TABOO TRANSGRESSION

Taboo transgression

Taboo transgression

Introduction

The winner of the Booker Prize in 1997 (making the author the first Indian citizen to win that prize), this novel set in the tropical south of India in the sweltering and fecund province of Kerala, in the town of Ayemenem. The focus of the novel centers on the decaying Ipes family, Anglophile followers of Syrian Christianity. Roy develops a recursive structure for her story, sketching in the essence of a tragic event in the first chapter and then revisiting it repeatedly, but with differing emphases and nuances, in subsequent chapters. Her prose style, admired by some and irksome to others, features playful disruptions of sentences and paragraphs, including random capitalization, idiosyncratic spelling tricks, and made-up combinations of old words to yield new effects (Durix & Durix, 2002).

Discussion

In addition to its recursive narration, the novel features several kinds of doubling. There are twin protagonists, Estha Ipes (a boy) and Rahel Ipes (a girl), and they get examined at two different times in their lives, at the age of seven in 1969 and the age of 31 in 1994, after they have separated for 24 years. Their cousin visiting from England in 1969, Sophie Mol, is a key figure in the tragedy that leads to the separation of the twins, but Roy's light handling of other parts of the novel produces an unusual combination of comedy and pathos. Additionally, the twins' mother, Ammu, provides a further level of complication in her breaking of the social barrier erected between higher and lower castes when she chooses to love a man in the "untouchable" or pariah caste. Sexual transgression in turn becomes a central theme in the way it can serve both as a bridge between isolated individuals and a weapon particularly wounding to the innocent. Recovering from wounds of various kinds, including guilt, becomes the special challenge for Estha and Rahel.

Taboo:

The word "caste" derived from the Portuguese world "casta" which means pure or unadulterated (sharing a Latin root, with the word 'chaste'). The rigid caste system, which provided the individual with different cultural apparel, became evident in India in the early Vedic age. They put a ban on the taking of food cooked by the Sudras, and the inter-caste marriage totally banned. It is in this historical perspective that Roy treats the inter-caste love affairs of Ammu and Velutha and Chacko and Kochamma. The intense anxiety of Vellya ...