The God of Small Things

Using the information provided about his childhood, his contentious relationship with his father, his flirtation with communism, his indifference to authority, his charisma, and his way with the children, define how Velutha, the Black carpenter, occupies the moral center of the novel. In what way is he a Christ figure?

Chart how the novel defines sex. Use Estha’s encounter in the movie theater, Ammu and Velutha’s assignations at History House, and Rahel and Estha’s taboo night together. Do you see any relationship between love and sex? Does sex save or corrupt?

With the delicate eye of a poet, Roy invests everyday objects with layers of suggestion and meaning. Take any of these objects and discuss how they become increasingly more invested with symbolic implications as the narrative revisits them at odd moments: Sophie’s silver thimble, Chacko’s model airplanes, Pappachi’s moth, Rahel’s sunglasses, the fetid river, or the elephant chained in front of the theater/temple.

In objecting to awarding the Man Booker Prize to the novel, critics cited the novel’s claustrophobic sense of pessimism. Does the novel manage to offer any glimmer of hope? Use the story threads of Ammu, Chacko, Margaret, Rahel, or Velutha.

Research the caste system in modern India, particularly after the Indian government outlawed its practices in the late 1940s. How does the novel use this centuries-old socioeconomic paradigm to suggest how its discriminatory cultural mindset still survives?

The most malevolent character in the novel is Baby Kochamma. Investigate what might motivate her to destroy Velutha and Ammu. Does the elaborate lie she fashions to save the reputation of her family at all mitigate how she manipulates Estha to lie to the police? Does her obsession with the Irish monk explain her behavior? What does her sedentary life reveal about her character?

Novelist John Updike, in his laudatory review published in The New Yorker, said that a novel of such ambition must necessarily invent its own language. Take a short passage and define this original language: Roy’s upending of conventional grammar (using nouns as verbs or adjectives as nouns), the use of fragments, the use of hyphens, the sporadic capitalization, the eccentric punctuation, the rhythm of repetition, the neologisms.

Who/what is responsible for the death of Sophie Mol? Examine the chains of causality the novel offers. Why does the novel resist a tidy narrative to account for the drowning?