Unfolding the Unsaid: Representing Silence in
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
(1997)
Dr. Himakshi
Kalita
Assistant Professor,
Department of English
Mahapurusha Srimanta Sankaradeva Viswavidyalaya,
Assam, India.
Abstract:
Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things (1997) is a tale of love and
violence. It is a tale of transgression, suffering and trauma. The novel is
remarkable for its complex storytelling and linguistic affluence. Despite the
lavish language of the novel, silence plays a crucial role in conveying that
essence which is beyond the realm of language and cannot be represented through
the confinement of language. At some precise points in the novel, language is
intentionally abandoned. The narrative style oscillates between linguistic
restraint and linguistic exuberance. The themes of the novel vary from silence,
forbidden love and societal constraints. The present paper attempts to explore
the discursive flow of silence on various aspects. The paper is analytical,
descriptive and theoretical in nature.
Keywords:
Silence, Suffering, Language, Trauma, Quietness, Resistance
The God of Small
Things (1997)
is Arundhati Roy’s first novel and it won the Booker Prize. The novel is set in
Kerala in the 1960s. The novel narrates the tragic history of Ayemenem House
through flashbacks in a zigzag manner. Ammu, the daughter of Mammachi and
Pappachi and the sister of Chacko, goes through various ups and downs in life
including her marriage and divorce with Baba. Ammu’s twin children, Estha and
Rahel are tragic characters in the novel who face various ordeals in life. The
death of Sophie Mol, daughter of Chacko and Margaret, is the culminating point
in the novel which leads to incidents after incidents. In the whirlpool of
events, Velutha, Ammu’s lover dies a tragic death. Ammu herself dies at the age
of thirty-one, after being banished from the Ayemenem House. The power dynamics
of politics and social hierarchy is highlighted. The scheming nature of Baby
Kochamma, the aunt of Ammu and grand aunt of Rahel and Estha, is also showed
up. Throughout the narrative of the novel, silence has been used as a powerful
narrative device like a pause in a song that builds tension and shows the
emotions of the characters. Silence as a tool says more than words in a
literary piece that conveys unspoken feelings or trauma shows power dynamics or
oppression and creates atmosphere or mood. In moments of silence, bigger
meaning lies beneath the surface. In The
God of Small Things (1997), silence as a narrative style is intentional and
layered. The author uses it to shape how the story unfolds and how readers experience
it.
Arundhati
Roy’s booker prize winning novel The God
of Small Things (1997) well articulates the inherent inadequacy of the
language in dealing with the most intimate and urgent affairs in human life.
One reason for this inadequacy is that “there is no one-to-one correspondence
between words and what we experience. As soon as we use nouns or any words we
recreate a fixed reality incompatible with the actual events” (Papin, 1256).
The non-linear, broken narrative mirrors silence----gaps and pauses between
scenes force readers to piece together meaning, just like characters piece
together their lives from unspoken truths. Sentences like “Edges, Borders,
Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their
separate horizons. Short creatures with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry
End. Gentle half-moons have gathered under their eyes and they are as old as
Ammu was when she died” (Roy, 3) convey the inseparable existence of Rahel,
Estha and Ammu. Sentences like “the confusion lay in a deeper, more secret
place” (Roy, 2) expresses the unspeakable grief and trauma experienced by all
of them. The narrative of the novel adequately expresses the unsaid emotions
and unvoiced pain of the characters through silence. Descriptions of rain,
river, and small sounds fill spaces where dialogue would be, turning silence
into a mood-setting device that’s almost tangible. Sentences like “....it was a
skyblue day in December sixty-nine (the nineteen silent). It was the kind of
time in the life of a family when something happens to nudge its hidden
morality from its resting place and make it bubble to the surface and float for
a while” (Roy, 35) represent instances of such atmospheric pauses or silences.
Rahel’s hidden grief is merged with the stillness of the river Meenachal when
the novelist describes thus: “Years later, when Rahel returned to the river, it
greeted her with a ghastly skull’s smile, with holes where teeth had been, and
a limp hand raised from a hospital bed” (Roy, 124). Arundhati Roy highlights
social taboos and oppression by leaving things unsaid and what is forbidden to
speak about becomes louder through its absence and silence invites the readers
to read between the lines, making the experience more intimate and haunting.
The readers are able to sense and detect narrative whispers scattered
throughout the novel.
Nothing
is more incomprehensible than the “discourse of a man for whom the language is
only used to make himself understood” (Almansi, 92). Velutha’s silence can be
interpreted in this regard on intertwined levels. Velutha is conditioned to
stay quiet and invisible as a Dalit or Paravan. Society trains him to speak
only when spoken to, and even then his voice is dismissed, “If he touched her
he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he
couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win. Who was he, the one-armed
man?.....The God of Loss? The God of Small Things?” (Roy, 217). Velutha craves
for language; a real one, but he is betrayed and repudiated from it. His words
did not seem to matter to the person he spoke to. It was like his voice twisted
around him, leaving him feeling confused. The silence of Velutha is merged with
his subaltern attitude in The God of
Small Things (1997). Velutha was accused of the murder of Sophie Mol
without any evidence. When Velutha approached Comrade Pillai, the local
communist party leader, he was not offered any word of consolation. Rather,
Velutha’s conversations with Comrade Pillai represented the futility of the persistent
effort of speaking in an alien tongue. The novelist remarks, “Velutha heard his
own voice beat back at him as though it had hit a wall. He tried to explain
what had happened, but he could hear himself slipping into incoherence....Once
again Velutha heard himself say something which made no difference to the man
he spoke to. His own voice coiled around him like a snake” (Roy, 287). Velutha
is desperately trying to seek words, feel then in his mouth and ascribe some
meaning to them, hungering for words that will equip him in some way. Velutha
is actually at a point where language has deserted and disowned him making him
realize the finitude of his social position in addition to the finitude of his
existence. Silence may “become an effective rhetorical practice or
communication tactic when people choose to be silent for a specific purpose”
(Medina, 565). Velutha’s silence is
powerful. When “silence becomes rhetorical, it is intentional since it reflects
a meaning” (Enos, 43). After the police raid, Velutha is beaten and killed. In
his final moments, he doesn’t scream, doesn’t beg-----his silence becomes a
stark contrast to the brutal noise of violence. It underscores how his life and
death are reduced to a silenced body.
The
narrative technique that Arundhati Roy uses in the novel is of a fragmented
style. The fragmented narrative style of the novelist often mirrors Velutha’s
broken voice. The novelist simply describes Velutha’s perspective, his labour,
and his movements without any dialogue which highlights what is left unsaid,
“He left no ripples in the water. No footprints on the shore....He was walking
swiftly now, towards the Heart of Darkness. As lonely as a wolf” (Roy, 290).
Velutha’s death signifies how the precarious and the disadvantaged are subjugated
and forced into silence not because they cannot speak but because they are
culturally and politically denied a language to articulate. Silence is used as
a politically constituted construct to look at the discourse it leads to,
shapes and displaces. The novelist accurately delineates, “Velutha’s
disembodied, piping voice stayed on and sent out slogans....The voice went on.
Sentences disaggregated into phrases. Words....Another edifice constructed by
the human mind, decimated by human nature” (Roy, 287).
The God of Small
Things
(1997) is a tale of love and violence. The love between Ammu and Velutha is
evolved through silence, “it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as
plain to see as the water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel as
the heat on a hot day, or the tug of a fish on a taut line. So obvious that no
one noticed” (Roy, 176). The warm love between Ammu and Velutha is a retort to
societal rules which strangle the spontaneity of love. The novelist writes,
“History’s fiends returned to claim them. To re-wrap them in its old, scarred
pelt and drag them back to where they really lived. Where the Love Laws lay
down who should be loved. And how. And how much” (Roy, 177). Silence can be
strategic when it is used as an instrument in negotiations, debates,
interpersonal relationships, and even broader social and political contexts.
Its “effectiveness lies in its ambiguity. It can be interpreted in a multitude
of ways, fostering uncertainty and prompting introspection in the other party.
This ambiguity can be leveraged to gain an advantage, create space for
reflection, or even exert pressure without uttering a single word” (Jung, 299).
The love scenes between Ammu and Velutha exactly articulates the same, “She
kissed his closed eyes and stood up. Velutha with his back against the mangosteen
tree watched her walk away” (Roy, 340). Velutha’s love for Ammu is unspeakable.
The moment he tries to break that silence, the whole system erupts, turning his
quiet into a dangerous secret: “As though they knew already that for each
tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they
knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be
taken” (Roy, 335). Their love is written in silence. Silence operates as
resistance. By not protesting openly, Velutha’s quiet endurance and his silent
love for Ammu became a subtle rebellion against a system that expects him to be
voiceless. Velutha’s silence is not cowardice. It is the only weapon left in a
world that has already silenced him by birth.
The
silence of Ammu in The God of Small
Things (1997) is a powerful, layered narrative device. The silence of Ammu
reflects the social constraints placed on her as a woman in a patriarchal, caste-obsessed
society. Silence is “a symbol of oppression, while liberation is speaking out,
making contact ....It is an uneasy feeling that your words are not yours at
all---they have been somehow co-opted or taken away and turned against you...it
is a powerful resource that the oppressor has appropriated, giving back only
the shadow which women need to function in a patriarchal society. From this
point of view, it is crucial for women to reclaim language” (Cameron, 8). At
times, Ammu’s quietness is a subtle act of defiance refusing to conform or
explain her to a world that misunderstands her. To fill the void of silence in
her life Ammu had midnight swims in the river Meenachal and she used to listen
songs on her radio as “human humming could have been a contact method that
early humans used to avoid silence” (Jordania, 274). According to Jordania,
humans find prolonged silence distressing and this may help explain why lone
humans in relative sonic isolation feel a sense of comfort from humming,
whistling, talking to themselves, or having the TV or radio on. Ammu is often
forced to hold back her feelings, desires, and anger to avoid conflict or
punishment and the act of listening songs on radio helps her to alleviate the
suppression.
Silence
emerges as eloquent in the very text and though this silence lacks form, its
functions and meanings vary according to the situation. Silence is an important
manifestation of language in this novel. Silence is manifested through gap,
pause, lapse and interval. Ammu’s silence in The God of Small Things (1997) is a powerful narrative device that
underscores repression, forbidden love and personal suffering. Arundhati Roy
poignantly illustrates the devastating effects of societal oppression and the
quiet strength required to resist it through silent rebellion. Ammu married
Baba and divorced him. She came to her parent’s home with her twins Rahel and
Estha where the mother and both the children were treated with utmost
indifference. Ammu’s suffering is immense. Ammu is trapped in a toxic marriage
and societal expectations struggling to find her own identity. The novel
highlights her pain, desires and the suffocating norms she faces. Ammu is a
woman ahead of her time craving love and freedom in a society that suffocates
her. Ammu’s silence is resistance and rebellion against the society that never
allows her to become the individual that she deserves. The novelist describes
the perception of the society towards Ammu that “a woman that they had already
damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on
the days that the radio played Ammu’s songs, people avoided her, made little
loops around that it was best to just Let Her Be” (Roy, 44). Ammu “subscribed
wholeheartedly to the commonly held view that a married daughter had no
position in her parent’s home. As for a divorced daughter....she had no
position anywhere at all” (Roy, 45). Silence, in the case of Ammu, is a
palpable presence that shapes her life. Silence invites the readers to read
between the lines making her experience more intimate and haunting. Her silence
is not empty. It is loaded with meaning, shaping how the readers understand her
character and the tragic forces around her. At times, her silence is deafening
showing her powerlessness and grief.
The
power hierarchy is embedded in the politics of language and speech. Foucault
establishes a relationship between silence and discourse: “There is no binary
division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must
try to determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who
can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which type of discourse
is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is
not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that
underlie and permeate discourses” (Foucault, 61). The silence in the novel The God of Small Things (1997) takes on
a life of its own. In the novel’s narrative, silence is brought to life
supporting the unseen and the unnoticed forces of existence. Silence is
constructed discursively and serves as a reservoir for the accumulation of
meaning.
Silence
qualifies as an utterance from the Bakhtinian perspective. According to
Bakhtin, “silence, word and pause together form an unfinalizable unified and
continuous structure of significance which is in dialogue with pre-existing
discourse. Hence, silence is reinforced as a form of utterance” (Bakhtin,
73). Denying silence the status of
utterance might reinforce the rigid monologic form of language which Bakhtin
repeatedly criticized. Estha’s silence in the novel is haunting. Estha had
always been a quiet child and so on one could pinpoint with any degree of
accuracy exactly when he had stopped talking altogether. It had been a gradual
winding down as though he had simply run out of conversation and had nothing
left to say. Estha’s silence was never awkward, intrusive and noisy. It was not
“an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of aestivation, a dormancy,
the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the
dry season, except that in Estha’s case the dry season looked as though it
would last forever” (Roy, 10). The novelist uses accurate words and phrases do
define Estha’s silence. Estha had acquired over time “the ability to blend into
the background of wherever he was----into bookshelves, gardens, curtains,
doorways, streets-----to appear inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained
eye. It usually took strangers a while to notice him even when they were in the
same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke.
Some never noticed at all. Estha occupied very little space in the world” (Roy,
11). Estha’s silence is a coping mechanism---a way to survive the unspeakable
by refusing to name it. The trauma is so deep that language cannot hold it and
so he locks it inside. When Estha is taken to the police station after Velutha
is brutally beaten up, manipulated by the family members and by the police into
looking at Velutha behind the bars and made to utter a single word ‘yes’ that
will confirm Velutha’s identity as having hands in the death of Sophie Mol,
“The inspector asked his question. Estha’s mouth said yes. Childhood tiptoed
out. Silence slid in like a bolt” (Roy, 320). One word takes away Estha’s
innocence locking away his childhood forever. Estha’s silence emerges from the
horror of his helplessness and vulnerability in the face of language and the
devastation it has led to. In the chapter named Abhilash Talkies, the
Orangedrink Lemondrink Man manipulated Estha with his words and sexually abused
him. Estha’s open rejection of language stems from the fear of the manipulative
ability of the spoken word. Once the quietness arrived, “it stayed and spread
in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms....It
stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and
naked. Unspeakable. Numb....Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the
world” (Roy, 12). Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away and
entombed somewhere deep in the folds of the fact of it.
In
a world that tries to define the marginalized by caste, by family, by shame,
silence becomes a quiet rebellion. The characters refuse to participate in the
narratives others impose on them. By not speaking, the characters deny others
the power to control the story. Silence is structured into the fragmented
timeline of the novel. Silence creates gaps forcing the readers to piece
together meaning from what is left unsaid.
Works
Cited
Primary Source:
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things, Penguin Random House India, 1997.
Secondary Sources:
Almansi, Guido. Harold Pinter’s Idiom of Lies, Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies, ed. C.W.E. Bingsley. London: Edward Arnold. 1992.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, C. Emerson, M. Holoquist, Eds., & V. W. McGee, Trans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Cameron, Deborah. Feminism and Linguistic Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, 1992.
Enos, Theresa. Encyclopaedia of Rhetoric and Composition. Routledge. New York, 2011.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, New York: Random, 1990.
Jordania, Joseph. “Times to Fight and Times to Relax: Singing and Humming at the Beginnings of Human Evolutionary History.”Kadmos.1: 272-277. Doi.10.32859/kadmos/1/252-276.
Jung, Theo. “Mind the Gaps: Silences, Political Communication, and the Role of Expectations.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. 24(3): 296-315. Doi: 10.1080/13698230.2020.1796329.
Medina, Jose. “The Meanings of Silence: Wittgensteinian Contextualism and Poliphony.” Inquiry.47 (6): 562-579. Doi.10.1080/00201740410004304
Papin, Liliane. This is Not a Universe: Metaphor, Language, and Representation, London: Methuen, 1992.