The God of Small Things Chapters 4 - 8
The twins are accompanied by Ammu and Baby Kochamma to the theatre to watch The Sound of Music, while Chacko stays at the hotel, where they will be spending the night before going to the airport on the following day. At the theatre, Estha goes unaccompanied to the men’s washroom while Ammu, Baby Kochamma, and Ammu share a moment of tenderness in the washroom as they take turns peeing in the same pot. The family is then guided to the movie theatre by a clerk, but Estha causes a ruckus by singing along with the actors in the movie. Ammu sends him out of the theatre because he is unable to stop himself. Estha is engaged by an attendant behind the drinks counter. He invites Estha behind the counter and makes him hold his penis. He uses Estha’s hands to stroke his penis and finishes in his hands. He rewards him with a drink, and Estha goes back into the theatre with his hands still dripping with the sticky substance. He returns to his seat but soon begins to feel a little sick. He feels nauseous and informs his mother, who leads the family out of the theatre. In the lobby, Ammu is engaged in polite conversation with the attendant. Estha prevents his mother from engaging with him any further, but he understands that the man is telling Estha that he knows where he lives and can visit him at any time. Rahel feels something dark in her brother’s world, and she feels angry at Ammu for taking them out of the theatre. She makes an angry retort about her marriage to Ammu, which visibly hurts her mother. They return to the theatre and find Chacko making easy work of a laboriously large meal. Rahel stays in Chacko’s room while Estha goes to his mother’s room. Estha comes to Rahel’s room, and she opens the door to him without having to hear his knock. They climb into bed and sleep in each other’s arms.
In the present, Estha describes the sad state of the Meenchal River that had always been visible from their home during their childhood. The river had been damned a little while ago and had been reduced to a small and lazy stream of trash that smelled sharply with the stench of human faces. She walks through the town, noting the changes that worked themselves into the structures during her absence, and encounters K. N. M. Pillai, the head of the communist party chapter in the town, who had played a crucial role in the tragedy that befallen her family. He greeted her warmly without any indication that he held himself responsible and showed her a picture of her and Estha with Sophie. Rahel thinks about how Sophie would die just a few short days after the picture was taken.
Chacko drives the family to the airport, and they join a huge crowd of relatives waiting to receive their family members. Margaret and Sophie soon arrive and greet their waiting hosts. Chacko is overjoyed, but Rahel is overwhelmed by Sophie’s British beauty. She and Estha fail to behave like the ambassadors that they were supposed to play and hardly engage with their cousin. Sophie rebuffs Chacko’s extreme affection, and they all begin their journey towards Ayemenem. In the present, Rahel searches through the bookshelf of her grandfather’s study and finds notebooks that both she and Rahel had squirreled away. Rahel goes through Estha’s notebooks that are marked by feedback from Ammu, and she is reminded of Ammu’s death.
Rahel had remained with her family while Ammu had been an outcast, but she had returned for a brief time after she had been fired from the post of receptionist because of how often she had fallen sick. Rahel was much older now, and Ammu did not allow Rahel to express herself. She talked incessantly of her plan to bring their family back together by getting a job that would allow her to rent a home for the three of them. Rahel remembers the sickness that wracked her mother’s lungs and caused her to cough incessantly. A few weeks after that visit, Ammu had passed away alone in a tiny rented room and been discovered by a cleaner. The church had refused to give her a burial place because of her divorce, and Chacko took her to an electronic crematorium with Rahel where she was cremated.
The Plymouth reaches the Ipe house just as Kochu Maria is finishing the icing on the cake that is being made for Sophie’s welcome. The workers of the factory wait under the shade of a tree as Mammachi waits on the verandah, nearly blind, and a violin by her side. Mammachi has very complicated feelings for her son, and she overlooks his sexual encounters with the factory workers by deeming them as ‘Men’s needs.’ She detests these women, but none more than Margaret, who had divorced her son. Mammachi receives the visitors with a sad and languid melody on her violin, while Rahel and Estha abandon the welcome play, repulsed by the pretense of their family members. Rahel happens to catch sight of Vellutha, who engages with her with love and affection. Rahel asks him about the rally, but Velutha playfully dodges her inquiries. Ammu catches sight of their warm interaction, and she is moved by Velutha’s beauty in that instant. Her gaze is acknowledged and returned by Velutha, but reality quickly seeps into their exchange. Rahel is asked to return to the house by her mother, and she angrily turns her attention to an ant hill, where she visits her childish fury by killing all the ants that fall within her line of sight.
Analysis
In the second section of the book, the author demonstrates how various members of the Ipe family cope with the past. Estha and Baby Kochamma present alternative yet equally unsuccessful strategies for dealing with the past. Before being involved with Sophie’s death, Estha is sexually abused by a drinks vendor, and forced to deal with this trauma without confiding in anyone. The narrative structure allows the reader to notice a clear contrast between the confident, and spirited child Estha versus the socially inept, and mute, adult Estha. The narrator elaborates that Estha’s silence is a means for him to repress, and move past the trauma of his childhood. His state indicates that his strategy has failed, and so Rahel’s reappearance aids both of the twins by setting them down a new path of recovery. On the other hand, Baby Kochamma serves as an example of an alternative but an equally unsuccessful attempt at dealing with the past. She is as yet unable to overcome the obsessive love that she experienced for the Irish monk. At this point in the novel, Baby Kochamma’s true role as an antagonist in the twins’ life seems highly unlikely, and she can instead be seen as a victim.
The Ipe house is a representation of the family’s condition, and its severely dilapidated condition is indicative of an overall family decline. The family as a corrosive force is a major theme of the novel that is explored throughout the novel. The Ipe family members do not simply aggravate each other’s traumas but also become the source for them. Mammachi, Ammu, and Chacko are all left deeply scarred by Pappachi, who is physically and verbally abusive to nearly all of his family members. Baby Kochamma harbors resentment against all of the family members even the children because of her unrequited love.
