Identity. To put it colloquially, Roy emphasizes that nothing is black and white. While

boundaries are set, love laws are made, and lines are drawn – not one of the characters in

the novel fits neatly into a category. Yet, every single mother adheres or is forced to

adhere to an unforgiving set of social norms. The inability to speak a profound pain leads

these marginalized characters to self-destruct. Roy stresses that the politics of resistance

and social transformation must be negotiated on a personal level before any large scale

change takes place. In the novel, fragments of freedom are found in personal

relationships between characters, but due to external pressures they are short-lived. When

the characters start to lose their history, their narrative ties and lines, they begin to come

apart at the seams. The decadent descriptions of Ayemenem indicate decline from a once

ideal state to one that is devastated. Roy explores the "vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation" (John Updike, The New Yorker)

in the individual lives of her characters.

Roy’s text is verification of Benhabib’s theory of narrativity. The interwoven

lives and tales, combined with the structure of the text, provide an awareness of multiple stories and perspectives that are oftentimes contradictory. By authoring a polyvocal

novel, Roy creates dialogue and thus, the potential for resistance. Rather than developing

a linear and traditionally cohesive text, Roy is creative and more fully engaged with her

characters and their subsequent stories, thereby enabling her readers to engage deeply as

well. Incompatibilities are viewed in relation to each other and no concrete resolution is

sought or required. In her largely political way, Roy emphasizes the necessity of

understanding subject position to address identity construction. There are no overtly

tragic assumptions made about the human condition in this novel, but the characters

speak for themselves.

The desperate pursuit of identity in a world that fights against the individual

occurs amidst all of the characters within the novel. To expect everyone to fall into neat

categories effectively marginalizes all those who do not in a destructive and disabling

process. Ironically, all the characters within the novel suffer from some kind of

marginalization or another, but the one attempt at consciously subverting this oppression

– Ammu and Velutha’s love affair – is considered to be the worst form of transgression

and the social hierarchy effectively subsumes their efforts. Ammu and Velutha are

punished brutally for their love affair. But, as Rahel highlights, every other character in the novel transgress in varying ways:

Perhaps Ammu, Estha and she were the worst transgressors. But it wasn’t just

them. It was the others too. They all broke the rules. They all crossed into

forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should

be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers

grandmothers, uncles uncles, mother mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and

jelly jelly.” (Roy 31)

Rahel’s sentiments on the transgressions of her family are poignantly accurate: all the

members of her family (and by implication everyone) commits some kind of

transgression and are punished for it, but more disturbingly, they punish each other.

Every mother within the novel faces social obstacles and is denied individual agency.

Despite familial ties and individual emotions, the characters are bound to their

constructed social beliefs. Because of the characters’ inability to break out of social

convention, all of their lives fall apart, and all of them fail. Everyone is participant and