...TEACHING THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS IN WISCONSIN: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXTS INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW Vinay Dharwadker Kerala and India are woven into the fabric of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The novel assumes that its reader is familiar with many basic facts about these two places, especially their history and geography, society and culture, economy and politics. Roy grew up in Kerala, where her mother’s family had a home in the village of Aymanam, located on the outskirts of the town of Kottayam, on the other side of the River Minachil. Most of the action of The God of Small Things takes place in a village called “Ayemenem,” set near a river called “Meenachal.” Roy’s fictionalized village and river strongly resemble the real-life Aymanam and Minachil, and her narrative contains numerous references to the actual landscape of south-central Kerala, its people and their common customs, their music and dance, their religions and social organization, and their economic and political activities. The narrative also mixes its fictional elements with factual elements on a larger scale. Some of the novel’s “imaginary” episodes occur in the real town of Kottayam (about 2 miles from Ayemenem/ Aymanam, across the river) and in the historic port-city of Cochin (now Kochi, about 50 miles away to the northwest). The novel’s political discussion frequently blends fictional characters and organizations with real politicians and political parties: Comrade Pillai, for example, is an...
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...The Original Sin in The God of Small Things Summary In that enchanted jungle, a divorced, upper-class mother of two children made love with an untouchable Paravan transgressing the boundaries of morality and breaking the law as to who should be loved, how and how much. The God of Small Things, like any masterpiece of literature, has been subjected to myriad interpretations and yet promises more to its readers every time it’s taken off the shelf. This paper seeks to study this maiden work of fiction by Arundhati Roy as a parable of the original sin depicted in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Like the biblical tale of man’s first disobedience, Roy’s fiction also acquaints the readers with characters who disobey the perennial ‘love laws’ and suffer...
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...COMMUNITY in a Variety of Texts The text, The God of Small Things and the film Moonrise Kingdom, both thoroughly reflect the theme of identity and the individual versus the community in many ways. Both authors of the film and novel seem to make a new environment. Environment plays a significant role in both these texts. For example, in the town of both texts, it was a society in which laws were secretly written down. There were certain ways in which many had to act, live, and shape themselves to impress that community. “If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win.” This quote goes into the situation of Velutha and Ammu, and their love affair. Due to the almost social hierarchy in the location the two had lived in, it was almost a sin of those two being together. It was expressed in such a pessimistic way – even if Velutha kept fighting for his love with Ammu, it would not make a difference is the society had forbidden it. It was forbidden for ‘Untouchables’ to associate, it was written in The Love Laws. Like The God of Small Things, the same went with Sam and Susie. Sam had once said to another boy, “Why can’t you just us disappear?” when found in the woods. It was quite simple: Sam was found a ‘freak’ and ‘not normal’ to most. Many were dumbfounded when they had learned that Susie had gone to escape with him, or even associate herself with him. It was then discovered that Susie...
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...This novel utilises a series of flashbacks which, fragment the story, in which the twins reminisce about their childhood. Roy employs the use of many distinguishing and interlinking features of postcolonial text such as the issues of identity, hybridity and white superiority as an attempt to draw attention to the chaotic situation of postcolonial India. Throughout the past century postcolonial text has risen to prominence following the independence of many colonised countries. Postcolonial texts, as stated by Professor Hans Berten ,”studies the relationship of the coloniser and the colonised as well as the aftermath of the postcolonial country.” An example of such a discourse is ‘The God of Small Things’ , by Indian author Arundhati Roy which explores postcolonial India, during the 1960s through the lives fraternal twins, Rahel and Estha, and their family in Ayemenem, India . Another instance of allusion of British culture is from the twin’s uncle Chacko , a former Rhodes Scholar, who often quotes from ‘the Great Gatsby’ as he describes it is another story of an “Oxford man” . Roy employs these intertextual links in order to depict the typical action of a postcolonial community in which the oppressed race subserves themselves to the colonisers by converting to the coloniser’s culture. During the 1960s the twins living with their mother and her anglicized family is caught up in the family’s attempt to attain a new identity. In this anglicized family, the twins are often...
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...! SUMMARY/ANALYSIS:! ! Back to 1969, 6 policemen walking towards it: dramatic effect with this long build up.! Violence in their heart. Hunting of an animal. Long detailed description of the small things with many pauses (line breaks), a feeling of something coming, suspense.! The policemen carry batons but are thinking of machine guns.! When they arrive they have the feeling of being responsible for “Touchable futur”.! They wake Velutha with their heavy boots by kicking him.! The children wake up by: ”to the shout of sleep surprised by shattered kneecaps”. They don’t know that Velutha was there. There are paralysed by fear and disbelief.! The police beat V= extreme violence, skull cracking, broken ribs puncturing his lungs, damaged spine, broken teeth, ruptured intestine…! The twins are too young to understand. The policemen are “history’s henchmen” acting out the inevitable.! Estha and Rahel learn that blood smells "sicksweet. Like roses on a breeze”! Rahel tells Estha that she can tell that it isn't Velutha – she says it's Urumban, his "twin" who was at the march. Estha says nothing because he is "unwilling to seek refuge in fiction”. Rahel retreats into fantasy and ignorance.! The six policemen take all of Estha and Rahel's toys for their kids. The only thing they leave behind is Rahel's watch, which has the fake time painted on it. they wonder if Velutha really kidnapped them.! Climatic tragedy, violence unlike Sophie Mol’s death.! The police achieve...
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...Even Small Things Are Great Every person longs for recognition. It is the yearning of the ego to seek love. We feel good upon receiving praise from our superior. We float with pride when we are rated on top of others. Giving honor and reward to those who have accomplished great things is a good way of valuing. Rightly done, it affirms their being created in the image of God. On the other hand, we must be careful of the way the world gives recognition. The criterion it sets to receive award tends to discriminate and devalue those who have no superior talents and winning personalities. Small people with limited capacity and resources are in a disadvantage position. The standard for becoming great is tilted to those who are endowed with opportunity to succeed according to worldly agenda. Little people compete against the odds in a world that measures success in terms of bigness and becoming number one. Status-seeking feeds the human nature’s quest for ego tripping. It works for show. It entertains people who are awed and dazzled by what they see. Being cheered and hailed by the adoring crowd awakens the hidden desire to feel like a god. It is a dangerous game that precedes downfall (Lk 14:11). Jesus values the greatness of people differently. Often times, it is not what they can show off but what is hidden in the heart that Jesus recognizes. The rich who put large gifts out of their riches never impressed Jesus. The one he admired is a poor widow...
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...Preschool Week #16 MESSAGES FROM GOD Bible Point: God doesn’t give up on his people. God won’t give up on me. * Talk about the church you attend. Talk about what the church looks like, the people and things they see, and the sounds they hear. Then have the children draw and color a picture of the church they attend and the children may take it home to share the story with their families. * 10-15 minutes into the service start the Propresenter. Just push play and Propresenter will start the 5 minute countdown (8:40, 10:10, 11:40) * The countdown moves straight into worship and offering. Once you have started Propresenter, let it just run. (Make sure to discuss offering with the children.) * Step 1: Come Together Gather the children around the carpets and say, “Messages come to people in many different ways. Let’s say I want to send you a message. How could I do that? Allow the children to answer. Ask: * What is the best way to tell someone that you want him or her to come to your birthday party? * What is the best way to thank someone for a present? Say, “There are a lot of great ways for us to send messages to each other. God sends messages, too. In Bible days, he sent his messages through prophets. A prophet is a person whose job it is to give people messages from God. Let’s read a story about one of God’s prophets. It’s great to talk to the children each week before the story about the Bible … book of stories that God left for us and wants us to read...
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...spoke loudly that God has not been giving “ME” a vision. a. The vision board presented in class was my fleshly vision and not the Kingdom building vision which this class or our God is preparing for me. b. The vision showed self and a possibility of a union of two people (man and woman) that working together could build a new with joint ownership in a ministry for helping God’s people with thee specific needs. i. Safe housing for batter women ii. Half-way housing for men and women returning from incarceration. iii. A school home for youth after school to learn life skills (sewing, cooking), completion of homework using computers, and general good recreation with Xbox, billiard tables, and the usual board games. c. Yet, this is a vision of all only one partner’s full interest and belief. The other half has a pass/fail life balance, open & good heart for doing things they see as “what would Jesus do?” Thinking good works and quote “following the law” will provide my key to heaven. We ae unequally yoked. iv. I believe that my “faith in Christ” is shown by my good works “in His name”; that my Salvation is in the receiving of “Christ saving Blood” and my submission to “Him as Lord and Master” of my Life. d. I took a possible answer to a pray and rushed the blessing of a good mate. God will make us ready for His blessing. And, until He has prepared us we will make a mess of things. I have hope in my God being a restorer...
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...asking the question “Could it be false?” If the answer is “Yes,” the belief is not necessarily true and is not considered knowledge. This is the perfect tool for presenting a foundationalist conception of knowledge, unless there is an omnipotent being who can deceive people to think wrongly about these basic principles. Therefore, the existence of an omnipotent God and proof that God is not a deceiver is then presented in order to reject all doubts about the foundationalist conception of knowledge. A foundationalist conception of knowledge is a conception of academic discipline: one can only trust real knowledge that is based on basic principles. If a principle is wrong sometimes or is possibly wrong, it is not basic. If the principle is self-evident, showing its own truth, or is justified without appealing to any external ideas or facts, it is basic. Also, if the principle is clearly and distinctly perceived, and one cannot help but assent to it, the principle is necessarily true, or is self-evident. Senses are not necessarily true because they are “sometimes deceptive” in the cases of “very small” and “distant” things (Descartes, 18). Location in space and time are also possible to doubt because of dreaming. For example,...
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...IRWLE VOL. 7 No. 2 July 2011 1 Arundati Rai’s The God of Small Things – A Post- Colonial Reading Rajeev. G The adjective “post colonial” signifies the notion that the novel or be it any piece of writing for that matter, goes beyond every possible parameters of the locality, region and nation to participate in the global scenario today which is an aftermath of European colonization. The God of Small Things written in the post colonial Anglophone by Arundhati Roy does reveal a decisive post colonial condition; through its dialogues, characters and various events and instances it encompass. Ms Roy refers to the metaphor “the heart of darkness” in the novel which is a sort of ridiculous reference to Conrad’s novel the heart of darkness. She says that, “in Ayemenem, in the heart of darkness, I talk not about the White man, but about the Darkness, about what the Darkness is about.” (Frontline, August 8, 1997). The God of Small Things tells the story of one family in the town of Ayemenem in Kerala, India. The temporal setting shifts back and forth from 1969, when Rahel and Estha, a set of fraternal twins are 7 years old, to 1993, when the twins are reunited at age 31. The novel begins with Rahel returning to her childhood home in Ayemenem, India, to see her twin brother Estha, who has been sent to Ayemenem by their father. Events flash back to Rahel and Estha’s birth and the period before their mother Ammu divorced their father. Then the narrator describes the ...
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...INTRODUCTION Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” I go by this scripture every single second of the day, and I believe it relates to all three topics I’ve chosen: How can we be confident Jesus is returning?, If a person is a Christian, does it matter how they live their life?, and What can your local church do to better communicate God’s love to your community? We can’t do anything without Christ’s strength through us. Each of us needs strength to know God faithfully and know He is returning soon! We need strength to live our lives well and to prosper in God’s love. Church communities need strength to spread God’s word to communities all around. In saying this, I think it is completely natural to have questions about things you already know of, because there is always something you do not know about within a particular subject. TOPIC 1 We can be confident Jesus is returning because He has risen once before and promised (GAVE HIS WORD) He was coming again. My perspective on this matter has changed slightly due to a better understanding. I had not heard the complete resurrection story. Towns (2002) tells us that when the women came to the tomb on Easter morning they discovered Jesus’ body missing. His physical body was given life again- that is, His soul and body were re-united. This is something I had not thought of before in depth. I didn’t look at His soul and body being re-united, just that He ultimately rose again and forgave...
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...The teleological argument infers the existence of a designer - god, from the apparent design of the universe. For the inference to work the arguments for apparent design must be sound. To argue for design explicitly is to observe natural organisms closely. Life appears to have a 'telos'. Living creatures are made up of organs that are set to perform a given task. For example, the heart pumps blood around the body and the lungs respires so we can breath. More astonishing however are how small parts of a complex system work so wonderfully and intricately in conjuction with each other to serve a purpose. Suppose the eye. The eye has numerous features that allow sight. If one small part of the stops functioning, it would lead to the over all disfunction of the system. This complexity suggests a plan - a plan that follows a purpose. Thus, there must be an intelligent planner and designer. Paley develops an analogy to infer the existence of a designer (god) by identifying what it is exactly about human artifacts that leads us to the conclusion that it must have had a designer. When we happen to find a watch on the ground, surely we wouldn't just think that the watch got there by its own or that the watch self-evolved. When we observe the watch closely, we can identify design-like properties. For example, the coordinations of small parts of the machine that allows the hand of the clock to tick in a 360 degree angle and the fact that the watch constitutes the concept of time and numbers...
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..."The Stowaway"- Julian Barnes "The Stowaway" is one of Barnes chapters in his book "A history of the World in 10 and a half Chapters. In this chapter the narrator is a stowaway, a small woodworm. It retells the biblical story of Noah's Ark from Its point of view. The original biblical "metanarritive" is about a righteous person named Noah, who was chosen to be saved from a horrible flood that was to destroy all living creatures and plants on earth. He was, by God's demand to build an ark and save his family and animals. Using vivid images very detailed descriptions and somewhat a humorous and cynical tone of what went on during this famous voyage Barnes tells us a slightly different version of the original Noah's Ark story. Barnes chapter begins with letting readers know that this voyage was not a luxurious cruise nor was it as we pictured it when we learned the biblical version as youngsters. Noah, the man whom was chosen to survive had craftsmen to build the ships, as there was more than one ship to be built. The ships were made all from gopher wood; there were stalls for animals that were secured with double peg locks for security. The species which boarded the ships were picked not randomly, but by attending a beauty contest, only the best pair of breed species was picked to go up on ship and the others were left to drown. Some animals were brought not in pairs of two but in pairs of seven. These animals which were called "clean animals" had mixed feelings, as they...
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...William Soller God and Poetry Throughout human experience, we have sought ways of understanding the universe. Stories of gods appeared as an answer to a multitude of questions. These gods began guiding the world into the realm of creation, from monuments of belief to the passing of belief through the written word. Christianity grew out of Judaism with the coming of Jesus Christ. Four Gospels were written as tribute to his life as the New Testament, and, with the combination of the Torah as the Old Testament, the Bible was crafted. The distinction between the Old and New Testaments create very different images of God. In the Old Testament, there is a God a vengeance and power. In the New Testament, God is merciful and full of love. Poets, such as William Blake, Countee Cullen, and Robert Frost have commented on this duality, inscribing their own beliefs onto paper. William Blake shows the contrast in God’s creations through two poems, The Lamb and The Tyger. The Lamb opens with a question: “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The speaker questions the lamb on how it was made, how it obtained its “clothing” of wool and its “tender voice.” In the next stanza, the speaker answers his own question: the lamb’s maker “calls himself a Lamb” and who resembles both the lamb and the speaker, a child. While the child’s question is an innocent one, it resounds as the constant philosophical question of creation that religion tries to explain. In the first stanza where the child poses the...
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...Klang Wesley Above All Writer/Composer : Paul Baloche Original Key : A | Current Key : A | | | Print Version : Small | Medium | Large | Intro A D Esus E A D/A Verse A E/D D Esus E AAbove all powers, a - bove all kingsA/C# E/D D Esus E AAbove all na - ture and all created thingsA/G# F#m Amaj7/E D A/C#Above all wisdom and all the ways of manBm7 D/A E/G# AYou were here before the world began A/C# E/D D Esus E AAbove all kingdoms, above all thrones A/C# E/D D Esus E AAbove all wonders the world has ever known A/G# F#m Amaj7/E D A/C#Above all wealth and treasures of the earthBm7 D/A C#sus/G# C#There’s no way to measure what You’re worth Chorus A Bm7 E/G# ACrucified, laid behind the stone Bm7 E/G# AYou lived to die, rejected and alone A/G# F#m Amaj7/E D A/C#Like a rose trampled on the ground Bm7 A/C# D2 EsusYou took the fall and thought of meE A D Esus E A D/A AAbove all Above All Writer/Composer : Paul Baloche Original Key : A | Current Key : D | | | Print Version : Small | Medium | Large | Intro D G Asus A D G/D Verse D A/G G Asus A DAbove all powers, ...
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