# of Words: 425

Released in 1997, The God of Small Things quickly skyrocketed Arundhati Roy to globally critical and popular acclaim. Her first (and to date only) novel won the 1997 Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards at the English-language literary universe. Interestingly, Roy was educated as an architect and had never before considered herself a novelist.

The novel, which Roy composed between 1992 and 1996, has sold more than 6 million copies and has been translated into 40 languages. Paradoxically, not bad for a beginner effort.

The storyline centers on Estha and Rahel, fraternal boy and girl twins residing with their divorced mother, Ammu, along with her loved ones. The central events of the novel involve the fateful visit of their half-English cousin, Sophie Mol, along with also her mother Margaret Kochamma. We know in the beginning of the novel that Sophie Mol drowns in the river from the household's house. The rest of the novel pieces together the events which led up to her passing and the aftermath which spanned, darting back and forth between Estha and Rahel's youth and adulthood in the procedure.

While telling the story of Sophie Mol's departure, the novel resonates with bigger political and social troubles. The society that our personalities occupy remains largely formed by the caste system, which characterized social classes in India and ordered the standing every person held. The Indian Constitution of 1949 outlawed the caste system and discrimination based on social standing, but it is pretty clear during the novel that there are definite social rules which persist which still need to be obeyed -- particularly in terms of who's permitted to interact with whom. The novel pays particular attention to what the narrator calls the "Love Laws," which translate the caste system to research who's permitted to appreciate whom, how, and how much. The violation of these social rules is fundamental to the unraveling of the seemingly fine, easy life that Estha and Rahel expertise as kids also has an integral role in forming the conditions which lead up to Sophie Mol's passing.

The growth of the lower classes and the toppling of the top classes is a concept in the center of these political ideologies which gives hope to a number of the novel's characters and matches others with dread. She has written several political articles and was even awarded the Sydney Peace Prize at 2004. Overall, there is a whole lot to untangle in this book, but Roy's stunning writing makes the entire travel a pleasure -- even in the moments when this book is at its most heart-wrenching.

Related Papers

Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand

Rand set out to describe her personal philosophy in this book, that follows a set of pioneering industrialists who go on strike against a corrupt government and a judgmental society. After finishing this novel Rand turned to nonfiction and printed works on her doctrine for the rest of her livelihood. Rand really only released four novels in her whole career, and also the novel that came out before Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, was printed in 1943. Therefore there was a fairly long publishing......Read More

The Comedy Of Errors William Shakespeare

The play is about two sets of identical twins separated as babies, along with the absurdity surrounding their casual reunion. Because this play appears premature along Shakespeare's writing timeline, critics have a tendency to discount it as his more juvenile work. It seems "textbook" in ways we are not really utilized to with Shakespeare -- it attracts from two previously classical plays, also has a motto of time, location, and action that only appears once again in Shakespeare's whole......Read More

The Catcher In The Rye J. D. Salinger

Over the course of 3 days, a rich kid who can not stop getting expelled from every college he attends wanders around Manhattan trying to get (1) drunk and (2) lucky. No, it's not the storyline of an unreleased Gossip Girl season (RIP). It is the storyline of Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger's beloved, prohibited, reviled, worshiped, and--well, let us just say polarizing 1951 novel about a depressed prep school boy with a heart of gold. After rocketing almost immediately to the top of the......Read More

Related Topics