Characters
Estha
Estha, which is short for Esthappen Yako, is Rahel's twin brother. He is a serious, intelligent, and somewhat nervous child who wears "beige and pointy shoes" and has an "Elvis puff." His experience of the circumstances surrounding Sophie Mol's visit is somewhat more traumatic than Rahel's, beginning when he is sexually abused by a Man at a theater. The narrator stresses that Estha's "Two Thoughts" in the pickle factory, which stem from this experience (that "Anything can happen to Anyone" and "It's best to be prepared") are critical in leading to his cousin's death.
Estha is the twin chosen by Baby Kochamma, because he is more "practical" and "responsible," to go into Velutha's cell and condemn him as their abductor. This trauma, in addition to being shipped (or "Returned") to Calcutta to live with his father, contributes to Estha becoming mute at some point in his childhood. Estha never went to college and acquired a number of habits, such as wandering on very long walks and obsessively cleaning his clothes. He is so close to his sister that the narrator describes them as one person, despite having been separated for most of their lives. He is repeatedly referred to as "Silent" in the book.
Rahel
Rahel is Estha's younger sister by eighteen minutes. An intelligent and honest person who has never felt socially comfortable, she is something of a drifter, and several times the narrator refers to her as the quality "Emptiness." When she is a girl, her hair sits "on top of her head like a fountain" and she always wears red-tinted plastic sunglasses with yellow rims.
Ammu
Ammu is Rahel and Estha's mother. She married their father (referred to as Baba) only to get away from her family. He was an alcoholic, and she divorced him when he started to be violent towards her and her children. She went back to Ayemenem, and seven years later has an affair with Velutha, a Paravan (Untouchable). This relationship is the cataclysmic event in the novel. She is a strict mother, and her children worry about losing her love.
Read more about this topic: The God Of Small Things
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)
“For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)