god of small things
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The award-winning novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, is about love, and fate. Roy uses symbolism and captures emotions through the image of a moth on Rahel's heart. In the symbolism of the moth, Roy defends the legacy of family and captures the unconveyable sensations of betrayal, envy, fragility, and dread.
The moth is used to represent the ghostly presence of Pappachi and his legacy resting chillily on Rahel's heart. The bitterness and failure of his life as an imperial entomologist is carried through as a moth with wings, which symbolizes the fate of the past in the novel. The moth is blamed for many, if not all of the family's personality defects. The wings pick up the consequences of attributing wrong events to fate and history: "The fate of the wretched Man-less woman."(44-45)
The moth is traced back to Pappachi who was known for being ill-humoured because of not being acknowledged as the discoverer of a new breed of moth. Pappachi was angry, and this bitterness of failure in his heart, created a legacy, that lasted to affect Rahel in her childhood. The moth captures his legacy of envy and fragility, which lands on Rahel's heart:
'Pappachi's moth was held responsible for his black moods
and sudden bouts of temper...