Sibling Relations in The God of Small Things In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (156) says that “there are things that you can’t do – like writing letters to a part of yourself.”
This statement, emerging from the mind of
the female twin named Rahel, establishes the theme of the novel with respect to the intimate relationship between twins. Despite having been born “from separate but simultaneously fertilized eggs,” or being dizygotic or fraternal rather than identical twins, Rahel and her brother Estha are so intertwined psychically that even the science into which the brother Ethappen enters does not separate them (4).
This brief essay
will examine the theme of constant communication and the inescapable linkage between twins as this theme is presented in Roy’s novel. Estha and Rahel “never did look much like each other” and the confusion regarding their synergies “lay in a deeper, more secret place (4).”
As young children, these twins are described
as thinking of themselves “together as me and separately, individually, as We or Us.
As though they were a rare breed of
Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities (4-5).”
So intimately intertwined are the psyches of these two
individuals that Rahel actually has a memory “of waking up one night giggling at Estha’s funny dream (5).”
These two children, born to a lonely mother who takes a lover, surrounded by adult relatives described as difficult at best, and subject to many different family and personal tragedies, are exceptional in their youth because of their shared lives.
Together, they are united in the face of family
traumas and are mutually supportive. This young couple – and it is quite clear that they function as a couple for much of their youth – share various “Terrors” as they attempt to navigate family relationships. They are a brother and sister “who had never been shy of each other’s bodies, but they had never been old enough (together) to know what shyness was (88).”
Ultimately, the siblings, in their
separate identities, achieve as they mature, a sense of distance from one another.
The normal adolescent development is forever
changed when Estha enters into a period of silence. Estha is described as someone who “had always been a quiet child, so no one could pinpoint with any degree of accuracy exactly when… he had stopped talking. altogether (12).”
Stopped talking
The arrival of quietness is what distances
the boy from his sister, striping “his thoughts of the words that described them” and permitting him “to withdraw from the world (13).”
Rahel, in contrast, brings to her brother “the
sound of passing trains, and the light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat (16).”
In other words, his
sister’s presence opens the closed gates that have prevented Estha from speaking and from expressing himself freely. The young boy is sent away from the family, but ultimately is “returned,” reunited with his sister when they are older.
As
Roy (149) describes this, it is “as though that was what twins were meant for. books.”
To be borrowed and returned.
Like library
In this return, what both of the twins and particularly
Rahel discover is that “separately, the two of them are no longer what They were or ever thought They’d be.
Ever.
Their
lives have a size and a shape now. Estha has his and Rahel hers (5).” Though it may not be necessary for twins who are separated to communicate with one another verbally, what Roy (5) seems to suggest is that there are events and actions that can ultimately diminish the bonds that exist between twins or at the very least, permit them to have separate identities and separate lives.
As Roy (192) puts it, “Things can change in a day.”
Despite the fact that their mother has asked them to “promise me that you will always love each other (214),” these twins learn that certain kinds of love cannot be expressed between twins despite the naturalness that their intimacy may engender. separation.
Seeing each other naked opens up the reality of Estha recognizes that his sister has “grown into
their mother’s skin (283)” and that his love for her has been
transformed into love for his mother who died far too young. The sexual attraction between the twins is ultimately buried because it must be. The secret that the twins share is ultimately revealed: all three of them bonded by the certain, separate knowledge that they had loved a man to death (307).
This is because the twins
and their mother, Ammu, together have been so involved with a man that they are responsible for his death.
So intimate is the
relationship between this set of twins (310) is that “they were strangers who had met in a chance encounter. each other before life began.”
They had known
The cost of living is separation.
In this particular story, following the action is made complex by Roy’s movement back and forward in time.
It is quite
clear that having been constantly together when they were young, Estha and Rahel have moved apart, separated by their shared memory of violence and betrayal.
It is also clear that they
think of themselves and are portrayed by Roy (182) as “a pair of actors trapped in a recondite play with no hint of plot or narrative.
Stumbling through their parts, nursing someone
else’s sorrow.
Greeting someone else’s grief.”
Having been
responsible for the death of a man, Estha moves into silence and Rahel moves into academia where she displays “waywardness and almost fierce lack of ambition (19).”
Where Estha moves into silence, Rahel “drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts toward an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge (19).”
Both of these twins are afflicted with
personal despair that permeates their beings and which nevertheless seems to underscore the fact that the bond between them can be diminished, but not settled.
Separately and
together, “they would grow up grappling with ways of living with what happened (54).” At the outset of this report, the idea was advanced that it is impossible to write a letter to a part of yourself.
In the
relationship between twins, such letters may not need to be written at all.
The relationship between Rahel and Estha is
such that communication, even in the face of enormous anguish is not necessary for understanding.
Estha and Rahel know who they
are, what they did, and how their actions influenced the actions of others.
Consequently, they find that maintaining a sense of
unified “Me” to be in many ways to be impossible and in other ways, inescapable. This report has considered one aspect of being a twin and its impact upon individuals.
The family constellation in which
Rahel and Estha are positioned is in no sense typical of ordinary families.
However, the twins in their connection to
one another may very well be exemplars of the intimacy that
occurs between two separate individuals who share a single womb for nine months. Work Cited Roy, Arundhathi.
The God of Small Things.
Random House, 1997.
New York:
