The God of Small Things Literary Devices

Explanation and Analysis—The Lion Tamer:

In the later years of her life, Baby Kochamma spends her time gardening. The novel describes her gardening expertise and diligence with a metaphor and simile:

Baby Kochamma spent her afternoons in her garden. In sari and gum boots. She wielded an enormous pair of hedge shears in her bright-orange gardening gloves. Like a lion tamer she tamed twisting vines and nurtured bristling cacti. She limited bonsai plants and pampered rare orchids. She waged war on the weather. She tried to grow edelweiss and Chinese guava.

In this passage, the novel compares Baby Kochamma to a lion tamer, as she gardens and tends to the unruly plants. Like lions, her plants run wild with abandon. Baby Kochamma's penchant for gardening is ironic, though: She spends her time bringing plants to life while she lets her own life and family house fall apart around her.

There is also a metaphor in how Baby Kochamma "wage[s] war" on weather. She is not waging a literal war, of course, but this metaphorical language illustrates Baby Kochamma's toughness in the face of adversity, the same toughness she displays in her life-long, unrequited love for Father Mulligan. Baby Kochamman is willing to do the hard and selfish thing—therefore, it is unsurprising that she betrays Ammu and the twins to save herself in the end.

Explanation and Analysis—Trees as Sea Anemones:

When Rahel looks out the window, she feels the sun on her face, "bright and hot." The novel then uses a metaphor to describe the nature of Ayemenem:

The sun shone through the Plymouth window directly down at Rahel. She closed her eyes and shone back at it. Even behind her eyelids the light was bright and hot. The sky was orange, and the coconut trees were sea anemones waving their tentacles, hoping to trap and eat an unsuspecting cloud.

In this passage, the novel compares the coconut trees to sea anemones, depicting the sky as a sort of ocean-scape. The use of this metaphor further promotes the novel's motif of water and currents. Specifically, the river Meenachal plays an integral role in the storyline (the twins fix up the Old Boat with Velutha, Velutha swims towards Ammu in the water) and in the trauma of the young children (Sophie Mol drowns in the currents). Before the trauma, though, the river plays an exciting and curious role in the story, leading the twins to the History House.

This metaphor also demonstrates Rahel's childlike tendencies to bring inanimate objects to life, as the sea anemones—or coconut trees—are waving to the world and hoping to eat the clouds. This passage appears to be written in the 1993 timeline, proving that Rahel has never lost her youthful perspective: Ayemenem brings out the child within her.

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Explanation and Analysis—The Millstones:

In Chapter 2, Chacko questions whether the twins should even be his responsibility. He uses a metaphor to express to Ammu the burden they pose on him:

“Stop posing as the children’s Great Savior!” Ammu said. “When it comes down to brass tacks, you don’t give a damn about them. Or me.” “Should I?” Chacko said. “Are they my responsibility?” He said that Ammu and Estha and Rahel were millstones around his neck. […] She and Estha knew about millstones. In Mutiny on the Bounty, when people died at sea, they were wrapped in white sheets and thrown overboard with millstones around their necks so that the corpses wouldn’t float.

At first Chacko metaphorically compares the twins to millstones around his neck, which Rahel recognizes as something given to deadweight sailors. The way in which Rahel and Estha react—with a fact about millstones in order to understand Chacko's meaning—demonstrates their continued, raw curiosity towards the world. However, the way in which millstones are then continuously referenced after this incident shows how truly hurt the twins were by Chacko’s comment.

In Chapter 6, Rahel feels like a burden to her mother and feels like a millstone around Ammu's neck:

Rahel’s mind was full of millstones with bluegrayblue eyes. Ammu loved her even less now.

Rahel describes her mind as “full of millstones” when she realizes that Ammu loves her less for her careless actions. By using this metaphor, Rahel demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the parent-child relationship and how challenging Ammu's life is as a single mother.

When Ammu is locked in her bedroom in Chapter 13, she screams at the twins and calls them the millstones around her neck in a moment of anger:

The careless words she hadn’t meant. “Because of you!” Ammu had screamed. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here! None of this would have happened! I wouldn’t be here! I would have been free! I should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born! You’re the millstones round my neck!”

Ammu explodes and says “careless words she hadn’t meant.” This is the most hurtful instance of the millstone reference, as the comment comes directly from the twins' mother. This millstone reference is also an example of a "small thing" that Rahel and Estha carry with them throughout the story. By the end of the book, the twins are an accumulation of so many small things, including the millstones.

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Explanation and Analysis—Quarter-Boiled:

When Estha goes into the lobby of the movie theater to sing by himself, he encounters the Orangedrink Lemondrink man behind the refreshment counter. The Orangedrink Lemondrink man then sexually assaults Estha, illustrated through imagery and a metaphor:

Then the gristly-bristly face contorted, and Estha’s hand was wet and hot and sticky. It had egg white on it. White egg white. Quarter-boiled.

The lemondrink was cold and sweet. The penis was soft and shriveled like an empty leather change purse. With his dirtcolored rag, the man wiped Estha’s other hand.

This gruesome imagery is tinged with childlike naiveté and innocence. The Orangedrink Lemondrink man asks Estha to hold his penis, which Estha describes using innocent and mundane imagery. Because he is in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable situation, Estha attempts to understand this instance of sexual abuse through everyday occurrences, using banal descriptions. It is also possible that Estha simply does not understand what is happening to him and uses the comparison to a "empty leather change purse" out of necessity. He compares what he sees to what he knows. This explanation also applies to the metaphor comparing the man's semen to "egg white." Only with this metaphor is Estha able to explain his horrific experience at the movie theater; he is seemingly unable to process the traumatic reality of his situation.

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Explanation and Analysis—The Millstones:

In Chapter 2, Chacko questions whether the twins should even be his responsibility. He uses a metaphor to express to Ammu the burden they pose on him:

“Stop posing as the children’s Great Savior!” Ammu said. “When it comes down to brass tacks, you don’t give a damn about them. Or me.” “Should I?” Chacko said. “Are they my responsibility?” He said that Ammu and Estha and Rahel were millstones around his neck. […] She and Estha knew about millstones. In Mutiny on the Bounty, when people died at sea, they were wrapped in white sheets and thrown overboard with millstones around their necks so that the corpses wouldn’t float.

At first Chacko metaphorically compares the twins to millstones around his neck, which Rahel recognizes as something given to deadweight sailors. The way in which Rahel and Estha react—with a fact about millstones in order to understand Chacko's meaning—demonstrates their continued, raw curiosity towards the world. However, the way in which millstones are then continuously referenced after this incident shows how truly hurt the twins were by Chacko’s comment.

In Chapter 6, Rahel feels like a burden to her mother and feels like a millstone around Ammu's neck:

Rahel’s mind was full of millstones with bluegrayblue eyes. Ammu loved her even less now.

Rahel describes her mind as “full of millstones” when she realizes that Ammu loves her less for her careless actions. By using this metaphor, Rahel demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the parent-child relationship and how challenging Ammu's life is as a single mother.

When Ammu is locked in her bedroom in Chapter 13, she screams at the twins and calls them the millstones around her neck in a moment of anger:

The careless words she hadn’t meant. “Because of you!” Ammu had screamed. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here! None of this would have happened! I wouldn’t be here! I would have been free! I should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born! You’re the millstones round my neck!”

Ammu explodes and says “careless words she hadn’t meant.” This is the most hurtful instance of the millstone reference, as the comment comes directly from the twins' mother. This millstone reference is also an example of a "small thing" that Rahel and Estha carry with them throughout the story. By the end of the book, the twins are an accumulation of so many small things, including the millstones.

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Explanation and Analysis—The God of Small Things:

When Ammu wakes up from a dream about "the God of Small Things," she first wonders who he could be. Slowly, she realizes his identity, using a metaphor to compare Velutha to "the God of Small Things":

Somehow, by not mentioning his name, she knew that she had drawn him into the tousled intimacy of that blue cross-stitch afternoon and the song from the tangerine transistor. By not mentioning his name, she sensed that a pact had been forged between her Dream and the World. And that the midwives of that pact were, or would be, her sawdust-coated two-egg twins.

She knew who he was—the God of Loss, the God of Small Things. Of course she did.

In this passage, Ammu compares Velutha to "the God of Loss" and "the God of Small Things," creating a motif that is subsequently used throughout the novel. The repeating metaphor is weaved throughout the story not only to describe Velutha but also to explain the complexity of life. People remember through patterns of small things that accumulate and explain the big things. The small things are what make you love a person, whether it is Estha's puff or Sophie Mol's Made-in-England go-go bag.

Therefore, to compare Velutha to this "God of Small Things" is to make him the true martyr of the novel. As a ruler of memory, loss, love, and life, Velutha brings so much happiness and so much pain to the family. He is the instigator of tragedy and yet the source of excitement.

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Explanation and Analysis—The Millstones:

In Chapter 2, Chacko questions whether the twins should even be his responsibility. He uses a metaphor to express to Ammu the burden they pose on him:

“Stop posing as the children’s Great Savior!” Ammu said. “When it comes down to brass tacks, you don’t give a damn about them. Or me.” “Should I?” Chacko said. “Are they my responsibility?” He said that Ammu and Estha and Rahel were millstones around his neck. […] She and Estha knew about millstones. In Mutiny on the Bounty, when people died at sea, they were wrapped in white sheets and thrown overboard with millstones around their necks so that the corpses wouldn’t float.

At first Chacko metaphorically compares the twins to millstones around his neck, which Rahel recognizes as something given to deadweight sailors. The way in which Rahel and Estha react—with a fact about millstones in order to understand Chacko's meaning—demonstrates their continued, raw curiosity towards the world. However, the way in which millstones are then continuously referenced after this incident shows how truly hurt the twins were by Chacko’s comment.

In Chapter 6, Rahel feels like a burden to her mother and feels like a millstone around Ammu's neck:

Rahel’s mind was full of millstones with bluegrayblue eyes. Ammu loved her even less now.

Rahel describes her mind as “full of millstones” when she realizes that Ammu loves her less for her careless actions. By using this metaphor, Rahel demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the parent-child relationship and how challenging Ammu's life is as a single mother.

When Ammu is locked in her bedroom in Chapter 13, she screams at the twins and calls them the millstones around her neck in a moment of anger:

The careless words she hadn’t meant. “Because of you!” Ammu had screamed. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here! None of this would have happened! I wouldn’t be here! I would have been free! I should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born! You’re the millstones round my neck!”

Ammu explodes and says “careless words she hadn’t meant.” This is the most hurtful instance of the millstone reference, as the comment comes directly from the twins' mother. This millstone reference is also an example of a "small thing" that Rahel and Estha carry with them throughout the story. By the end of the book, the twins are an accumulation of so many small things, including the millstones.

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Explanation and Analysis—A Serene Crocodile:

When Ammu goes down to the river to meet Velutha, she does not see him at first. Velutha is swimming "farther downstream" in the river, as the narrator describes with personification and a fitting metaphor:

Farther downstream in the middle of the river, Velutha floated on his back, looking up at the stars. His paralyzed brother and his one-eyed father had eaten the dinner he had cooked them and were asleep. So he was free to lie in the river and drift slowly with the current. A log. A serene crocodile. Coconut trees bent into the river and watched him float by. Yellow bamboo wept. Small fish took coquettish liberties with him. Pecked him.

The novel compares Velutha to a log or a “serene crocodile” as he drifts and swims down the river. This metaphor paints Velutha as a calm and collected man that subtly attracts the attention of others. He blends in with the background but is always there to help. Therefore, it is unsurprising that Ammu and the kids should feel so drawn towards Velutha and his generosity. Even the coconut trees are personified in this passage, bending down to watch Velutha float by in the river. The coconut trees also create a watchful mood, hinting towards how Vellya Paapen watches Velutha's rendezvous with Ammu and then betrays his own son. The bamboo even weeps, an omen of Velutha's near and harrowing death.

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The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things: Metaphors 6 key examples