Kerala’s advertising motto has been, for years, “Kerala: God’s Own Country”. It’s not exactly “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but you get the idea.
Please choose a passage from this section of reading (89-177) in which the writing, that is to say the language itself, does something interesting. I’ll let you decide and explain what “interesting” means.
You can comment on each others’ responses, but you need not feel obligated to for this post.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: charlotte, roy
“Mammachi played a ‘Welcome Home, Our Sophie Mol’ melody on her violin.
A cloying, chocolate melody. Stickysweet, and meltybrown. Chocolate waves on a chocolate shore.” (page 174)
This passage is very near the end of our reading, and it’s just as Margaret and Sophie are arriving. I was struck by the intense visual imagery that this excerpt conveys to readers. The alliteration of cloying, chocolate, and Chacko emphasizes these words, and it creates a very striking, unique and almost poetic couple of lines, especially in her “stickysweet” and “meltybrown.” Again, this is Roy taking some liberties with words, but in this case, inserting her own makes the meaning and feeling that much clearer. We get this sense of being overridden with sweetness, in her ‘chocolate waves on a chocolate shore.’ There’s just too much, and any value that could have been present in the emotion is lost in its own excess. And I think this mirrors perfectly how the family welcomes Sophie and Margaret–they fawn over them, make a big, decorated cake. Roy refers to it as “the Play” that they all take part in, and again, I think that is a very fitting label for the family’s behavior. I think subconsciously, each member, to some extent, reveres and idolizes Margaret and Sophie for their ethnicity, their status as Londoners, and that’s what contributes to this saccharine display of hospitality.
“Ammu saw that he saw. She looked away. He did too. History’s fiends returned to claim them. To re-wrap them in its old, scarred pelt and drag them back to where they really lived. Where the Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.” (page 168)
This excerpt is taken from a passage toward the end of the reading. During Sophie Mol’s welcome home party, Roy makes it obvious that there is an attraction between Ammu and Velutha. Velutha notices that Ammu is a woman for the first time and there is immediate sexual tension. This passage is particularly interesting because it personifies history by calling it evil and saying that it has “fiends.” They want to love each other and know that there is something there, but are unable to because of age old customs. For a brief moment before this though, history was subverted and they felt something for each other. Upon the realization that they both knew what was happening, old customs took over as they know who they must and must not love.
The passage I chose is on page 121…
“Something lay buried in the ground. Under grass. Under twenty-three years of June rain.
A small forgotten thing.
Nothing that the world would miss.
A child’s plastic wristwatch with the time painted on it.
Ten to two, it said.”
Roy, throughout the novel, repeats the time as being ten to two, alluding back to Rahel’s watch. The book marks great changes to the lives of the twins yet the “time” always remains the same. To me, this does several things. One, it gives a sense of a fear or unwillingness to change. Rahel and Estha’s childhoods are stripped from them suddenly and prematurely. There would be a reluctance to accept this and a longing to remain the same in the same time. Also, the fact that the watch always reads ten to two makes me think that time often passes so slowly that we hardly notice a change and it seems like no time passed at all. Also, I find it interesting how the book, with its attention to detail, makes a point to describe little things that the world might not see otherwise. It makes its title seem all the more appropriate. Perhaps the reason time passes so quickly is because we do not stop to notice the little things that could capture our time and attention. Just like the watch that was “nothing that the world would miss.” Times moves much more quickly than we would like.
“When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you less” (107).
Ammu says this to Rahel when they are leaving The Sound of Music, prompted by Rahel’s saying that if she liked the man tending the drink stand at the theater, than she should just marry him. It comes right after Estha is molested. I was so jarred by this passage because it’s so brief and cutting. Much of Roy’s narrative passages in this book are decadent descriptions. Roy constructs the previous scene (do you say “scene” when talking about a novel?”) with naive, yet disturbing images and ideas (egg white, etc.) So all of the sudden these three short, grammatically correct sentences just arrest you mid-page. It’s a horrible thing for a mother to say to a daughter, but in the case of this novel, with its looming sense of despair, you don’t doubt that it’s true.
“Had Estha been with them, he would have kept the receipt. He was the Keeper of Records. The natural custodian of bus tickets, bank receipts, cash memos, checkbook stubs. Little Man. He lived in a Cara-van. Dum dum.
But Estha wasn’t with them. Everybody decided it was better this way. They wrote to him instead. Mammachi said Rahel should write too. Write what? My dear Estha, How are you? I am well. Ammu died yesterday.
Rahel never wrote to him. There are things that you can’t do – like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.” (page 156)
This passage is part of the section about Ammu’s death, after Chacko and Rahel have taken the body to the crematorium. What I find interesting about this passage is Roy’s repetition and emphasis of certain ideas that she wants to convey to the reader. First of all, Roy continues to create prominent titles for the characters, such as deeming Estha the “Keeper of Records.” By providing such a rich title, Roy is pushing the reader to acknowledge Estha’s presence as one of organization and cohesion, keeping the family together. Roy even reminds us that he was “the natural custodian of bus tickets,” referring back to when Estha had to take care of the tickets on the train when Ammu was too emotional to handle such a small task. All of the descriptions Roy makes in this passage allude to Estha’s ability to maintain himself and be poised enough to carry the family’s baggage. Roy still sheds a playful tone in the midst of grave matter by repeating the line “He lived in a Cara-van. Dum dum.” By doing so, she reminds us of Estha’s young age, and provokes us to consider the level of Estha’s maturity.
What I found most riveting in the language of this passage is the last few sentences. The illumination of Rahel’s deep connection with Estha enforced the fact that Rahel and Estha together share one united soul. To think that Rahel did not write to Estha about their mother’s death is shocking, but completely understandable when Roy writes, “There are things that you can’t do – like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.” Depicting a parallel between Estha and parts of the body is so simple, yet fully believable considering the nature of Estha and Rahel’s relationship. So, at the beginning of this passage, Roy presents Estha as a level-headed entity, and at the end of it, she reveals Rahel’s need for Estha’s reasonable conscience. The breath-taking thought of Estha as Rahel’s heart compels me to believe that without Estha, Rahel lacks emotional reasoning or response. As the youngest generation, Estha and Rahel have an important duty to hold the family together for years to come, and this cannot be done without cooperation by the twins, as they both need each other to remain whole.
“Just outside Ayemenem they drove into a cabbage-green butterfly (or perhaps it drove into them).” (page 147)
The quote i chose is at the conclusion of chapter 6. Rahel and Estha were singing a song to impress Sophie Mol. This quote shows the reference to death in multiple perspectives. Not only does Roy revert back to death or a negative mood, but she looks at death from the perspective of the butterfly as well as from the killer’s angle. The butterfly could have had suicidal intentions or maybe it was just its time to go. I personally found this quote intriguing because of the challenging last statement, “or perhaps it drove into them”.
“Ambassador Rahel wouldn’t come out of the curtain because she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she couldn’t. Because Everything was wrong. And soon there would be a LayTer for both her and Estha.
Full of furred moths and icy butterflies. And deep-sounding bells. And moss.
And a Nowl.
The dirty airport curtain was a great comfort and a darkness and a shield.” (139-140)
There are a lot of things I find interesting about this little excerpt from Rahel’s thoughts. There are the little things, like the capitalization of E in “Everything” and the spelling of “LayTer” as her mom does, which add to the drama that Rahel would feel as a child. But then Roy uses symbols to illustrate the fears she’s imagining about the “LayTer” instead of stating her fears flat-out, including the moth, which seems to be an ongoing symbol of pain and loss of hope for the family. Also, the start of the passage seems to emphasize how Rahel’s decision to hide and try to escape was a natural one–To me, the words “She couldn’t because she couldn’t” seem like a child’s explanation for something that he or she can’t entirely explain but still feels right anyway.
All of these things draw me into Rahel’s mindset–I especially feel that the last sentence about the curtain being “a great comfort and a darkness and a shield” suggests how she feels. She desires comfort and protection, but knows that any comfort or protection will only be tentative and won’t save her for whatever punishment or trouble is about to come her way.
I noticed a rather poetic moment in Roy’s writing on page 132, where she writes about the kangaroo cigarette repositories:
“Red betel spitstains spattered their kangaroo stomachs like fresh wounds.
Red-mouthed smiles the Airport Kangaroos had.
And pink-edged ears.
They looked as though if you pressed them they might say Mama in empty battery voices.”
I found this excerpt interesting because it breaks from conventional writing to use alliteration and succinct, fragmented description. These are conventions usually reserved for poetry and they created a flowing emotional sense for the passage. The use of short incomplete sentences like “And pink-edged ears,” relies on the same mechanic that poetry uses to relate an image or an idea without interpretation. It allows the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about the scene. This seems to be a running theme in Roy’s writing, whether intentional or not. She likes to use a mix of long sentences to move the story, and short sentences to relate the emotion of a particular passage.
The alliteration was amusing at the very least. It reflects the playful attitude of Roy’s writing, just as when she rhymes certain words. It is relaxing in the same way that a toddler’s antics are disarming. This is not to say that her writing is juvenile, just that it uses techniques that cause the reader to feel more comfortable with the story and the writing style. One feels more obliged to read the novel out of a sense of curiosity, instead of an academic interest.