Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things: A Glance on Style

Abstract

The paper aims at capturing the style of 1997 Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy's maiden novel The God of Small Things. Roy has used a variety of figurative devices in her work and inadvertently woven magic into the novel.  It seems as if Roy is a painter and in her palette she has heaps and heaps of words to paint with in the canvas of her book. Arundhati's  inadvertent ease  with  words – pouring  like  incessant  rain  in  a  hot  June  month  tell  a  heart-rending  tale – unleashes  a  new  world  for  the  reader – a  world  full  of  harsh, stark  realty, bitter-sweet  tragedies  of  human  life  and  the  irrevocable  fatal  consequences  thereon. She  has  inserted  in  it  shapes  and  patterns  along  with  sound  effects  with  much  precision. The  reader  wallows  in  the abysmal depths  of  the  book, completely  forgetting  the  world  outside. Reading  it  is  like  going  through  an  actual  experience. The  novel  is  full of  puzzles  and  paradoxes. Though  the  author  does  all  the  imagining  for  the  reader, the latter  remains  on  his  toes  throughout, fitting  the  different  blocks  of  the  plot-building  into  place.