The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy explores the issue of ambiguous classification through many routes, one of which being the character of Ammu.  Ammu herself is not incorrectly categorized, but she is an example of a character in the novel who denies classification all together; she is willing and capable of transcending the established boundaries of her culture in Ayemenem. She most obviously expresses her indifference towards classification when she approaches Velutha, an Untouchable, and consummates their relationship.  She, unlike her Touchable family of Syrian Christians, is unconcerned with the division created by the caste system and does as she pleases.  But this indifference, or independence, of hers is shown much earlier in the text at a couple different moments.  For example, it is explained that Estha and Rahel temporarily had no surname because Ammu was still unsure about which name she wanted to claim: "She said that choosing between her husband’s name and her father’s name didn’t give a woman much choice” (35).  This lack of classification in turn creates a lack of identity for her and her children, though it is not identity to a family or category that she is taking into consideration, but her independence as an individual.  After she offers a sarcastic response in the company of Margaret Kochamma, it is explained that Ammu “walked away to her room, her shoulders shining.  Leaving everybody to wonder where she had learned her effrontery from” (148).   This passage goes on to explain that “Ammu had not had the kind of education, nor read the sorts of books, nor met the sorts of people, that might have influenced her to think the way she did” (146).   This passage suggests that Ammu belongs to a different sort of mindset than those around her, though nobody in the novel is quite sure from where she inherited it.  The novel supply reason for Ammu’s breaking out of her assumed classification, but the fact that she does plays with the novel’s greater concepts of illustrating how breaking people into categories can be detrimental to individual lives (Ammu, Estha, Rahel, Velutha) as well as whole communities.

The setting of The God of Small Things is in Ayemenem, Kerala, India when Rahel and Esta are adults and through flashbacks to when they are children; the Ayemenem we see when Rahel and Estha are children is very different from the Ayemenem we see in the flashbacks when they are children.  In the past, the town seems to be active, and the family seems to belong to a community, whether it is in conflict with that community or not. Furthermore, at this point in time there is much conflict within the town between classes/castes, as well as with groups that wish to alleviate the effects of the caste system (such as the growing Communist party).  In the present, however, when Rahel returns to Ayemenem she finds abandoned or dilapidated houses, a river run dry, a silent Estha, and the only sign of growth or development in a five-star hotel chain that has built a wall around itself to keep out the rest of the city. The only one that seems to remain unchanged is Baby Kochamma, though she allows the family house to fall apart around her.  For Rahel, the whole town stirs up memories like dust and seems forever altered by time the same way her family has been. The city of Ayemenem, then, reflects the state of life after a past filled with conflict--it is relieved of its conflict, but also emptied and almost lifeless.
         Arundhati Roy bases her story around a the state of India in which she spent her childhood; in an interview with The Progressive, Roy discussed her life growing up in Kerala without the traditional "lenses" of family roles, gender roles, religious identities, or caste identities that many in the state find themselves influenced by.  From her interview, she seems to be a mixture of Ammu, Rahel, and a bit of Chacko in her behavior and political activism--she tells David Barsamian, "I was the worst thing a girl could be: thin, black, and clever" , and continues with "The problem is that we [Roy and her mother] are both women who are unconventional in their terms" (Progressive).  These descriptions bring to mind both Ammu and Chacko, who live unconventionally in Kerala, taking action in what they believe to be important issues (shedding light on the injustice of the caste system, for example, is an issue both Chacko and Roy are passionate about). Unlike Adiga's The White Tiger and the film Slumdog Millionaire, The God of Small Things contains autobiographical elements about the setting, the culture, and the larger societies of Kerala and India that Ayemenem belongs to; it should be noted that this book was much less contested in India than either of the two listed above. Ayemenem, then, both as a town and a fictional setting proves to be subtly central to the novel and ends up accounting for how both Ammu and the author behave against tradition.