English notes
TGOST:
Context:
When different political parties are elected to office at the state and
national levels in India, a state government may have very different
policies and a different style of administration from the national
government. (This is the case in most of Roy’s novel, in which the
Congress Party controls the national government while the Communist
Party holds power in Kerala.)
“untouchables” (garbage-removers, cremators, barbers, tanners and
cobblers, etc.), who are believed to be permanently “polluted” by their
occupations and their association with dead and rotting things, with filth,
etc.
Velutha’s inherited occupations- tree-climbing, toddy-tappers, carpenter
Comrade Pillai is a member of Communist Party, who organises the party’s
activities in the Ayemenem-Kottayam area in Kerala. In the 1950s and
1960s, two distinct “factions,” called the Communist Party (Marxist)
[known as the CP(M)] and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
The Ayemenem and the Kottayam that Roy evokes imaginatively in her
story are much smaller, more rustic, less crowded, and less modern
places. This “primordial” setting is imaginatively essential for the kind of
story Roy wants to tell, in which “deeply unconscious” and natural
“forces” seem to shape the lives and destinies of the fictional characters,
outside their conscious control.
For practical and emotional reasons, and also by longstanding social
convention, members of an inter-generational family maintain close ties
with their extended family.
Female characters predominate in The God of Small Things. This reflects
the broader fact that women in Kerala are more empowered than in most
other parts of India
In Roy’s narrative, Karna’s tale becomes an allegory for the injustice and
resultant fury experienced by any “untouchable” in modern India.
Roy has written many nonfiction essays and has become an outspoken
critic of the Indian government, the United States, and global policies of
imperialism, capitalism, and nuclear war.
ASND:
Context:
TGOST:
Context:
When different political parties are elected to office at the state and
national levels in India, a state government may have very different
policies and a different style of administration from the national
government. (This is the case in most of Roy’s novel, in which the
Congress Party controls the national government while the Communist
Party holds power in Kerala.)
“untouchables” (garbage-removers, cremators, barbers, tanners and
cobblers, etc.), who are believed to be permanently “polluted” by their
occupations and their association with dead and rotting things, with filth,
etc.
Velutha’s inherited occupations- tree-climbing, toddy-tappers, carpenter
Comrade Pillai is a member of Communist Party, who organises the party’s
activities in the Ayemenem-Kottayam area in Kerala. In the 1950s and
1960s, two distinct “factions,” called the Communist Party (Marxist)
[known as the CP(M)] and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
The Ayemenem and the Kottayam that Roy evokes imaginatively in her
story are much smaller, more rustic, less crowded, and less modern
places. This “primordial” setting is imaginatively essential for the kind of
story Roy wants to tell, in which “deeply unconscious” and natural
“forces” seem to shape the lives and destinies of the fictional characters,
outside their conscious control.
For practical and emotional reasons, and also by longstanding social
convention, members of an inter-generational family maintain close ties
with their extended family.
Female characters predominate in The God of Small Things. This reflects
the broader fact that women in Kerala are more empowered than in most
other parts of India
In Roy’s narrative, Karna’s tale becomes an allegory for the injustice and
resultant fury experienced by any “untouchable” in modern India.
Roy has written many nonfiction essays and has become an outspoken
critic of the Indian government, the United States, and global policies of
imperialism, capitalism, and nuclear war.
ASND:
Context:
