Use of Similes and Metaphors in God of Small Things Aaisha Mumtaz College

‘Her reality is magical. She has a heightened awareness of the natural world, of smells and sounds, of colour and light. And she renders palpable this world, at once strange and familiar, in prose of sinuous beauty… A small wonder of style and compassion.’ (Jason Cowley, The Times)

With her sharp imagery, logical thought and emotional sensitivity, Arundhati Roy presents before us a world we can very easily identify with. Her lucid language, witty puns and quick and sudden shifts into thoughts serve to make us more comfortable rather than to confuse us like Faulkner’s work does. She is more close to Steinbeck in style than she is to Morrison, with an additional quality of excessive use of similes and metaphors that help to lend more beauty to her work. Her ‘utterly exceptional masterpiece,’ The God of Small Things, justifies Rushdie’s statement that ‘Literature is self-Validating.’ Along with the brilliance of its inter-related themes and genuine tragic resonance, the novel appeals to our senses for its marvelous descriptions. Roy attempts to ‘show’ rather than just ‘tell’ and this she does, with great success.

Use of similes and the connections she makes between tangible objects and imaginary feelings, between apparent...