The God Of Small Thing Analysis

Introduction

The paper throws light on the major features of language that Arundhati Roy has deployed in her novel The God of Small Thing, the novel that won her The Man Booker Prize. Roy, through her creativity of language, makes an attempt to capture and represent the reality. The novelist comes up with certain strategies. She brings about certain linguistic innovations, by shaping and molding the language as it is not readily available, to capture Indian sensibility and present it in all its cultural dimensions.

The novelist makes the use of the language very creatively to develop the characters and plot through the interference of the local language, the use of capitalization, and child-speak. The local language is used to develop certain

The language is enriched with adjectives in the novel. Having used 93 adjectives in the first 1000 words of the text which is close to one tenth of the total amount of lexical items, Roy stands first in using such language enriched with adjectives leaving the writers like Joseph Conrad,James Joyce,Salman Rushdie,William Faulkner,Ernest Hemingway behind in using adjectives.

Eg.

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid.

The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruit burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air.

Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun. (1)

Affective adjectives

The second most distinctive feature that Roy deploys is a generous amount of affective adjectives both in descriptions of the environment and portrayals of characters. The word “affective” relates to emotional effects or dispositions. The writer creates certain visionary images by using affective adjectives. The term, therefore, “affective adjective” includes the type of adjectives that arouse emotions in readers and creates certain images in their

A drenched mongoose flashed across the leaf-strewn driveway. (1) Adjectives in isolation

Eg.

1. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. (12)

2. The silence sat between grand-niece and baby grand aunt like a third person. A stranger. Swollen. Noxious. (21)

In the two examples above, the fragmentized pairs of adjectives, “unspeakable”,

“numb”, “swollen” and “noxious”, are all about blocking of communications. The way two adjectives are placed side by side, but isolated by periods, symbolizes how two persons, or in Estha’s case him and his confronting ego, choose to ostracize themselves. Such a fragmentary arrangement provides visual effect for the meaning the words are embedding and in the quoted examples, the single adjective sentences put weight on the sense of wordlessness bought forth in the content.

Participle as adjectives

Roy uses adjectives mainly for the descriptive purposes as listed below.

Eg.

1. People got used to seeing him on the road. A well-dressed man with a quiet walk. His face grew dark and outdoorsy. Rugged. Wrinkled by the sun. (13)

2. Within minutes there was no one on the road. Except Murlidharan.