God of Small Things
Reading novel can be a study on certain society in certain time and place. It is because a novel is not born from inanition, it has some phenomena, worldviews and reasons that become the background of its present. This idea is the main supporter of studying the extrinsic elements of the novel. And one of the ways for doing it, is by applying the sociological approach in analyzing the novel.
Arundhaty Roy’s The God of Small Things is the novel that captures many social values of Indian society. This novel that is set in Kerala (India) after the colonial era describes clearly the culture of Indian society and how it influences many aspects of the society life, including the family life, the neighborhood relationship, political condition and so on. At least, there are three cultural values can be reached after reading this novel, they are about the caste, gender, and cultural transformation in post-colonial era.
The analysis in this paper is extrinsic study of Arundhaty Roy’s The God of Small Things. So, the discussion will be sourced from both novel and some literatures outside the novel. The discussion hopefully can serve the cultural values of India at the time of post-colonial India so that we can examine the influence of the caste system in postcolonial India and investigate the cultural conflicts or differences caused by this system, to re-think Roy’s appreciation of the imperial language, and also to explore how the dominated/colonized culture uses the tools of the dominant/colonizer to resist cultural hegemony.
DISCUSSION
1. Caste in India
Sometimes, people assume that caste is similar to the class. But, according to Dirks (1997 in__________), they are actually different. Class related to the social economic of the people, while caste is the sign ofIndia’s fundamental religiosity, a marker ofIndia’s essential difference from the West and from modernity at large. Caste is one of the traditions that distinguishesIndiafrom other nations, just
Arundhaty Roy’s The God of Small Things is the novel that captures many social values of Indian society. This novel that is set in Kerala (India) after the colonial era describes clearly the culture of Indian society and how it influences many aspects of the society life, including the family life, the neighborhood relationship, political condition and so on. At least, there are three cultural values can be reached after reading this novel, they are about the caste, gender, and cultural transformation in post-colonial era.
The analysis in this paper is extrinsic study of Arundhaty Roy’s The God of Small Things. So, the discussion will be sourced from both novel and some literatures outside the novel. The discussion hopefully can serve the cultural values of India at the time of post-colonial India so that we can examine the influence of the caste system in postcolonial India and investigate the cultural conflicts or differences caused by this system, to re-think Roy’s appreciation of the imperial language, and also to explore how the dominated/colonized culture uses the tools of the dominant/colonizer to resist cultural hegemony.
DISCUSSION
1. Caste in India
Sometimes, people assume that caste is similar to the class. But, according to Dirks (1997 in__________), they are actually different. Class related to the social economic of the people, while caste is the sign ofIndia’s fundamental religiosity, a marker ofIndia’s essential difference from the West and from modernity at large. Caste is one of the traditions that distinguishesIndiafrom other nations, just