The Untouchables Analysis

Pappachi has a split personality. His outward behaviour is quite different from what he actually is. He donates money to orphanages and leprosy clinics and works hard to impress upon people that he is a generous and morally upright. “But alone with his wife and children he turned into a monstrous, suspicious bully, with a streak of vicious cunning. They were beaten, humiliated and then made to suffer the envy of friends and relations for having such a wonderful husband and father” (TGST 180). He even sent his daughter and wife out of their home after beating them.
Pappachi follows the footsteps of his father, Rev. Ipe, in his discrimination of women. His sends his son Chacko to Oxford to become a Rhodes Scholar and he “was permitted excesses

Certain taboos and conventions practised by the people have divided people. It was a State where untouchability was practiced in its most rigorous form. The Brahmins would even stay away from the shadow of an untouchable for fear of being defiled. The untouchables “were not allowed to touch anything that Touchables touched” (TGST 73). The Pelaya, Pulaya and Paravan (Parayan) were the worst affected by casteism. Pulayas and Parayans had to stand sixty-four feet away from the Brahmins.
In Kerala, the Brahmins decided the fate of the people. P.K. Gopalakrishnan in his A Cultural Study of Kerala wrote, “The kings had only a titular role under the Brahmins and they were even controlled by them. The kings had no authority and legal control over the Brahmins. Even the kings were fined by the Brahmins on many occasions” (292. translation mine). The untouchables were “expected to crawl backwards with a broom sweeping away their footprints so that Brahmins or Syrian Christians would not defile themselves by accidently stepping into a Paravan’s foot print” (TGST

Education was considered unnecessary for a woman as her duty lay in looking after her husband and children. Marriage was considered a sacred vocation and a hallowed institution, as is evident from the denial of marital alliance to Baby Kochamma who becomes unfit to enter into such an alliance because of her relationship with Fr. Mulligan. But such behaviour on the part of a modern woman would be seen as a minor lapse peculiar to her age and not in any way warranting the denial of conjugal relationship. Her failure to get close to Fr. Mulligan forces Baby Kochamma to remain a spinster. It also proves that marriage is far more important for a woman than her education as is evident from the fact that her father sent her for higher education only when she made herself unfit for such a relationship. Likewise, Aleyooty Ammachi, the representative woman of the older generation in the novel, complies with the system even though deep within she does not completely accept