anger at being divorced is described as her father's anger (p. 48).  His anger within her.  She can't even own her anger because her identity is so tied into family.

White: sense of an overpowering fate - people only have so much room to move in God of Small Things.  Free will and predestination.

April: almost a paradox with Hinduism and the caste system.  The belief is that all things are good and equal, but then there's caste division, and untouchables are supposed to accept restrictions but still believe they are an equal part of the system

White: Brahmins were the educated priestly class who wrote the laws and the laws are good to them.  A warning to literary people

April: The theory being everything is of equal importance, but it's not that way in practice

White: Huge relativism in Hinduism.  Everything is a mask of god to some extent.  Much larger time scale than western religious cosmologies.  Hindus think of huge cycles of time - eons - that repeat.  Almost like the bog bang theory.  Rebirth.  If they accept their caste humbly, they may move up in the next life.

Ginger:  The moth is a small thing as in the title.  On relativism and
identity - the word contamination occurred to me.  Pappachi's energy
contaminated by his anger about the moth.  Keeping perspective.

White:  Roy's style - tiny details that have significance.  The children grasp at the salvation in the small moments because the big narratives are all sad and confusing.

Rosalyn: the little things - seemingly insignificant - add up.  If the twins didn't share a soul, maybe they could cope with the small things.  Also they're small things themselves - without the adult ability to cope

Kim: Both twins fear not being loved

Kristy: Interesting that the twins have no individual identity.  It's hard to form an identity in a system where everything is relative - everything is supposed to be equal.

White: For a positive spin, change relative to related.  It's hard to have a separate identity in a traditional culture because you're related to everyone.

Kayla:  Mrs. Moore in the cave loses her sense of moral relativism.  The caves have no markings to relate them to a specific religion.  Presented with so many ways to look at the universe, she can't say her religion is better anymore.  That's scary.

Kristy: especially so far along in her life to have to wonder if she got it wrong and she bet her eternity on it

Kayla: Mrs. Moore questions Christianity in the face of the world's options

White: Welcome to colonial/postcolonial lit.  Same as our discussion of
nations

Greg: Identity's unchangeable but how we deal with the small things,
everyday dignity, those are the things we can change

White: an example - Aziz and the boy with the bee sting - "your touch is unkind"

Rosalyn: in daycare kids are told "You're unique, you're special" and we start developing identity in children by telling them this.  No one in God of Small Things is told this.  Even Sophie Mol has her grandfather's nose.

Kayla: Sophie Mol is the other for both twins

Krisann: in God of Small Things who you are is flexible, perception of ten other people provide many variables

White: no core identity preserved, posits a self detachable from others, change with the relations

Natalie: Americans are able to choose who they are.  People should realize the other is within.  You are self and other functioning in both positions.

April: We think of the other as bad so we don't look for similarities

White: Freud - "the narcissism of small differences" - like the ways we
differentiate ourselves from our families

Natalie: literature is one way to open up similarities

White: childhood - similarities

Natalie: unless it's Lord of the Flies

White: contamination again

White: I especially liked the comparison between Velutha and the man who is in the courtroom (in Passage to India) who is beautiful but an untouchable. Laws of nature dispensing with the laws of culture.  Nature has a nobility.

April: nature's disregard for society's conventions

White: in terms of objective 1b, textual dialogues can be conscious or
imposed.  Conscious - Forster dies about the time Roy was born so they're roughly contemporary.   The resemblance of the courtroom man to Velutha is the point where you think, "Oh she must have read Passage to India."  But Roy brings the character into the foreground.

Kristy: it's the noble savage idea

White: that's another self-other idea.  There's a core value in humanity.  Roy writes Velutha much like a character in Last of the Mohicans, a technique where you show just enough to get the reader interested, caring about the character, like barely glimpsing the monster in a horror movie - and we're being postmodern when we move back and forth between literature and pop culture

April: The echo, the heart of darkness, all represent the unknown. 
Acknowledging this within ourselves is constructive.  When someone does
something you abhor, you can recognize you've probably done something
similar.

White: What annoys you about your family is what you dislike about yourself

White: the course can seem threatening because you look at everything as a construction - self, nation, religion

Natalie: has made me more critical of American culture, wondering of other cultures are more spiritually advances and why we think we're dominant or superior