Ammu the Tragic Heroine of The God of Small Things

This is the tragic story about a Syrian Christian family from Ayemenem in Kerala. It is the story of Ammu, a divorced mother for whom life has become bitter and her inseparable twins Estha and Rahel. Though Estha and Rahel are the central characters of the story Ammu also play a very important role in The God of Small Things.

Ammu’s tragedy began when she was very young. It followed her like a shadow right up to the last moment in her life. When she finished her schooling she had to move to Ayemenem. For Ammu college education was a luxury as her father had found it an unnecessary expense, she being a girl child. She idled away time at Ayemenem. Her eighteenth birthday came and went unnoticed by her parents. She grew totally desperate and somehow wanted to run away from Ayemenem to some place or other. She conceived of her own little plans and eventually one worked out. She received the green signal to Calcutta to join her aunt. Theodre P

With in few months of her return to Ayemenem she found that there were people around her who were specialists in sympathizing. But she was one who never liked to be sympathized with. When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs she felt that the whole thing was futile and absurd. Slowly with out her knowledge, she was becoming restless. A reckless rage of a suicide bomber was battling inside her. This eventually led her to love by night Velutha, the man her children loved by day.

Pappachi her father could never reconcile to the theory that an Englishman would covet another man’s wife. As for Ammu, her world was confined to the front and back of verandha of Ayemenem house. Baby kochamma believed that a married daughter has no position in her parents home. She did not feel pity for Ammu. On the contrary she often became the cause of Ammu’s suffering. Soon Ammu realized that she no place in her parent’s house. “ In her own home she became ‘untouchable’.” ( Jayadipsinh Dodiya & Joy Chakravarty)

Ammu and her husband moved to Assam. She was beautiful and was the toast of the planter’s club. At the same time her husband turned out to be “not just a heavy drinker but a full-blown alcoholic with all of an alcoholic’s deviousness and tragic charm.” (P.40)

Things come to a head when her nocturnal rendezvous with the untouchable, Velutha, is discovered and the drowning of Sophie Mol is falsely associated with Ammu’s affair.This also brings into sharp focus the discordant attitudes of the phallocentric society towards the sexual desires of men and women. Where as Chako’s man’s needs are not only tolerated but also accommodated by the family, Ammu’s affair is greeted with revulsion. (P. 48 R.S. Sharma)

When a girl leaves home at eighteen she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assume the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes wor

Some topics in this essay:
P40 War, Chakravarty Ammu’s, P159 Estha, P42 Ammu’s, Lodge Alleppey, Ayemenem Ammu, KVSurendran Ammu’s, Sophie Mol, Arundhati Roy, Chacko Rahel, story ammu, ayemenem house, estha rahel, saving hands,