The God of Small Things Lesson Plan

Why does Roy shorten the lengths of the chapters as the novel ends, and to what effect?

At this point in the novel, all of the backstories about the family and contextualizing scenes for the main events have already been told--because of this, each scene left to be told is short and concise. The frequent chapter breaks emphasize the fragmented nature of the experiences. Even though the events occur within a chain of cause-and-effect, no one character experiences every moment, and many of the characters (especially the twins) are unable to join their experiences into a coherent narrative. The reader is given all the information necessary to create the narrative, but the...