Indigenous Identity in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Abstract

The novel The God of Small Things (1996) by Arundhati Roy has been defined by Salman Rushdie as a novel that has been written artistically well. It is a very ambitious novel and the style is quite personal. By using her ambition and personal style Roy challenges indigenous issues and hybridity effortlessly. Through these two subjects we are acquaint with the themes of identity, culture, human relationship, and politics. This paper argues that The God of Small Things exchanges, questions and experiments with identity through symbols that signify identity: language, politics, culture and human relationship. Roy is very observant in presenting her narrative; but she hides her judgment, and leaves us to make our own conclusions. The representation of the characters’ social class is examined using definition of social class and maintained by aspects of social class. The influence of the characters’ social class is studied using the consequences concept of social class. The main characters’ social class is represented through several points