nudekvm.blogg.se

By not mentioning his name, she sensed that a pact had been forged between her Dream and the World” (210).

The only viable force left was their emotions: “Somehow, by not mentioning his name, she knew that she had drawn him into the tousled intimacy of that blue cross-stitch afternoon and the song from the tangerine transistor. Together, they made time unnecessary they had no reason to burden themselves with history since societal norms had already made their relationship publicly impossible. With Velutha, there were no flashbacks simply because there was no need for Ammu to attempt to obscure the present with the past when she was with him. He offered her an escape from tradition, and escape from her societal role, and, most importantly, escape from the past. Ammu only evaded the black hole of the Kochamma family history through flight into her own fantasy. There were, however, exceptions whose contrasting approach strengthens the point, two being Ammu and Velutha. Her boarding school years (however flawed) pushed her further and further away from her family’s influence until, after alighting in Washington D.C., Rahel gave in to the undeniable pull of familial history and returned once more to Ayemenem. Rahel was a different matter actively attempting to flee the history of her family, she came the closest to normalcy. Even Pappachi, the patriarch of the family, was privately awed by his father the reverend. Estha is entrapped in the moment he lost his innocence in the cinema, missing the simplicity of childhood. Baby Kochamma is left yearning for the yesteryears of prosperity while sitting stagnant on her couch, entranced with the superficiality of television. Chacko does so with his days as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, pining for Margaret yet content in his suffering.

With reoccurring pseudo-flashbacks, each of the elder Kochammas finds solace from the fear of the present by reminiscing and dwelling in the past. The first indicator of the Kochamma family’s apprehension of time is the non-linear way in which the novel is written, forcing mention of past success as if to offset the steadily lowering fortune of the family.