CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

A novel should leave the audience (regardless of age) feeling enriched as well as providing a sense of reader satisfaction. The sense of enrichment and satisfaction felt will differ between various audiences and will greatly depend on the subject matter and fictional methods used by the author. In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy includes themes such as childhood, growing up and being a twin. Death, relationships on all levels, love, hate, politics, religion, tradition, culture, abuse, misused authority, the end justifying the means, the caste system and the values of society are also presented. These issues are woven into a story, which does not follow conventional chronological order. The story is about twins Rahel and Esthappen who live in Kerala, India and is set in the 60’s through to the present. It tells of their growth and how their lives are affected by people and events around them with a focus on them being twins. This theme of twins may also be used to convey...