29. Works Cited

Amrita816. "Chapter 21The Cost of Living for Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things." Scribd. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/76998294/21/Chapter-21-The-Cost-of-Living>.


"Banned Books." : The God of Small Things. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://bannedbookschallenge.blogspot.com/2007/11/god-of-small-things-wendys-review.html>.


"Our Diocese - Location | Diocese of Neyyattinkara." Our Diocese - Location | Diocese of Neyyattinkara. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://www.diocese-neyyattinkara.net/diocese/location/>.


"The God of Small Things Characters." Study Guides & Essay Editing. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://www.gradesaver.com/the-god-of-small-things/study-guide/character-list/>.


 "The God of Small Things [Paperback]." Amazon.com: The God of Small Things (9780060977498): Arundhati Roy: Books. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/The-God-Small-Things-Arundhati/dp/0060977493>.


 "The God of Small Things Plot Analysis." Shmoop. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://www.shmoop.com/god-of-small-things/plot-analysis.html>.


"The God of Small Things Quotes." By Arundhati Roy. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/810135-the-god-of-small-things>.

30. Reflection Paragraph on Sources

The sources that I used were not as helpful as I would have liked, but I worked with them. I never did learn who it was that actually challenged the book, so that was discouraging. I searched for three hours just trying to find one topic for this novel! It was very stressfull. The most useful source that I found was probably the blog by Wendy. It really helped me learn the most about the ban more than any other site I could find! The most trustworthy was probably gradesaver.com because it had so many of their sources listed when it came to background information on the characters.

28. Reflection on Findings and Process

    What I discovered in my research is that this book has absolutely nothing to do with what I expected! It did surprise me a lot because I expected it to be a sweet little story about candy canes and sugar plums that express how great the small things of God are but no ma'am it was not. It did prove the same point that I expected Roy just did it MUCH differently than I thought she would. The most interesting thing I found was probably how explicit the novel was.
    I really enjoyed doing the ToonDoodle and Wordle's in this project. I have never had a project where I could hardly find ANY research on it! It was definitely a challenge! I hated digging for information for hours and never finding it! It was awful! If I did it over I would have chose a different book because this book sucks. I hated it!

27. Finding Paragraph 3

Another question that I had was "Who are the main characters?" The main characters are Estha and Rahel. Estha, according to gradesaver.com,  is sent to live with his father, Babu, in Assam after Sophi Mol's death. At the age of thirty-one, he moves back to Ayemenem. It also says that much of the story is told from Rahel's perspective as a seven-year-old girl and as a thirty-one-year-old woman. She has an instinctive connecton to Estha, and as a child she could share experiences and memories with him unconsciously.
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-god-of-small-things/study-guide/character-list/

26. Finding Paragraph 2

Another question that I had about my book was "Where do they live?" Amazon.com states that it is Set in Kerala during the late 1960s when communism rattled the age-old caste system. They stay in a small home in Kerala. The city that they live in in Kerala is called Ayemenem. It goes on to tell how the story begins in a mossy, soaky, and dusty home in Ayemenem.
http://www.amazon.com/The-God-Small-Things-Arundhati/dp/0060977493

25. Finding Paragraph 1

In my first few blogs I wrote questions that I had about my book. The main question that I had about my book is what is the main conflict in the story. The conflict in the story is when Estha is molested by the Orangedrink Lemondrink man. It's also when Ammu is insulted by Rahel. In the quote that I put up about "careless words making people love you less" is the conflict point where Rahel insults Ammu.
http://www.shmoop.com/god-of-small-things/plot-analysis.html

21. Groups that have banned the book and Citation

According to "Wendy's Review", "The God Of Small things was not officially banned, but it faced controversy and challenges in India. Roy faced an obscenity trial for her depiction of love between a Christian woman and a low caste Hindu servant. The novel included pedophilia and incest, but apparently those issues were not what made the novel 'obscene.'" As for who challenged it I couldn't find any information on that.
http://bannedbookschallenge.blogspot.com/2007/11/god-of-small-things-wendys-review.html

22. Quote, Caption, Citation

D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/810135-the-god-of-small-things

Bad things can happen when you hurt people. When you hurt people they aren't going to love you as much. When you say careless things it tends to hurt people. Careless words make people love you less.

20. Message Passage 2, Explanation, and Citation

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again." http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/810135-the-god-of-small-things

     This quote is basically saying that a good story is a story that never gets old. To put it in my own interpretation, a good story is like watching your favorite movie! You know every single detail that is going to happen but you still love it. You never get tired of watching it.
     I chose this quote because it's a great example of why the book should not be banned. I watched an interview on YouTube between the author and a man where she explained how she wanted everyone to know the ending as soon as you started reading. She didn't want to write a book that kept you on your toes the whole time wondering what's going to happen. She wanted to spoil it at the beginning. In this quote it shows how she did that. I find that very interesting how she did that.

19. Message Passage 1, Explanation, and Citation

"They knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had nothing. No future. So they stuck to the small things." Chapter 21 "The Cost of Living"

    In this passage, the author is talking about how the two lovers had nothing. They didn't have a home. They knew that there was no futrure for them at all. They didn't have a penny to their names and it didn't matter. Even though they were going through all that they still managed to stick to the small things.
      This quote from the novel is a perfect example of why it shouldn't be banned. In my opinion, this quote is saying that when you're at your lowest point in life, and you know that there's no hope for you, if you have love then there's no reason to worry. Love will get you through everything. I think that is a good message that does come from this book even though most quotes from this chapter made me gag!

18. Graph/Chart/Map and Citation

The novel takes play in the state of Kerala, India. http://www.diocese-neyyattinkara.net/diocese/location/

17. Controversial Passage 3, Explanation, and Citation

"Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a tent. Like her children did when they wanted to exclude the outside world. She slid furtherdown, introducing herself to the rest of him." http://www.scribd.com/doc/76998294/21/Chapter-21-The-Cost-of-Living#page=149
  In these controversial passages, the controversy is mostly caused by the relationship between Ammu and Velutha. Ammu, the mother of main characters Estha and Rahel, is having an affair with this man who's name is Velutha. Velutha is the father figure of Estha and Rahel, even though he is accused of kidnapping them. This is still an unfit passage for anyone under the ages of 18 to read.
  This book has been challeged because of its sexual passages. Almost all of Chapter 21, "The Cost of Living", is about sex. The whole chapter is basically describing Ammu and Velutha's affair. It describes what is happening in the affair. This is why it is challenged. The whole point of Roy describing the affair in the way she does is because she uses it to emphasise the change in their way of seeing things. She shows that in Chapter 21 when she says "Even later, on the thirteen nights that followed this one, instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. ..They laughed at ant-bites on each other’s bottoms. At clumsy caterpillars sliding off the ends of leaves, at overturned beetles that couldn’t right themselves. At the pair of small fish that always sought Velutha out in the river and bit him." But the sexual passages is why it's challenged.

16. Controversial Passage 2, Explanation and Citation

"She lay against him. Their bodies slick with sweat. She felt his body drop away from her. Hisbreath become more regular. She saw his eyes clear. He stroked her hair, sensing that the knot thathad eased in him was still tight and quivering in her. Gently he turned her over on her back. He wiped the sweat and grit from her with his wet cloth." http://www.scribd.com/doc/76998294/21/Chapter-21-The-Cost-of-Living#page=149

      When I chose this book, I was expecting a story about showing God's glory through the little stuff. I waned to find something that may be a good book that would help me read about the power in the small things God has created, but in this chapter: Chapter 21, "The Cost of Living", I was appauled! All the expectations relating to God that I had in this novel were gone. This book isn't even fit to read with God, much less does it praise him like I expected.
     It is absolutely rediculous to even think that this book could be in schools. This passage isn't just about sex, it's about what's going on during sex. That's very awkward to say, but that's what it is. The book is not at all a book that pulls you in and makes you want to read it. Reading this passage was very uncomfortable for me, honestly. I felt like this passage is too vulgar and too explicit for school.

15. Controversial Passage 1, Explanation and Citation

    "Once he was inside her, fear was derailed and biology took over. The cost of living climbed to an unaffordable heights; though Baby Kochamma would say it was a small price to pay." pg. 318
    This is DEFINITELY an example of a controversial passage in this book! This quote in my opinion is quite disturbing! But it's actually one of the least explicit quotes compared to the ones that follow it! This can be an extreme reason for banning the book in schools. It is by far the most explicit quote from a school novel as any one I have ever read. I actually didn't want to keep reading when I got to that part.
   In my opinion according to this quote the book should definitely be banned in schools! It is not appropriate for student under the age of 18. Students should not be reading such graphic passages from a book such as this one. That is why it should be banned in schools.

24. Glogster on Banned Book

http://www.glogster.com/jennagracesingleton1d/the-god-of-small-things/g-6lj538k3k620crba56vjma0

14. Quote, Caption, Citation

"And so we hold on to this vision of happiness, this precious scrap of plunder, even as the novel's waters close over our heads."


This quote simply means being an optimist in whatever situation even in dire circumstances. 

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/970525.25truaxt.html

13. Photo, Caption, Citation

This picture relates to my book because the two main characters, Estha and Rahel, are twins. This is a picture of a set of twins and it relates even though they are not adult twins like the twins in The God of Small Things. 
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1092&bih=522&tbm=isch&tbnid=UUB_ppnOz295RM:&imgrefurl=http://sandystore.com/&docid=Sq4fgeMphLIztM&imgurl=http://sandystore.com/wp-content/themes/u-design/sliders/cycle/cycle2/images/TWINS.gif&w=564&h=338&ei=q0CXT8TFM4fq8wSC6ujEDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=84&vpy=215&dur=3075&hovh=174&hovw=290&tx=172&ty=96&sig=116946227877985947949&page=3&tbnh=147&tbnw=177&start=29&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:29,i:165

12. Book Review From a Well Known Source and Citation

Jenna-Grace Singleton

English II Honors

March 16, 2012

Mrs. Myers 

New York Times: 

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/970525.25truaxt.html

May 25, 1997

A Silver Thimble in Her Fist

By ALICE TRUAX

---

A child's drowning is one of the tragedies in this novel about a prosperous Indian family's ruin

The God of Small ThingsBy Arundhati Roy. 321 pp. New York: Random House. $23.

here is no single tragedy at the heart of Arundhati Roy's devastating first novel. Although ''The God of Small Things'' opens with memories of a family grieving around a drowned child's coffin, there are plenty of other intimate horrors still to come, and they compete for the reader's sympathy with the furious energy of cats in a sack. Yet the quality of Ms. Roy's narration is so extraordinary -- at once so morally strenuous and so imaginatively supple -- that the reader remains enthralled all the way through to its agonizing finish.
This ambitious meditation on the decline and fall of an Indian family is part political fable, part psychological drama, part fairy tale, and it begins at its chronological end, in a landscape of extravagant ruin. When 31-year-old Rahel Kochamma returns to Ayemenem House, her former home in the south Indian state of Kerala, its elegant windows are coated with filth and its brass doorknobs dulled with grease; dead insects lie in the bottom of its empty vases. The only animated presence in the house seems to be great-aunt Baby Kochamma's new television set -- in front of which she and her servant sit day after day, munching peanuts.
Rahel has come back to Ayemenem not to see her great-aunt, however, but because she has heard that her twin brother, Estha, has unexpectedly returned. Estha and Rahel were once inseparable, but now they have been apart for almost 25 years -- ever since the winter of 1969, when their English cousin, Sophie Mol, drowned in the river with their grandmother's silver thimble in her fist.
''Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day,'' Ms. Roy's narrator muses. ''That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house -- the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture -- must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for.'' And this is precisely Ms. Roy's undertaking as, throughout her book, she shuttles between the twins' past and present, continually angling in, crabwise, toward the night of Sophie Mol's death.
Unlike most first novels, ''The God of Small Things'' is an anti-Bildungsroman, for Estha and Rahel have never properly grown up. Whatever the nature of their crimes, it is almost immediately apparent that they have never recovered from their punishments, and present-day Ayemenem -- with its toxic river fish and its breezes stinking of sewage -- seems to reflect their poisoned and blighted lives. The Ayemenem of the twins' aborted childhood, however, is a rich confusion of competing influences. Bearded Syrian priests swing their censers while kathakali dancers perform at the temple nearby; the Communists are splintering, the Untouchables are becoming politicized and ''The Sound of Music'' is wildly popular. Life has an edgy, unpredictable feel.
The twins are only 7 years old in 1969, and -- affectionate, contentious, indefatigable -- they still live almost entirely in a world of their own making. They are at Ayemenem House because their proud and beautiful mother, Ammu, made the unforgivable mistake of marrying badly: when her husband began hitting the children as well as her, she returned, unwelcome, to her parents' home.
Ammu's status within the family is tenuous because of her marital disgrace, but a certain aura of eccentricity and defeat clings like a smell to all the residents of Ayemenem House, rendering them alternately comic, sympathetic and grotesque. There is the twins' elegant grandmother, Mammachi, with her skull permanently scarred from her dead husband's beatings and her bottle of Dior perfume carefully locked up in the safe. Then there is scheming Baby Kochamma, who once tried to become a nun but -- her faith inspired less by God than by a certain Father Mulligan -- lasted only a year in the convent. And there is the house servant, Kochu Maria, who thinks that Rahel is ridiculing her when she announces that Neil Armstrong has walked on the moon.
Finally, there is the twins' charming uncle, Chacko, the Oxford-educated Marxist who has returned from his failed marriage in England and taken over Mammachi's chutney business -- which, with cheerful ineptitude, he is running into the ground. Comrade Chacko means to organize a trade union for his workers, but he never quite gets around to it; instead he philosophizes, flirts with his female employees and assembles tiny balsa airplanes that immediately plummet to the ground. Chacko commends his ex-wife, Margaret, for leaving him, but he pines for her and their little daughter, Sophie Mol, just the same.
It gradually becomes clear to the reader that only Velutha, an Untouchable who serves as the family carpenter, is competent enough to transform life rather than simply endure it -- but, of course, as he's an Untouchable, endurance is supposed to be all he's good for. Velutha fixes everything around Ayemenem House, from the factory's canning machine to the cherub fountain in Baby Kochamma's garden. He is both essential and taken for granted in the twins' existence, like breathing. He is ''the God of Small Things.''
Estha and Rahel are accustomed to life under the umbrella of their elders' discontent; it is only after Chacko invites Margaret and Sophie Mol to come to India for Christmas that the twins gain a fresh appreciation for their second-class status. Baby Kochamma makes Estha and Rahel memorize a hymn and fines them whenever they speak in Malayalam instead of English. Kochu Maria bakes a great cake; Mammachi plays the violin and allows Sophie Mol to make off with her thimble. When Chacko angrily refers to the children as millstones around his neck, Rahel understands that her light-skinned cousin, on the other hand, has been ''loved from the beginning.''
In the following weeks, the smoldering longings and resentments at Ayemenem House will be ignited by larger historical pressures -- the heady promises of Communism, the pieties of Christianity, the rigidities of India's caste system -- and combust with catastrophic results. And if the events surrounding the night of Sophie Mol's death form an intricate tale of crime and punishment, Ms. Roy's elaborate and circuitous reconstruction of those events is both a treasure hunt (for the story itself) and a court of appeals (perhaps all the witnesses were not heard; perhaps all the evidence was not considered).
Are the twins responsible for Sophie Mol's death? Why is Baby Kochamma so terrified of the Communists? What happened to Velutha at the police station? Why does jolly Chacko batter down the door to Ammu's room, threatening to break every bone in her body?
What sustains us through this dread-filled dance between the calamitous past and the bleak present is the exuberant, almost acrobatic nature of the writing itself. Ms. Roy refuses to allow the reader to view the proceedings from any single vantage point: time and again, she lures us toward some glib judgment only to twist away at the last minute, thereby exposing our moral laziness and shaming us with it. But Ms. Roy's shape-shifting narrative is also tremendously nourishing, crammed not only with remonstrances but also with inside jokes, metaphors, rogue capital letters, nonsense rhymes and unexpected elaborations. Even as the Kochamma family seems to be withering before our eyes, the story of the family is flourishing, becoming ever more nuanced and intricate.
Very early on in ''The God of Small Things,'' the grown-up Estha is caring for an ancient dog when he glimpses the shadow of a bird in flight moving across the dying animal's skin: ''To Estha -- steeped in the smell of old roses, blooded on memories of a broken man -- the fact that something so fragile, so unbearably tender had survived, had been allowed to exist, was a miracle.'' The end of this novel also describes a brief interlude of intense happiness, and it evokes in the reader a similar feeling of gratitude and wonderment: it's as if we had suddenly stumbled upon something small and sparkling in all this wreckage. By now we know what horrors await these characters, but we have also learned, like Estha, to take what we can get. And so we hold on to this vision of happiness, this precious scrap of plunder, even as the novel's waters close over our heads.

11. Info on the Author

Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya. In an interview the author said that she wanted to write a book that wasn't suspenseful. She wanted a story that was different than most. Instead of the book leaving you guessing the whole time, she wanted you to know the ending at the very beginning! The God of Small Things is actually the only novel she has written. The book won the "Booker Prize." 


www.BookRags.com states that Indian history and politics shape the plot and meaning of The God of Small Things in a variety of ways. Some of Roy's commentary is on the surface, with jokes and snippets of wisdom about political realities in  India. However, the novel also examines the historical roots of these realities and develops profound insights into the ways in which human desperation and desire emerge from the confines of a firmly entrenched caste society. Roy reveals a complex and longstanding class conflict in the state of Kerala, India, and she comments on its various competing forces. 

Roy's style is often political.

23. ToonDoo on Censorship

http://www.toondoo.com/View.toon?param=4854532

10. Describe the Ban

     Ask.com states that in 1997, the author was summoned to India's Supreme Court. This was the beginning of the banning of the book "The God of Small Things." The Court claimed that the book had occasional sex scenes, involving a Christian woman and a low-caste Hindu servant. The book was never officially banned but it was challenged.
    Also, to defend against a claim that the book's brief and occasional sex scenes, involving a Christian woman and a low-caste Hindu servant, corrupted public morals. The book came close to being banned, but was never actually banned. After the court session that Roy went through she went on to writing her second book.

9. Describe Your Book

My book is about these fraternal twins, Estha and Rahel. They live in Ayemenem India.  Shmoop.com states that the conflict of the story is that Estha is molested and Rahel insults Ammu. The complication is that Rahel is convinced that Ammu doesn't love her. Estha is afraid the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man will come for him. The climax of the story is when Sophie Mol dies. In the book the protagonists are Rahel and her twin brother Estha. The antagonist is Baby Kochamma. 

8. What is Censorship? Citation.

Jenna-Grace Singleton 
English 2 Honors
February 29, 2012
Mrs. Myers 


Censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts. My book was banned in schools for some "unacceptable parts." I think it is quite ridiculous. It's just an opinion of the author, these unacceptable parts. Censorship is just taking the first amendment and making it like it doesn't matter.
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=define+censorship&oq=define+cen&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_l=hp.3.0.0l4.159l2690l0l3919l13l11l1l1l1l0l317l1067l9j0j1j1l14l0.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=87c6230bd8e448f1&biw=1092&bih=522

7. What is the 1st Amendment? Citation.

Jenna-Grace Singleton
Mrs. Myers
English 2 Honors
February 24, 2012


The first amendment is arguably the most vital amendment in the Bill of Rights. It gives the right of religion, freedom of speech, the right of press, the freedom to assemble, and the freedom to petition. All of these rights play into each other in different ways. For example, we couldn't have the freedom of press without the freedom of speech. America has been called the melting pot because of their diverse cultures and because we have the freedom of religion these cultures can endure. 
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights

6. Wordle #1 Based On One Useful Site

5. Preliminary Links and Descriptions

http://bannedbookschallenge.blogspot.com/2007/11/god-of-small-things-wendys-review.html
This is by Wendy. She gives an overall view of the book was banned. This can help me with more opinion.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/roy.html
It is by author Paul Brians. This website gives a very good description of the books small things. It also describes things that some may not understand.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/595830-the-god-of-small-things-chapters-8-14
This is by many authors.This site includes reviews on why the book was banned. It can help me get some other opinions on why it may have been banned from schools.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6134.Arundhati_Roy
This website is full of quotes from the book. They're all by the Author Roy. I think this will help me because it gives some of the best and most important quotes from the book.

4. Animoto Based on Search Questions

This is as much as i could fit on there :/
http://animoto.com/play/vV0pmazkLcMkaz0ZLjtxTQ

3: What I Want To Know About My Book

The over all question I have about my book is; What is the major conflict that causes them to discover "The God of Small Things." Also, I'd like to know who the main characters are, Where they live, How old they are, How many main characters there are, and What point of view the story is told in.

2: What I already know about my book.

Currently, I do not have a copy of my book but i remember a small part of the description. To my knowledge, "The God of Small Things" By: Roy is about a man who can't decide on his faith. He wants to be a Christian but he's persecuted so much that it's hard. I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure this is what it was about.

1: The Story Behind My Book Choice

The reason I chose this book is because I read the description and it seemed inspirational. This past weekend, I rededicated my life to Christ. The description said it was about a Christian who got persecuted a lot. I thought it could, possibly, up-lift me more and give me advice on how to take in and handle persecution as a Christian.