Poetic Mode in Modern Fiction:
The new developing trend in modern fiction has been mixing of different styles leading to a range of new effects such as high emotionally, irony, humour and mere poetic utterance. Realism and poetic mode including symbolism are now-a-days supposed to co-exist and interpenetrate in fictional composition. This type of style mixing has been eminently displayed by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Salman Rushdie in their fiction. Roy is also put into this category, though poetic fervor varies from author to author.
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| Use of Poetic Prose in the Novel The God of Small Things |
Poetic Mode in “The God of Small Things”:
Roy's language, though prose yet it is sweet poetry. She arranges the words in such a clever and effective manner that it is sheer poetic. But by poetic mode in “The God of Small Things” we do not mean that most of it is poetry or even poetic. What we mean is the fact that in “The God of Small Things”, Roy makes use of those linguistic and rhetorical devices that are the characteristic of poetry rather than prose. Her prose is sheer poetry as we see in the following lines:
“The God of loss, The God of Small Things. He left no footprints, in sand, no ripples in water, no images in mirrors. "
Linguistic and Rhetorical Devices being the Main Characteristic of Poetic Mode in the Novel:
Some of the linguistic and rhetorical devices made use by Roy, which are the characteristic of poetry rather than prose, are as under:
(1) Emotivity the Distinct Characteristic of Roy's Narrative:
The narrative of Roy is distinguished by emotivity, which has been achieved by her use of connotative vocabulary; words and utterance flow in a stream to carry the reader away sometimes slowly, deeply and at other times fast as current of a river. Emotions and feelings overtake us like:
“In the afternoon silence (laced with edges of light), her children curled into the warmth of her. The smell of her ...... they sensed somehow that in her sleep she had travelled away from them . They summoned her back now with the palms of their small hands laid flat against the bare skin of her midriff.”
(2) Distinguishing Characteristics of Ray's Prose as Poetry i.e. Poetic Prose:
The prose of Ray is strongly marked with such features as rhyme strong rhythm, alliteration and types of sound which are the distinguishing traits of poetry. For example the undernoted para can be re - written as fine piece of tree verse:
“The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring.
The heat lunged out at them like a finished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it.
Her hair,
Her skin,
Her smile,
Her voice. "
Children are specifically fond of playing with the sounds of a language and along with rhythm they rejoice in alliteration and rhyme. A large portion of the novel The God of Small Things ' is seen through the consciousness of the children. Hence naturally such sound effects abound in the writing. To illustrate:
(¡) Satin lived
“Brass handled shined.”
(ii) " Thimble - drinker
Coffin - cart wheeler. "
(3) Originality and Seductively of Roy's Style:
Roy has created her own original style, a unique seductive one, which is solid and sound; though she has often omitted the structural words here and there like auxiliary words and conjunctions, subordinators and coordinators. This has resulted in creating great effect. In this respect her writing is nearer to that of G. M. Hopkins and W. H. Auden rather than of any writer of realistic novel. Undernoted are the illustrations of the above mentioned features of Roy's style:
(a) “Just then Rahel saw Velutha, Vellya Paapen's son, Velutha. Her most beloved friend Velutha. Velutha marching with a red flag. In white shirt and mundu with angry veins in his neck. "
(b) “She managed that by doing what she was best at. Irrigating her fields, nourishing her crops with people's passions. "
As a general practice Roy breaks up the sentences into clauses and phrases and makes a new sentence; such as:
“He was grateful to her for not wanting to look after him. For not offering to tidy his room. For not being his cloying mother. "
(4) Use of Symbols, Similes, Metaphors and Other Tropes by Roy in the Novel
The novel “The God of Small Things” is replete with symbols similes, metaphors and other tropes in such a way that we can think, in terms of imagery therein as a unifying factor. The main lines of the story of the novel The God of Small Things ' are drawn in terms of a single symbol. The other major symbols used are History House, Heart of Darkness and Pappachi's moth. History House represents an evil spirit which captures people's dreams. Heart of Darkness is employed to stand symbolically for the rotten state of Keralite society. When a dark emotion arises suddenly or there is an apprehension of some disaster, then Pappachi's moth is said to have descended on the person concerned.
(5) Use of Imagery by Roy in the Novel:
Perhaps the single crowning achievement of Roy is his field of imagery. She is in fact the mistress of vivid, ever fresh and most appropriate similes and metaphors which we find scattered on every page of the novel. The imagery of Ray is simply superb. A few examples show her genius:
(a) “Her face was pale and as wrinkled as a dhobi's thumb from being in water for too long.”
(b) “The clouds resolved themselves into little lumps, like substandard mattress - stuffing.”
(6) Description of Nature and Human Body by Roy in her Novel:
Roy while giving description of nature and human body has combined her poetical powers with the art of a painter or sculptor. Consequently we find examples of living description of nature and well described profiles of human figures in her novel. In this respect following examples deserve careful consideration:
(a) " It was raining .... slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, ploughing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat..... The wild, evergreen garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives....... Hopeful yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates....... "
(b) " She saw the ridges of muscle on Velutha's stomach grow taut and rise under his skin like the divisions on a slab of chocolate. She wondered at how his body had changed - so quietly, from a flat - muscled boy's body into a man's body. Contoured and hard....... A swimmer - carpenter's body. Polished with a high - wax body polish. "
(7) Arundhati Ray as a Designer of New Words:
While handling the English language, Ray has revealed herself as an interesting Wordsmith. She has displayed herself as a tireless experimenter and designer of words. Ray has created her own style of creating new words by combining two words such as ' Carbreeze’, ' dust - green and day moon. She has combined adjectives to create appropriate impression like ' Sick sweet’, adjective with noun like ' dust green ' noun with past participle like ' dirt coloured’, adjective with past participle like angry coloured and nouns like ' fever button’. She has also formed words to create the needed impression as ‘touchable’ opposite to ' untouchable ' mid - poem, vomity, faulty and smelly. Thus it is very difficult to explain the poetic and linguistic inventiveness of Ray but at the same time we cannot check ourselves to appreciate her brilliance in poetic expression which is superb.
Conclusion:
It is not possible to cover the entire range of Ray's use of poetic and linguistic inventiveness but we must conclude by noting that when the various devices are used in an effective and harmonious manner , they give rise to some brilliant passages in the novel which easily reach the level of 'poetic expression'. To illustrate:
(a) Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, foetal heart beat........ It stripped his thought of the words that described them and left them pared and naked unspeakable Numb.
(b) It was not what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself. No milestone marked its progress. No trees grew along it, No dappled shadows shaded it.
... No birds circled it. No twists, no turns on hair pin bends obscured even momentarily, her clear view of the end. This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman, who wanted her future told....... So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it would only have been not to know