The God of Small Things Chapters 20 & 21 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 20 & 21

Summary: Chapter 20, The Madras Mail

The narrative returns to the twins’ childhood. Estha is sent away to live with his father, Babu. On the train, a woman sitting next to Estha offers him treats, saying he speaks good English. As the train pulls away, Rahel screams as if she’s in pain. It is revealed that only when Estha and Rahel are adults do they learn Ammu’s role in Velutha’s death. Throughout their lives, the twins both bear the guilt of Sophie Mol’s and Velutha’s death, but Estha moreso since he was the one forced to testify against Velutha.

Back in the present, Rahel goes to Estha’s room at the Ayemenem house. She calls him by his childhood nickname, “Esthapappychachen Kuttappen Peter Mon.” Estha traces her mouth with his fingers, noting how her mouth is like their mother’s, which he always thought was beautiful. They lie holding each other in the bed and then make love. The narrator says that “[t]here is very little anyone could say to clarify what happened,” and the act was one of “hideous grief” more than love. Rahel then remembers the night of Sophie Mol’s arrival, when Ammu tucked her into bed. After tucking Rahel in, Ammu leaves the room, longing for Velutha.

Summary: Chapter 21, The Cost of Living

The last chapter ends with a description of Ammu and Velutha’s relationship. Back on the day of Sophie Mol’s arrival, after Ammu tucks Rahel into bed, Ammu goes out to the verandah of the house to listen to her radio. She goes to the river, hoping that Velutha will meet her there as they planned. For a while, Velutha doesn’t notice her there because he’s floating in the river looking up at the stars. Velutha finally spots Ammu and swims over, excited yet hoping he hasn’t made a mistake thinking that she wants to be with him. They embrace on the bank of the river and Ammu kisses him, signaling him to make love to her. The experience is so deep and profound that time is suspended for a moment.

Ammu and Velutha meet thirteen more times before Velutha’s death, focusing only on the “Small Things” like the little pleasures of their bodies and the way insects bite them, since they know the “Big Things” (namely their caste difference) will always keep them apart. Velutha and Ammu care for a pet spider that Velutha names “Lord Rubbish” and every night before they part, they say the words “Tomorrow? Tomorrow.” The last night they are together, the night of Sophie Mol’s arrival, Ammu turns back to repeat the word “Tomorrow” one last time before returning to the house.

Analysis: Chapters 20 & 21

The final chapters offer two starkly different, yet equally pathos-inspiring depictions of the act of love. In Chapter 20, the twins make love, an act of incest that is so horrifying it isn’t even described. Roy writes that, rather, “[t]here is very little that anyone could say to clarify what happened” and nothing anyone could say that “would separate Sex from Love[,] Or Needs from Feelings” when describing the act. Roy only refers to their sexual encounter as an act of shared “hideous grief.” The twins, who found that only in each other can they find understanding and a home, have made love out of the intense loneliness and sadness they share over their tragic lives. It’s an act where they, for once, feel connected to another person, in body and mind.

Ironically, the twins have broken the cherished “Love Laws” of their culture, just like Ammu and Velutha. In their act of sex, they have created their own dictates over who should be loved and how. Their act of rebellion, however, is more gruesome and leaves the reader uneasy at best. Rahel and Estha’s violation, one would argue, is wholly unnatural. Ammu and Velutha’s act of love, in contrast, is an act of rebellion that is sprung from a love that is pure and healthy, an impulse that should be followed, even if it causes them to violate the “Love Laws.” When Ammu and Velutha are together, they succumb to forces that overwhelm them and take them outside of time to the eternal. It’s this force that makes them pay attention to the “Small Things,” like the insects around them and the features of their bodies. It’s a vision of pure paradise experienced on Earth. These are the things Roy clearly champions in the novel as being the one “real” thing that should be followed.

The “Love Laws” set down by society make an act of love like Ammu and Velutha’s “perverse,” but it also makes the one committed by Rahel and Estha perverse, a judgment, in the twins’ case, which seems correct. In a confusing world where love, needs, sex, and feelings are all mixed, Roy leaves the reader to decide where to place Rahel and Estha’s act, in both the novel and in life at large, which lies on the boundaries of pure need, sibling love, and perversion.

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