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Chapters 13–15

Summary: Chapter 13, The Pessimist and the Optimist 

The narrative returns to the past. Sophie Mol is in her mother Margaret’s room as she’s sleeping, and she’s looking at a picture of her parents’ wedding day. The scene shifts back to when Chacko and Margaret first meet. He is a student at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and she, the daughter of working-class parents, is a waitress. Margaret is an independent woman, supporting herself and saving up to train to become a teacher. Chacko comes into her restaurant and strikes up a chat with her by telling her a joke about “Pete the Optimist and Stuart the Pessimist.” The joke says that on Pete and Stuart’s birthday, the father gives each of them gifts. He fills Pete’s room with horse dung and Stuart’s room with expensive gifts that he doesn’t like. When the father goes into Pete’s room, he finds Pete shoveling frantically, saying that if there is this much horse dung, there must be a horse around. Margaret doesn’t find the joke that funny, but laughs hard because Chacko is laughing, and their laughter bonds them. Margaret is charmed by Chacko and his thin body and intelligence. They marry, but soon after, she learns how lazy Chacko is, and she grows weary as she realizes their life is going nowhere. Soon after their daughter Sophie Mol is born, Margaret asks Chacko for a divorce, and leaves him for another man, Joe. When Joe dies nine years later, Margaret seeks refuge with Chacko in India, and she and Sophie Mol go to Ayemenem. Back in the moment where Sophie Mol stands watching her mother sleep, Margaret feels distraught and haunted by her decision to bring Sophie Mol here, knowing Sophie Mol would be alive if she never brought her to Ayemenem.

Next, the reader learns about the events surrounding Sophie Mol’s death. The morning of her death, when the twins and Sophie Mol don’t show up for breakfast, Ammu recalls how she told them in a fit of anger the night before that they are “millstones” around her neck, and if it weren’t for them, she’d be free. Ammu is now seized with fear, wondering what has happened to them. 

Readers learn that the previous afternoon, Velutha’s father, Vellya Paapen, showed up at the Ayemenem house drunk to confess to Mammachi that his son Velutha, a Paravan, and Ammu were having an affair. Vellya Paapen is so distraught and ashamed that he offers to kill his own son over their betrayal, since it is a serious crime for a Paravan to have a relationship with a Touchable. Mammachi, in a fit of rage, pushes Vellya Paapen down the stairs. Baby Kochamma overhears the fight and stokes Mammachi’s rage even further by gesturing with her arms while the fight rages. Baby Kochamma feels vindicated by Ammu’s betrayal to the family, since she’s always been jealous of Ammu. The women lock Ammu up in her room and send for Velutha.

The narrative shifts to when a fisherman discovers Sophie Mol’s body in the river. At the same time, Baby Kochamma is at the police station reporting Ammu’s and Velutha’s affair. At first, the policeman seems uninterested in the case since the victim isn’t the one reporting the crime. Baby Kochamma then fabricates the story to say that Ammu was raped, and Velutha is unashamed of his crime, a story that indulges Baby Kochamma’s love of melodrama and her family’s self-importance. 

Back at the Ayemenem house, Margaret sees Sophie Mol’s corpse and goes into a tailspin for the next few days. She blames Estha, since it was his idea to go on the river. Margaret slaps him on her way out of town, but apologizes years later, after he’s become an adult. The narrative then returns to Sophie Mol standing in her sleeping mother’s bedroom. Sophie Mol opens her mother’s suitcase to take the presents she’s brought for the twins as Sophie Mol is on her way to meet Rahel and Estha at the river. Both Velutha and Sophie Mol are described as beings whose loss of life remain long after the mark of their actual lives. 

Summary: Chapter 14, Work Is Struggle 

Chacko visits Comrade K. N. M. Pillai’s house. Chacko wants Pillai to take on a new contract to print labels for Chacko’s new product, Synthetic Cooking Vinegar, and Chacko also wants to learn more about the Communist march the family saw on the way to Cochin to pick up Sophie Mol. Comrade K. N. M. Pillai’s house is modest, and he shuffles around trying to impress and intimidate Chacko by getting his children to recite poetry and slogans, and appearing busy. Chacko mentions seeing Velutha at the march, which surprises Comrade K. N. M. Pillai, who thinks Chacko will be angry since Velutha is a worker at his pickle factory. However, Chacko defends Velutha, saying he trusts him. Still, Comrade K. N. M. Pillai says Chacko should fire Velutha because he is a Paravan and having an Untouchable as a co-worker bothers the other employees. 

The narrative shifts forward to reveal that the family’s pickle factory eventually folds, and it is Comrade K. N. M. Pillai who is the last to see Velutha alive, swimming down the river, but does not reveal this information to the police. Readers also see Velutha’s arrival at Mammachi’s house, after she calls for him after his father outs him. When Velutha arrives, Mammachi spits in his face and says she’ll have him killed. He only replies, “We’ll see about that.” Velutha heads to Comrade K. N. M. Pillai’s house to try to get his support, knowing that Mammachi will ruin him, but Comrade K. N. M. Pillai sends Velutha away, muttering blank Communist slogans and saying the party can’t protect its workers over personal affairs. Before he shuts the door completely on Velutha, Comrade K. N. M. Pillai notices Velutha’s nails are painted red as the twins painted them earlier in the day. Velutha leaves Comrade K. N. M. Pillai’s home and heads to the river to swim toward the History House. 

Summary: Chapter 15, The Crossing  

Velutha takes his last swim across the river. The narrator describes how beautiful, strong, and able Velutha’s body is as it cuts across the water in the moonlight, but also how all his movements are instinctual and unconscious, as he’s in a state of shock over his now uncertain and dangerous future. The narrator refers to Velutha as the “God of Small Things.”  

Analysis: Chapters 13–15 

In these chapters, the plot reaches the climax and enters the falling action. The particulars of Sophie Mol’s death, the main plot event of the novel, are not yet revealed, but Ammu and Velutha’s affair is discovered, and this major sub-plot of the novel is resolved. Readers are also given clues into the events that precipitated the act that led to Sophie Mol’s death, including Ammu’s harsh words to the twins that they are “millstones” around her neck. This comment is what sends the twins to the History House to seek refuge, and the reason, indirectly, why Sophie Mol dies. 

Ammu and Velutha’s relationship defies social and family obligations to the extreme. It brings shame upon Mammachi’s family and angers Velutha’s father so much that he offers to kill his own son to right Velutha’s wrong. Mammachi breaks social boundaries to welcome Velutha, the Paravan, into her home, and now he has defiled this act of “kindness” by sleeping with her daughter. While the Kochamma family has a “right” to be angry, the result is a confused mess since they have already made Velutha an unofficial part of the family. Velutha, once again, is caught at the crossroads of culture, family obligation, and the forces of real love, and yet he also lives outside of these boundaries. 

Velutha’s encounter with Comrade K. N. M. Pillai, and Chacko’s meeting with Comrade K. N. M. Pillai earlier, highlight how Marxism’s ideologies run hollow when transplanted into other cultures, and perhaps run hollow indefinitely in and of themselves. Comrade K. N. M. Pillai refuses to help Velutha and give him Party protection because Velutha is a Paravan and he doesn’t want to interfere with the political relationships he is building in the community. For all its maxims, the Communist Party is also ineffectual to help the ones it proclaims to protect: the workers. Comrade K. N. M. Pillai draws an artificial line between “personal” and “professional” issues, and says the party cannot protect members from personal issues and acts of transgression. He allows the codes of the Indian caste system to trump the ones of the Communist Party, which stand truly outside of Indian culture.

Velutha, in a highly metaphorical moment, is seen floating across the river in Chapter 15. Now truly “homeless,” without affiliation to family, work, or society, and without the protection of any of them, Velutha is in the only place that will accept him: the river. In several scenes throughout the novel, Velutha is seen gliding elegantly across the river, his muscular body working effortlessly with and against the currents, and star-gazing, suspended in time. Nature is the only place where he belongs as a “God of Small Things.” Velutha is the messenger of the “Small Things,” like the currents of the river, that form the impulses for all pure things in nature.

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