Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: Reformulation of language and style in a postcolonial setting

Abstract

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a story of parti ti on, immigrati on, love and trauma. While exploring the problems of identi ty of her characters in a postcolonial setti ng in India, Roy also reformulates her characters’ use of English in an idiosyncrati c way. This study, therefore, analyses The God of Small Things from the perspecti ve of postcolonial theory in terms of linguisti c and cultural hybridity. It also att empts to explore the novel as a postcolonial text that foregrounds the impacts of imperial past in parti ti oning the country not only into two diff erent nati ons but also dividing people’s lives into two halves and leaving them to lifelong misery.