Please answer this question and then RESPOND to at least one other person’s response. In other words, interact with each other.
Obviously Arundhati Roy is taking some liberties with syntax and grammar. Choose one instance where language corresponds with the tone of the story so far in an interesting way. You may like or dislike her style–choose one quotation and explain why.
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Here’s a short excerpt I particularly liked, from page 79 at the top:
“With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat-shaped holes in the Universe.
There were so many stains on the road.
Squashed Miss Mitten-shaped stains in the Universe.
Squashed frog-shaped stains in the Universe.
Squashed crows that had tried to eat the squashed frog-shaped stains in the Universe.
Squashed dogs that ate the squashed crow-shaped stains in the Universe.”
This passage comes after the part where the family is approached by Marxists when they’re in their car, and Rahel thinks she sees Velutha. She notices a frog that has been run over in the road, how it is dead and flattened so it looks like a stain. So following that train of thought, these various stain shapes discussed in the passage seem like an extension of Rahel’s thought about death. This excerpt relies a lot on rhythm, the repetition of that phrase “–shaped stain” and “in the Universe.” There really isn’t logic or sense in these like sentences, but then again, after I went back and re-read it, I realized they really didn’t have to make perfect sense. These are a child’s thoughts, and Rahel’s connections. I think the oddness of it as well as the predictable logic of the frog to crow to dog-shaped stains reflects the mindset of a young child.
Roy’s style of emphasis through capitalization and grammar was a little hard for me to get used to at first. But through the repeated utilization of subtly stressing certain words or phrases, I found myself subconsciously making a mental note for each time I came acrose a capitalized or oddly syntaxed word. And here, in this passage, instead of feeling disconnected by the fragmented sentences, I liked how simple and logical it felt to think in that same way as Rahel. Getting past the strict logistics of grammar and correct punctuation and captialization, I found I could really identify with the tone of the narration.
This passage caught my eye…it’s in the middle of page 51, when Chacko is comparing history to a house.
“Estha and Rahel had no doubt that the house Chacko meant was the house on the other side of the river, in the mmiddle of the abandoned rubber estate where they had never been. Kari Saipu’s house. The Black Sahib. The Englishman who had “gone native.” Who spoke Malayalam and wore mundus. Ayemenem’s own Kurtz. Ayemenem his private Heart of Darkness. HE had shot himself through the head ten years ago, when his young lover’s parents had taken the boy away from him and sent him to school. After the suicide, the property had become the subject of extensive litigation between Kari Saipu’s cook and his secretary. The house had lain empty for years. Very few people had seen it. But the twins could picture it.
The History House.”
I chose this passage because when reading it, I noticed there was a gradual shift in the tone–it starts out relatively neutral, perhaps slightly dreamy, as Estha and Rahel think of an abandoned house on the other side of the river, how a man lived there who tried to submerge himself in the native culture…Roy devolves into statements that give the house a sense of familiarity: “Kari Saipu’s house. The Black Sahib.” But then, Kari Saipu isdescribed as having “gone native,” insinuating that he’d also “gone insane”. This is followed by the fragments referencing Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, which now taints the initial dream-like possibility associated with the house. Finally, Arundhati Roy gives the full story behind the house by stating (in a complete sentence once again). I feel like the subjects in the middle of the paragraph are what help shift the tone from dreamy to tragic, because each subject gives an image with a slightly-more tainted tone.
I think it’s also relevant that this anecdote is brought up right after Chacko describes the history of the family as a “family of Anglophiles”–the juxtaposition of this idea with Kari Saipu’s story and Kurtz from Heart of Darkness creates many different parallels at once. All three are stories of people lost between two different cultures that seem to inevitably lead them to tragedy.
Melanie, I really liked the passage you chose–even though it’s talking about death, I feel like there is kind of a strange humor to it because of the repetition and the syntax. It somehow seems a lot more lighthearted to me when Roy starts listing off all the different stains. Though I didn’t specifically notice the youthful mindset and voice to the passage, I definitely see it now that you’ve pointed it out.
The passage I chose is the second paragraph of page 16 as Estha thinks about his sister’s return. When they were younger, the twins felts as though they had one mind. Now, he realizes how different they are.
“It had been quiet in Estha’s head until Rahel came. But with her she had brought the sound of passing trains, and the light and shade and light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat. The world, locked out for years, suddenly flooded in, and now Estha couldn’t hear himself for the noise. Trains. Traffic. Music. The stock market. A dam had burst and savage waters swept everything up in a switling. Comets, violins, parades, loneliness, clouds, beards, bigots, lists, flags, earthquakes, despair, were all swept up in a scrambled swirling.”
This passage, with its continuous list of unrelated things and ideas and places (both tangible and intangible), created a sense of chaos in its tone so that the audience might understand how Estha is feeling. There is a great deal of disorder and conflict within the passage. This list of things seems entirely too long. Everything is thrown together randomly, leaving the reader to make sense of it. I believe that it is a great example of the chaos of the mind itself. People have so much on their minds…we are able to think and feel many things simultaneously. If we stop to think about HOW we can do this, it is a wonder that we are able to function this way. How can we think about two things? Feel two emotions? Want different things at the same time? I think the return of Rahel is demonstration of this conflict within Estha. On one hand, maybe he really wants to see her and invite her dynamic presence back into his life. On the other hand, perhaps she reminds him of things that he had hidden in the quiet of his mind that have suddenly come forth like the bursting of a dam. The mind is a complex, secretive place, throwing all of our thoughts together leaving us to sort them out. This passage, with its many run-on sentences and eclectic word choice reminds me of this struggle.
Melanie, I thought the passage you chose was very interesting. I particularly liked your comment that, while Rahel is originally hard to understand, you realize that she is using a child’s logic. While the passage is about death and the passage of time, I also think about my childhood and I wonder if it would have made perfect sense to me if I was younger. It really makes me think about how I’ve grown and changed. The passage almost seems silly to read but it make you think about serious matters. Quite a conflict!
“Rahel watched Estha with the curiosity of a mother watching her wet child. A sister a brother. A woman a man. A twin a twin.
She flew these several kites at once.
He was a naked stranger met in a chance encounter. He was the one that she had known before Life began. The one who had once led her (swimming) through their lovely mother’s cunt.
Both things unbearable in their polarity. In their irreconcilable far-apartness.” (page 89)
This passage occurs when Rahel sees Estha changing in the bathroom after he returns to Ayemenem. It gives a taste of the new relationship between Rahel and Estha after they have been apart for so long. I liked the series of statements about how Rahel sees Estha as “a sister a brother, a woman a man, a twin a twin.” Grammatically, these are fragments and seem to be missing commas, but when I read them one after another, I could easily translate what Roy was trying to express. I saw these comprehensible fragments as ideas plucked out of an individual’s train of thought. Just as Rachel mentioned about Roy writing lists of ideas to convey a sense of chaos, these fragments allow me to enter Rahel’s mind and see her thoughts as she experiences reuniting with Estha.
I appreciate Roy’s capitalization of certain words throughout the novel, such as, “he was the one that she had known before Life began.” By capitalizing “Life,” Roy immediately draws my attention to the word, and I think about why she is emphasizing it as a major point of interest. I liked how Melanie described this recognition as a “subconscious” act, but yet it is so imperative to grasping Roy’s main points. In this context, I interpreted “Life” as Estha and Rahel’s life together as twins, as two people so connected that, together, they constitute one whole being. I also liked how Roy inserted the parenthetical phrase “(swimming)” into the next sentence. It provided a more metaphorical, spiritual visualization that set the act of giving birth apart from Estha and Rahel’s connection and reliance on one another. Overall, throughout this passage, Roy presents the twins’ past familiarity with one another and their current separation. Roy does this through Rahel’s stream of consciousness which displays the major contrast between then and now in her relationship with her brother.
I chose an excerpt from page 49…
“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kinds of things they could get used to. You only had to look around you, Ammu said, to see that beatings with brass vases were the least of them. ”
This passage, in particular, stood out to me. I realized that through out the first part of the novel there is a clear struggle on the outlook of life. The social class distinctions in India at the time fundamentally made Rahel, Esta, and the rest of the family look down upon their lives and accredit it with no meaning. To the contrast, at Sophie’s funeral, Rahel was unusually aware of “the small things” that life had to ofer. The language in this passage seemed to be illustrating the point that although these people do not have much of a life, they do cherish it in the little ways. The women seem to have it the worst in India, constantly being obedient and abused, but still remain attached to their husbands. This passage allows for some what of an uplifting mood and a demonstration of faith in humanity in a sad situation.
“Edges, Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their separate horizons. Short creatures with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry End. Gentle half-moons have gathered under their eyes and they are as old as Ammu was when she died. Thirty-one.
“Not old.
“Not young.
“But a viable die-able age.”
I almost feel as though this passage could a be a poem on its own. It’s suddenly abstract. (At least the first paragraph is, until she mentions Ammu and numbers.) She uses kind of an obscure metaphor, one that took me a while to understand, about trolls guarding these very abstract concepts. Roy then ties it back to the story, craftily inserting important details: their mother is dead; she died at 31; Rahel and Estha are now 31. Roy then inserts these three mini-lines, trying to specify the mentality of this age, a transition period. A charming rhyme and clever oxymoron, “viable die-able” captures this transition. It’s a viable age in that it’s a generative time, not just in the biological sense, but in professional and personal terms as well. It’s die-able in that with this productivity comes a looming awareness of mortality.
I like this passage because it’s easy on the eyes (or ears.) It flows. It’s pretty. But it’s also dense.
P.S. it’s from page 5
“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.” -page 32
Roy is questioning her original statement about Sophie Mol’s visit to Ayemenem was when it all began. Her family visit as a cousin quickly morphs into her into death and Roy uses general but astute statements to convey her overall outlooks on life. Although at times the chapters show positive energy Roy always delves into downward spiral eventually ending in someone dying. This passage stood out to me because Roy rants all the way back to the beginning of time: when the Love Laws were made.
Clara’s excerpt is a really great one, I actually thought about doing a similar one because I liked the poetic natural rhythm that she describes. Actually, the passage I almost did was from page 88, and that one line, “a viable, die-able age” is repeated there, when Rahel is thinking to herself about being ‘old.’ Not only is that phrase memorable because of its rhyme and rhythm, but because it recurs throughout the text. Roy brings together the three main characters, Ammu, Estha, and Rahel, through their comprehension of their impermanence and frailty.
I chose a passage on page 45 that goes as follows:
“Rahel thought that boot was a lovely word. A much better word at any rate than sturdy. Sturdy was a terrible word. Like a dwarf’s name. Sturdy Koshy Oommen—a pleasant, middle-class, God-fearing dwarf with low knees and a side parting.”
The first thing that struck me about this paragraph was the use of the word “boot.” It refers to the part of a car usually called the trunk in America. Being that my Father grew up in a Tanzania, a former British colony, and that he went to college in England, I grew up using the word “boot.” This word, along with other words like “larder” for pantry, meant that I constantly had to describe my vernacular to my friends. I was amused to see the British influence on Roy’s use of language. On top of all this the passage stuck out because it was effectively a speed-bump in the flow of the story.
Leading up to this paragraph Roy was describing the seating arrangement of people in a car, showing how the relationships between people affected where they sat. This sudden break to explore the nature of language seemed almost humorous. It showed the tangential thought process that we all experience every once in a while. I liked how it gave the whole preceding passage a sense of reality through the relatable way Roy divulged her thoughts and feelings.
I noticed in Melanie’s excerpt the part about the flattened frogs. It reminded me of the passage on page 42 where Roy is talking about Ammu’s view of the twins. Ammu sees the twins as two frogs hopping out into the road oblivious to the large trucks and what they will do to them. One thing that Melanie noticed that I definitely missed was how the frog stains are like a representation of death, not just a metaphor for the uncertainty and danger of the world (a.k.a. the road).