Rahel And Estha example essay topic

Before going into the theatre "to see The Sound of Music for the third time" (35), Estha " [completes] his first adult assignment" (93). He goes to the bathroom on his own, while Ammu, Baby and Rahel accompany each other to the ladies room. This little detail about going to use the restroom foreshadows another instance where Estha will be forced from being a child into manhood. Ammu tells Estha to "shut UP! !" (96) because he was singing along to the words of the movies. Instead of shutting up, he leaves the theatre on his own account, because "he couldn't help" (96) but sing along to the words he knew.

After completing his first adult assignment, his child likeness comes out in having to sing the lyrics in "a nun's voice" (96). He did not know that this act of immaturity, in acting his own age, he would be shoved into yet another adult assignment, something that he kept as a small thing, but ended up as a Big Thing inside him. The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man scolded Estha for " [disturbing]" (97) him with his song. As soon as he is done scolding him, his "yellow piano key" (97) teeth offered him a free drink.

As Estha came, the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man already knew what he had in store for Estha. The Man asked him questions, and Estha, being a man and a child, had to answer. Where did he live? What did his family do?

The Man "handed Estha his penis" (98) and made Estha masturbate him while he drank his lemon drink, and he had to, because the Man "knew where to find [him]" (104). After the Man was done with Estha, he sent him back into the theatre. Estha knew from this time that he would be love a little less if anyone knew what he had done with the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man. So he told no one. But in his head, a conversation was taking place between himself and Baron von Trapp, the father in The Sound of Music. Would von Trapp love him even though he was not white?

Even though he " [blew] spit bubbles... [shivered] his legs... held a strangers's o-so os?" (101). Was he still acceptable to obtain a Baba's love? He knew that it was "out of the question. [He could not] love them" (102). No father could ever love him. They leave the theatre because Estha the child, Estha the man, is sick.

When they exit the theatre, the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man smiles at Rahel and offers her candy. She goes toward him, and is suddenly petrified, and " [shrinks] from him" (106). And she knows. She knows what he did to Estha.

The lesson of Manhood he taught him. Rahel " [spins] around to look at Estha" (106). She knows that would be loved a little less if Ammu or anyone knew. The next thing you know, Rahel is saying something to Ammu that "makes [Ammu] love [her] a little less" (107). Ammu "couldn't be expected to understand that... emptiness in one twin was only a version of the quietness in the other" (20, 21). She did not get the hint that something happened to Estha in the theatre by Rahel's behavior.

Journal Entry: February 18-20 The back verandah of the History House (where a posse of touchable policemen converged, where an inflatable goose was burst) had been enclosed and converted into the airy hotel kitchen. Nothing worse than kebabs and caramel custard happened there now. The Terror was past. Overcome by the smell of food.

Silenced by the humming of cooks. The cheerful chop-chop-chopping of ginger and garlic. The disemboweling of lesser mammals-pigs, goats. The dicing of meat. The scalding of fish.

Something lay buried in the ground. Under grass. Under twenty-three years of June rain. A small forgotten thing. Nothing that the world would miss.

A child's plastic wristwatch with the time painted on it. Ten to two, it said. (121) This passage is taken from a time when Rahel was in her "viable, die-able age" (154), back from America and reminiscing over the past. This passage holds some foreshadowing, both for what the book holds for us, which has already happened but not yet disclosed to the reader, and for what the future holds for the characters in the book, that the reader has not gotten to yet. It makes ties to the brutal murder of Velutha, the ways of the caste system, the title and main theme of this work, the madness of Ammu, and the loss of Estha. Rahel is looking at the hotel that now takes the place of the History House.

A place that held so many memories for her, some good and some bad, was now something that tourists trampled on. This is where "the Terror" took place, the place where Velutha was " [wakened]" and killed "with [the police's] boots" (292). The hotel now told "collapsed and amputated" (121) kathak ali stories, the story that "was and wasn't [Estha and Rahel's]" (224). Their past was mocked at and erased by the hotel, by the demolition of the History House, by the "slashed" stories of the kathak ali.

They were made into a "small... thing", that "the world would not miss" (121). As if the "humming of cooks" could remove from the twin's sight what had happened to Velutha, now transformed into the God of "small forgotten things" (121). Or like the altered stories could change their past. The mention of "the [disembowelment] of lesser mammals-pigs, goats" (121) is a very ironic statement.

In the eyes of India, Velutha was at the same level of pigs and goats. Because Velutha was an "Untouchable" (71), many people would have touched a pig or a goat before the thought would even occur to them to touch an untouchable. Velutha was a "lesser mammal" in their eyes. Though the hotel did its best to cover up what had happened there in the past, it did not have the power to do so. Much like the memories were still alive in the minds of the participants of the past, there was "something... buried in the ground" under the hotel, something that lay "under twenty-three years of June rain" (121). Rahel's "plastic wrist watch with the time painted on it" (121) still remained, forever capturing the event of the past, not allowing it to be made into another myth or to be erased by the present.

The time was "painted" on to the wrist-watch that was buried under the History House. When that watch was left to become one with the grass and the dirt, it captured many things. It made time stand still. It took away the desire to speak. This affected Ammu and Estha in everlasting ways.

Ammu went mad before she died. Ammu treated Rahel as though she were still seven, when she was actually eleven, saying, "It was as though [she] believed that if she refused to acknowledge the passage of time, if she willed it to stand still in the lives or her twins, it would" (152). Estha changed dramatically as well. When "childhood tiptoed out" and "silence slid in like a bolt" (303), they went to where the watch was, buried with Ammu's mind. In the ground of the History house, the time would remain at "ten to two" (121). Ten to two; two small people against ten big people.

Rahel and Estha "trapped in... a story" (224) against Malachi, Baby, Chaco, Margret, Sophie, Ammu, Velutha, Koch Maria, Pillai, and the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man. Ten. Ten to Two. Where the God of Small Things, "if he fought he couldn't win" (207).