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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Elusive Love

Love is an “Untouchable” in the novel, just like the Paravan caste. The emotion is the impetus behind much of the novel’s major events: It is love that propels Ammu to sleep with Velutha; love that fascinates and instills fear in Rahel; the variability of Ammu’s love toward Rahel that constantly plagues Rahel as a child; and it is unfulfilled love that leads to Baby Kochamma’s bitterness, and leads to her tragic betrayal of Velutha, Ammu, and the twins. Ironically, the only person who is “loved” outwardly in the novel is Sophie Mol, a relative the Kochamma family only knows for a few weeks. They fawn over Sophie Mol’s arrival and her death is the ghostly core around which the novel’s plot is told. 

A twisted, sick version of love is also mixed with violence in perversion, as in the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man’s molestation of Estha, Mammachi’s nightly beatings by her husband, Pappachi, Ammu’s beating of her own husband, Babu, and perhaps most tragically of all, Estha and Rahel’s night of incestual love-making. Love, in all its mixed and perverted, as well as purest, forms is something that is woven in and out of the characters’ lives, but love is only truly experienced and achieved between Ammu and Velutha. Despite love being the fuel for so much of the action in the novel, the emotion is only explicitly given a single chapter’s worth of description at the end.

The Struggle to Maintain Boundaries

Boundaries—in their literal and figurative form—are constantly crossed, mutated, observed, and defied throughout the novel. Nature is the first transgressor of boundaries, turning brick walls green with moss, choking electric poles with vines, and overtaking the Ayemenem house with dirt, grime, and insects. Nature finds a way of eluding and moving beyond boundaries throughout the novel, and it is a reminder of the “Small Things” that constantly threaten to overturn the “Big Things.” Even Pappachi’s treasured moth eludes him and the other scientists, who argue for years over its official classification. The twins themselves are hard to classify as children, and consider themselves as “One” since they share the same thoughts and experiences. It’s only later, as adults, that Rahel and Estha become individuals, and even then, they defy social norms by sleeping together. Mammachi and Baby Kochamma are the characters who try to uphold boundaries and the social order of the caste system but in doing so end up betraying the true things that hold people together, such as love, honor, and compassion. Mammachi turns her back on Velutha after years of service in order to maintain her family’s standing, and Baby Kochamma betrays the twins to save herself and her own standing in the world. 

Pride and Shame

Pride and shame run strong in the Kochamma family. Both emotions can result from emotional instability, a way of establishing a sort of grounding in the world. Pappachi, in order to keep his pride, buys a blue Plymouth and drives it around the town to appear attractive and worthy of respect. Much of his pride relied on dominating his wife, Mammachi, and his social standing as Imperial Entomologist at the Pusa Institute in Delhi, but these are both taken away when his son Chacko forces him to stop beating Mammachi, and he doesn’t get credit for discovering the species of moth he found in his drink one day. Pappachi dies of a heart attack, embittered for having lost his pride and standing in the world. Comrade Pillai, a man of a lower caste, uses his children to impress others by making them recite literature, and Baby Kochamma makes a reference to a Shakespearean play to impress a child, Sophie Mol. Readers may end up sympathizing with these characters as they try to shape-shift to cover up a sense of inadequacy. Shame, a sort of inverse emotion of pride, also functions as a destructive force in the novel, keeping Estha from revealing that he’s been abused for fear of no longer being worthy of his mother’s love. Pride and shame are motivating factors for many of the things the characters do to avoid being real, and they instead live in an altered version of reality where they have control. Pride and shame are also the motivating factors behind the most heinous of actions, specifically Baby Kochamma’s betrayal of Velutha, Amma, and the twins.

Next section Motifs

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