How Does Arundhati Roy Tell The Story In Chapter 1

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How does Arundhati Roy tell the story in chapter one? The God of Small Things begins with Rahel returning to her childhood home in Ayemenem, India to see her twin brother, Estha, who has been sent to Ayemenem by their father. Events flash back to Rahel and Estha’s birth and the period before their mother Ammu divorced their father. Then the narrator describes the funeral of Sophie Mol. It's a very disturbing scene where Roy describes Sophie Mol being buried alive (of course she is not actually alive) but she lets the vivid imagination of the twins run wild. Rahel and Estha’s cousin, and the point after the funeral when Ammu went to the police station to say that a terrible mistake had been made. Two weeks after this point, Estha was returned to his father The narrator describes the twins’ adult lives before they return to Ayemenem. In the present, Baby Kochamma boasts that Estha does not speak to Rahel just as he does not speak to anyone else, and then the narrator gives an overview of Baby Kochamma’s life. Rahel looks out the window at the building that used to contain the family business, Paradise Pickles and Preserves, and flashes back to the circumstances surrounding Sophie Mol’s death. The story begins twenty-three years after the main events which are later covered by the novel, with flashbacks to that earlier period which culminated in the funeral of Sophie Mol. References to the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man and the death of Sophie Mol are explained later in the novel. The God of Small Things is not written in an orderly narrative style where events unfold chronologically. Instead, the novel is a mixture of flashbacks and lengthy side tracks that weave together to tell the story of the family. Although the narrative voice is all knowing, it it is some what based on Rahel's point of view and all of the chapters of the novel progress towards the key

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