The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

After concluding the book, I found myself seeing Roy showing that different cultures are not as different as they seem to be. At least, after they have been assimilated anyway. When she tells her story about they way things are in India, how people there are separated by class, is this not the case with the same country that it seems to want to be like? The people's culture there is it's own, but it seems to be blended into a western idea of imperialism. It wants what we have or imitates in a way that it might not know how similar it already is or as become. India being a far East country and Orientalism which is by Edward Said, touches on the interplay of cultures or more exact, the dominate culture and how it can change one's society not so much for the better may I add. When reading Small Things, you see how Roy shows the fascination of India and its people with the Western culture. The characters reflect how once again, the West can influence its greatness upon people because we seem to be the country without problems or the country that seem to be more right, but is this more because of that power of influence that we can impose our will upon people? One thing that jumps out to me about this story is how wanting to be something you are not, being fascinated by another culture too deeply, can be very harmful to you and the people around you. The influences was spreading from the government, with their bigotry or separation of classes, which seemed to be in part base on color? Take the character, Velutha. here is a guy in which the book mentions how he had a brain fit for engineering, but was trained to be a carpenter, why? Was this because he was a "touchable" and was look on as beneath that potential, so he was forced to accept, in part the confinements of his situation? Speaking of confinements, his love for Ammu and her children played an interesting tale about how close India was and is to the same country it wants to be, America. Thanks to this separation, these two could not be together, publicly and once their relationship was found out, things got a lot worse. It cause the lose of two lives(Velutha and Sophie Mol), the destruction of an immediate family(Ammu and her children), not to mention any sort of reconciliation from a former couple(Margaret and Chacko). When one simulates one's culture, not only does one take the good, but apparently the bad as well. What I would like to take from this book is a sense that what Roy was trying to tell was that when you simulates into a culture or try to bring one into your own, you must be careful not to overlook the dangers of this discourse. This pattern can lead to a sense of self-destruction of not only people, but a culture as well. I do not think being a hybrid of a culture is a bad thing, but you must stay true to one's self and not let outside influences dictate what you are truly about.