The god of small things: A novel born of/on the waste land

This paper is an attempt to uncover the dialogic relationship -- a special case of intertextuality -- that exists between Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things and T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. It traces the way the soul as well as the symbolic chain of events of Eliot's poem has transmigrated into Roy's novel and permeated the whole of its being. It attempts to trace out the roots of the major themes in the “recipient” novel to the “emitter” poem, points out the glaring instances of correspondence between the two works in their themes, imagery, language, characters and style, and brings out the dialogicality of Roy's novel. When Eliot opens his poem saying “April is the cruelest month/Breeding…,” Roy opens her novel saying “May in Aymenem is a hot, brooding month.” Here, albeit she does not acknowledge her source, her reader hears the voice of her predecessor, Eliot. Similarly, the title of the first chapter of The God of Small Things “The Paradise Pickles & Preserves,” and the title of the first section of The Waste Land “The Burial of the Dead” symbolize the same idea; in fact, the former is a euphemism of the latter. Hence, when a novelist draws themes from a highly fragmented poem such as The Waste Land, she has to expand each of these themes and images into a well-structured piece of fiction by adding new characters, actions and situations. And while undergoing such a process, the work comes to have a special sort of originality. Here, Eliot is exploring a spiritual remedy for the sad destiny of man. And finally, the poet tells the reader of the spiritual promises of the Eastern religions, especially Buddhism.