In The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, readers may find it easy to think of Sophie Mol and Velutha as the gods of colonial circumstances. However, by viewing the characters solely as embodiments of colonial circumstances, readers fail to see them not only as the villains of society, but also as the victims of the novel. Each character has been placed in a socially determined category by the novel, namely a class such as touchable or untouchable. The reader is presented with Sophie Mol as the victim since she is the touchable of the novel, but if she is a victim of her privilege, she is also the villain of the narrator. In juxtaposition to the touchable in the novel is the untouchable, Velutha. Although he is the villain of society, he is the victim of the narrator. Both characters experience actions and social reactions that they do not necessarily want or deserve. The narrator says, “They all broke the rules. They all entered forbidden territory. They have all altered the laws that establish who should be loved and how” (Roy 31). To see the characters through both the prism of society and that of the narrator is to see both sides of their stories. Neither character is entirely victim or villain, and seeing the characters alongside each other allows the reader to better understand how these individuals are affected by a colonial worldview. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayCritical arguments surrounding Roy's God of Small Things are still rather rare. Although a few critics have evaluated and examined the novel in relation to the world, they all seem to agree that what Roy emphasizes in his novels are themes of great importance. Critics like Yumna Siddiqi of "Policing and Postcolonial Rationality in Amitac Gosh's 'The Circle of Reason'" argue that "the novel reveals the brutal control of caste boundaries and the unscrupulous functioning of the party political machine" ( Siddiqi 177). Siddiqi argues that this brutality in Roy's novels is what sets them apart from other novels. While this response to the world is an essential part of The God of Small Things, understanding how it occurs is also essential to understanding the culture Roy represents. Critics like Kerryn Higgs of “Review: Who’s a Terrorist?” » examined Roy's "Walking with the Comrades" and pointed out that the popularity of the Party of Armed Revolution is due in part to the deep-rooted feudal structures of Indian society, its inherent inequality and exploitation, the reliance on brutal repression by the landlord class and its “law and order” apparatus… Roy insists that the endemic violence on the government side and the excesses of India's two main political parties must be recognized. (Higgs) Higgs states that Roy demonstrates the impact that hierarchical inequalities in society have on the population. This reviewer argues that importance should also be given to police brutality and how it was inflicted on these characters. These social inequalities are better visible between Sophie Mol and Velutha to allow a better understanding of critical conversations. Critics like Veena Shukla in “Untouchability and Social Exclusion in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997)” relate the difference between touchables and untouchables to the caste system. Shukla explains the caste system as "a social system in which peoplewere divided into separate and close communities” (Shukla 963). In India, these separate and close communities were differentiated by the color of their skin because the lighter the skin of a group of individuals, the more likely they were to be of white origin. Priya Menon in "Asserting the Local: White Subversions in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things" takes note of colonization in the novels. She argues that this colonialization pushes the novel's characters to love what is white and to strive to be white, even though they know it is wrong. These two critical camps, seen side by side, allow the reader to see both sides of the situation, which is probably why Roy allows readers to see the characters from both the society's and the narrator's point of view. The character of Sophie Mol is placed higher than the other characters in the film. the novel because she is the “touchable” and the colonizer. She is first introduced to the novel by his death. The narrator gives the exact reason for this by stating: “It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lasts much longer than the memory of the life it stole. Over the years, as the memory of Sophie Mol… slowly faded. , the loss of Sophie Mol has become robust and alive. She was always there" (Roy 17). The narrator states that Sophie Mol's extreme impact on Rahel's life and on everyone here did not stop once she passed away. It continued to accompany them throughout their lives and affect them in many ways Her death is so important to everyone in the novel because she is “more loved” because she was born half white and. half-Indian, unlike everyone else in the novel She is the colonizer Allowing the adults to favor her, the novel describes her as “scattered and loved from the beginning” (Roy 129). was supposed to see Sophie Mol explains in her article the reason why the touchables get more "love". She states that "throughout the novel, we see many encounters between these two, and ultimately, it is the one who occupies the superior position in the domestic and social hierarchy who emerges victorious” (Shukla 965). For Shukla, the “two” in question are the touchables and the untouchables, who can also be seen as Sophie Mol and Velutha to decipher who is the victim and who is the villain of the novel. According to Shukla's explanation and according to society, Sophie Mol is the victim since she is in the superior position. The novel defines Sophie Mol's name in its entirety as the "wise little girl". The narrator even designates Sophie thus, “the seeker of little wisdoms” (Roy 17). At birth, she was given a name that would distinguish her from the rest of society, much like her biological makeup. In all respects, she was placed in a privileged sphere of society. Sophie Mol did not choose to be white and Indian, she did not choose for people to stage the game of life that they were playing for her. This is the life we ​​gave him. As a result, even though many people loved her, there were also many people who hated her. Among those who hated her the most were her cousins, the people whose love she hoped to gain. Those who admired her paid no attention to the fact that she was “excluded” and “alone” (Roy 180). They all simply assume “that the sweet cousins ​​were playing hide and seek, as sweet cousins ​​often do” (Roy 177). They don't realize that the privileges they give her separate her and the people she wants to be close to. This is also a key point in the victimization of Sophie Mol. This desire for true affectionmanifested when Sophie Mol goes out of her way to find gifts to give to her cousins ​​in the hope of winning them over. "Sophie Mol ended up finding what she was looking for. Gifts for her cousins.. To negotiate hard. To negotiate a friendship" (Roy 252-253). Even though the characters in the novel push her away, she persists. trying to find common ground with those who mean the most to her. The only character in the novel who treats her like everyone else is Velutha, otherwise everyone shows her a lot of love and attention, if at all. It was not a life that Sophie Mol had asked for, it is the one that was given to her and that is why she is the victim of society. Next to Sophie Mol is the society villain, Velutha. Just like Sophie Mol, the name Velutha has also dictated much of her life. The narrator states that it “means White in Malayalam – because he was so black” (Roy 70). When he was born, he was given a name that would hopefully allow him some respect in a society that would take everything away from him because of the color of his skin. Society considers Velutha to be an untouchable: like other untouchables, he was not allowed to walk on public roads, nor to cover his upper body, nor to carry umbrellas. They had to put their hands over their mouths when they spoke, to divert their polluted breath from those they were speaking to. (Roy 71) The color of Velutha's skin marked him as a villain, and to associate with him would be to assume his villainous qualities. As a result, he must be feared by society. Society spends most of the novel trying to enable Velutha's "public humiliation" (Roy 78). The only people who really get to know him for who he really is are those close to him. In society's efforts to humiliate her, the reader is not surprised that “Baby Kochamma has misrepresented the relationship between Ammu and Velutha” (Roy 245). When Baby Kochamma takes matters into her own hands, it is the police brutality that befalls Velutha that allows the reader to truly understand how evil he is in the eyes of society. Rahel describes Velutha's final moments before her death as "the abyss where anger should have been sober and constant brutality, the economy of it all" (Roy 292). Since Velutha is hated by society, it is not unusual for the police who take him away in his final moments of life to act as if his death means nothing. They murdered him as if his life didn't matter and that's because to society it didn't matter. The violence inflicted on him shocks most readers, but it does not shock the police because that was their job, the social norm, and what was expected. They are trained to know nothing else. The caste system and the maintenance of this hierarchy is what mattered most to the people. In the eyes of the narrator, who often follows Rahel, Sophie Mol is considered the villain. This is because Rahel, herself, has always felt “a little less loved” (Roy 177). For Rahel, Sophie Mol's colonial privilege affected her negatively. Sophie Mol was born half white and half Indian. It is shown throughout the novel that Rahel becomes quite jealous of her, but in an effort to remain "loved" by Ammu, she tried "not to get the attention she deserved" (Roy 139). Throughout the novel, the reader is confronted with characters who constantly try to impress Sophie Mol and/or be more like her. Piyra Menon in "Asserting the Local: White Subversions in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things" states that even though the text is set in postcolonial Kerala, most members of the Ipe family continue to adhere to white values. Local topicsstruggle in an environment that screams whiteness and depicts those who have learned to value themselves as imitators of whiteness. (Menon, 69 years old) Although this is true, it is also possible that this is the reason why Rahel considers Sophie Mol to be a villain. She believes that Sophie Mol does not deserve any special attention. All interactions between Sophie and Rahel are told either from the perspective of a child or from the perspective of an adult looking back on their childhood feelings. We understand why Rahel did not favor Sophie Mol since at such a young age she did not yet understand the caste system or colonization. Prejudice toward someone who is different from you is a learned behavior, and as a child, Rahel just didn't understand. The book probably says it's better this way. This leaves the reader wondering if Sophie Mol should even be favored because looking at her through Rahel's eyes, it is clear that she is not a desirable character. In the heat of the moment, Sophie Mol herself makes racist comments, stating: "You are both whole wogs and I am half" (Roy 17), "wog" being a negative term to describe Indians . The character of Sophie Mol is not supposed to please readers. As easy as it may be for a reader to dislike her character for causing Rahel so much jealousy and heartache, they can also easily forget that she is more than just a villain in the novel. He is also a very intelligent character who is a victim of many of his privileges. In the eyes of the narrator, Velutha is the victim. This is also how Shukla perceives it. She states that “Despite the fact that Velutha is a very talented person with proven skills as a carpenter, what he gets in life is social exclusion” (Shukla 966). He never receives the recognition that the novel's narrator and the other characters in his life feel he deserves. Velutha is first introduced in the novel as a man with a "luck leaf" birthmark, "a luck leaf who hasn't had enough luck" (Roy 70). From the beginning, it becomes clear to the reader that the narrator feels that Velutha's fate would be unjust. Unlike Sophie Mol, Velutha is a character with whom Rahel feels safe, someone who is very close to her heart. She states that “they had become the best of friends. They were forbidden from visiting his house, but they did. They would sit with him for hours” (Roy 75). When things were not going well for her “She thought of Velutha and wished to be with him” (Roy 141). When asked about him, she describes him as “A man we love” (Roy 144). It’s Velutha’s unsung character that appeals to Rahel as a person. She feels like he represents everything and everyone who doesn't get the respect they deserve due to society's unjust hierarchy. She claims that he is “the God of small things” (Roy 210). The narrator's victim and society's villain assume the most important title in the novel. Its story is undoubtedly the most essential. The characters break down the walls of the laws of love. Ammu had to “love by night the man whom her children loved by day” (Roy 193). Despite the fact that Rahel and her family hold Velutha so highly, see him in his most vulnerable form and still appreciate and love him for it, they can never allow the world to see and know their true feelings about it due to societal expectations and norms. While reviews tend to focus more on the brutality and trauma of the novels, it is equally important to see how the caste system, seemingly less.