The Kochamma Family

The Post-colonial experience has made the goal of harmonious family relationships much more difficult due to the fragmentation of families throughout the country and immigration to the land of the coloniser. Children and adults lose perspective on their homeland and the struggles within their homeland. They become struck by the development of the colonizer’s land, and as a result they become confused with where their loyalties should lie. In Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”, the Kochamma family is a family of tragic situations and tragic people. It is their own cultural traditions that lead to the tragedy. However, it can be argued that the underlying theme within the novel is that of people oppressed by the colonisation of India by

They do not however communicate with each other and nor do they comfort each other or attempt to understand one another. This is the greatest downfall of the family. Colonisation plays a role in how some members begin to perceive each other and India as a whole; as well as it lays the foundation for the sense of worthlessness each member of the family feels at different times. Although the English have left India when this story took place but their presence can still be felt. “Englishness” and “whiteness” is held in high regard, and is something to emulate and work towards. The Indians, who always had a class system and a disregard for darker skin, all of these stories, the children look to their families to help them form their identity and find their place in the world; and in most cases are disappointed with the lack of unity and dis-functionality they encounter. This relationship is much like India has with itself and England. Rather than thinking independently and trying to move away from British culture and being

The novel reveals a decisive colonial condition; through its dialogues, characters and various events and instances it encompass. Arundhati Roy refers to the metaphor “the heart of darkness” in the novel where She says that, “In Ayemenem, in the heart of darkness, I talk not about the White man, but about the Darkness, about what the Darkness is about.” The God of Small Things tells the story of one family in the town of Ayemenem in Kerala, India. The temporal setting shifts back and forth from 1969, when Rahel and Estha, a set of fraternal twins are 7 years old when the twins are reunited at age 31. The novel begins with Rahel returning to her childhood home in Ayemenem, India, to see her twin brother Estha, who has been sent to Ayemenem by their father. Events flash back to Rahel and Estha’s birth and the period before their mother Ammu divorced their father. The narrator describes the funeral of Sophie, Rahel and Estha’s cousin, and the point after the funeral when Ammu went to the police station to say that a terrible mistake had been made. Two weeks after this point, Estha was returned to his father. The narrator briefly describes