Suzanne Arundhati Roy

Biography
Suzanne Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and a political activist. She was born on the 24th of November 1961 (age 51) in Shillong Meghalaya, India. She is well know for her fantastic novel The God Of Small Things and her deep involvement in environmental and human right causes that not only affect the Indian community but the world. She was born to Mary Roy who was a womens right activist and to Ranjit Roy a tea planter. The book is a description of how the small things in life affect people's behaviour and their lives Career Early in her career, Roy worked for television and movies. She wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), a movie based on her experiences as a student of architecture, which she also appeared as a performer, and Electric Moon (1992),[5] both directed by her current husband Pradip Krishen. Roy attracted attention in 1994, when she criticized Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, based on the life of Phoolan Devi.[5] In her film review entitled, "The Great Indian Rape Trick", she questioned the right to "restage the rape of a living woman without her permission," and charged Kapur with exploiting Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning She then began to write The God of small things in 1992 and finished it in 1996. She later went back to writing screenplays for a series called The Banyan Tree.

Techniques The God of Small Things is not written in a sequential narrative style in which events unfold chronologically. Instead, the novel is a patchwork of flashbacks and lengthy sidetracks that weave together to tell the story of the Ipe family. The author is able to structure her book so as to build up to the ideas and events at the root of the Ipe family's experience. Arundhati Roy employs FORESHADOWING as the narrative voice emphasizes that it is building towards a mysterious, cataclysmic, and all-important event. Roy even provides details and glimpses of the event, which she refers to as The Loss of Sophie Mol, and quotes characters remembering it and referring to it vaguely far before the reader discovers what has happened. Because of this technique, called foreshadowing, Roy builds considerable tension and intrigue into The God of Small Things, and she is able to play with the expectation and anticipation that the reader feels. The book is narrated in the third person. However, during a great part of the narrative, the reader sees everything through Rahel's eyes. This gives the reader a very special insight into the happenings and characters. There are various moments, which cross each other all through the book. One moment is in 1969 when Rahel is a seven-year-old child. At these moments everything is seen through a child's eye with a child's feelings and rationale. Facts, objects and people are seen in a complete different light. The child's view gives the book a very special charm and poignancy. It also brings in moments of light comic scenes. Another moment is twenty-three years later of an adult woman, searching for something she has lost in her childhood. The adult's eye is more critical. Through her eyes, the reader feels the sadness and horror of how the facts came together, causing such a terrible tragedy.

Some other parts of the book are written from the point of view of an observer who has no direct involvement in the scene. The background information on the family and facts are written in pure impartial narrative form, as is the last love scene. The impartial view, which purely relates the facts, brings the story together, making it real and believable. The author uses this style to create an exquisite atmosphere and a beautiful but very sad story. Roy imbues the plot with a mixture of innocence, love and malicious manipulation. Roy employs is the capitalization of certain words and phrases to give them certain significance. Similarly, the children will restate things that the adults say in a new phonetic way, disjoining and recombining words. This echoes the children's way of looking at the world differently from the grown-ups that surround them. They place significance on words and ideas differently from the adults, thereby creating a new way of viewing the world around them. They pick up on certain feelings and ideas that the adults around them either fail or refuse to recognize, and give new significance to things that the adults may or may not ignore for their own purposes. The children use and repeat these phrases throughout the story so that the phrases themselves gain independence and new representational meanings in subsequent uses. Setting The story is set in the small town of Ayemenem in the Kerala province, southwest India. The main part of the plot takes place in 1969, a time when the caste system in India was still very strongly imbedded. It is also the time of increased awareness around the world and a peak of communist ideology and influence. India is a very complex society with various cultural and

religious habits and beliefs. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims share the same space. Society is divided not only by the very strict caste system but also by class-consciousness. There are a number of languages spoken in India, but the higher classes make a point of speaking English, sending their sons to study in England and adopting certain English habits. Kerala, where the story is set itself has a complex social setup with Hindus, Muslims and Christians having lifestyle and traditions different from each other. It also has a considerably larger number of Christian populations compared to other parts of India, predominantly Saint Thomas Christians. The God of Small Things is a book about India, not India as seen by the western world or by western standards. This is a story about the real India, beautifully written by one of its own nationals. The book is filled with deep emotion that is closely tied to place. Language The book is written in English because English is the most commonly used language throughout India, and it is the natural language for Arundhati Roy to write in. Throughout the book, there are also a few sentences written in the Indian Malayalam language. The author makes very free use of the English language in this book. She uses languages in a completely unique and fascinating manner. Sometimes her writing takes on a poetic dimension. Playing with words and phrases, she manages to give a whole new dimension to the language. At times during the book, Roy's writing expresses a child's thought process. Using a child's language, Roy gives readers whole new and interesting definitions of people, objects and facts. For example: Aristocrats were people who didn't blow spit bubbles or shiver their legs.

Roy writes as if she were thinking. Sometimes thoughts ramble on illogically, and other times random thoughts and remembrances just melt together. It is this free style of writing that makes the book convey such a depth of emotions. Structure The book is divided into twenty-one chapters. Some chapters have subdivisions in them. Other chapters are very short. The story is not told in a linear time frame. The author takes the reader back and forth from the present to the past. Facts, thoughts and recollections are interrupted in one chapter and further expanded on a few chapters later. At certain points, Roy follows no sentence or paragraph rules. This deviation from a formal style serves to enhance the atmosphere of the book. In the first chapter, Roy gives readers an outline of the story. The other chapters have no chronological order. The last chapter, depicting the love scene, is actually the middle of the story itself. It ends the telling of a very sad story in a beautiful way. There is no real end to the story itself. The author lets the reader imagine what the future may hold for Rahel and Estha. Will they ever find happiness and how? The author has structured the novel in this way in order to put more emphasis on the events that lead up to the story, the consequences and the characters themselves involved. This is very effectively accomplished. Characters Sophie Mol - pivotal character in the novel Baby Kochamma- manipulative, bitter and mean Rahel and Estha are the protagonist of the story (major characters) Ammu Estha and Rahels mother