The Interface between Tradition and Modernity in Roy’s The God of Small Things

Abstract

The present dissertation explores consequences of the encounter between tradition and modernity in the present Indian society through Roy’s novelThe God of Small Things. Modernity helps to weaken the strict rules of the caste system where cruelty and barbaric behavior are used as tool to perpetuate the age old caste system and renders the assertion of independence which implies the central characters Velutha and Ammu to choose unwilled and undesirable transgression against social taboos as protest, which ultimately leads them into victimization.