A Postcolonial Study of Arundhati Roy’s Novel The God of Small Things (1997)

Abstract

This dissertation examines the circumstances of the process of colonisation and the effects resulting from the relationship between the ‗colonizer‘ and the ‗colonized‘.It aims to investigate the postcolonial aspects in The God of Small Things written by the Indian Arundhati Roy (1997).The novel turns around t h e s t o r y o f t h e twin c h a r a c t e r s namely: Esthaben and Rahel. They were living with their divorced mother in her paternal house with grandparents, uncle and aunt. The visit of their English cousin Sophie Mol to India depicted vividly the coloniser colonised relationship. The dilemma was when Sophie Mol was drowned in the river, things turned around, secrets started to be revealed and the twin were separated. The novel includes different issues such as racism, social crash and social classes, religious struggles (castes) power represented in the coloniser and weakness of the colonized in addition to the ideological beliefs of superiority and inferiority.