2022 IB Diploma Extended Essays

How does Arundhati Roy explore the impacts of cultural values on the lives of individuals in ‘The God of Small Things’? values of communism, as he believes getting rid of Velutha would garner him support. In the article ‘Reading Arundhati Roy Politically’, Aijaz Ahmad criticises Roy’s representation of communism within Kerala, stating that she “dismisses the actually constituted field of politics as either irrelevant or a zone of bad faith”. There is merit to this claim, as developing the head of the communist party as corrupt is indicative of communism being ‘a zone of bad faith’, and the fact that communism plays little part in the climax of the novel, namely the death of Velutha, demonstrates how Roy, despite purposefully setting the novel in Kerala during the rise of communism, deems its impact, within the plot of the novel, as irrelevant. While Ahmad actively criticises Roy’s depiction communism within Kerala, in ‘In Desire and In Death’, Brinda Bose, while believing that “Ahmad’s criticism of Roy’s apparent lack of knowledge… of the contemporary left-wing politics of Kerala… is valid”, suggests that “one’s personal politics is often an extension of, but always greater than, one’s [political] positioning”. Bose emphasises that a political reading of the novel should not be confined to explicit political references, but rather should include how the personal is often political. Specifically, rather than the corrupt nature of the communist party functioning as a value judgement of communism, by considering the overarching themes of the novel, this portrayal of Pillai serves instead to highlight how the flaws in Keralan society itself cause immoral actions to occur. While Kerala may be a changing society, traditional caste values are still present, restricting the freedoms of Velutha and creating difficulties in the implementation of communist ideals. Therefore, while Ahmad sees the surface-level dismissal of communist characters as a failure to engage with political ideas entirely, Bose considers Roy’s use of “personal politics”, suggesting that radical political ideals struggle to be realised in a complex society shaped by traditional values. Therefore, Roy explores how the communist party utilises the traditional caste system to demonstrate that, even within changing societies, powerful figures may still maintain discriminatory traditional values, a detriment to the life of Velutha as an individual.

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