The Faults Of Our World And Society In The God Of Small Things And Boyz N The Hood

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Introduction:

The Relativity of truth is a broad concept, which can have many different answers and approaches to it. There are a vast number of answers, possibilities and interpretations that are associated with the ultimate question, “What is the relativity of ”truth“?”. I have read the book called The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and watched the movie Boyz N’ The Hood, directed by John Singleton, and I was able to grasp a strong answer on the relativity of truth, as well as have a deep understanding of both the stories on a psychological, intellectual and emotional level through the eyes of the Marxist lense.

Summaries:

The God Of Small Things:

The God Of Small Things is a novel published in 1997 by Indian author Arundhati Roy. The story follows a family that resides in a small village in Kerala, India called Ayemenam. It starts off with one of the twin siblings, Rahel, returning to the village after finding out her twin brother Estha has also returned, to run the pickle factory. With a shift of time being set in place, it is the funeral of Sophie Mol, another resident of Ayemenem, who suddenly passes away. Rahel feels as if she was buried alive, but all the people around her don’t believe or take consideration of what she’s saying. The twins ultimately get separated, with Rahel taking the train back to Ayemenem and Estha being sent to live with Babu, another character, in Assam. As time progresses, it’s found that both twins have ventured through life aimlessly and then ended up back in their hometown many years later. Due to the many years that the twins have spent apart from one another, they are like strangers to one another. As the story has a non-linear chronology and interchanges between 1969 and 1993 frequently, another flashback is introduced to the reader that goes to a time where the twins and their family go to watch a movie in the theatre, and Estha cannot stop singing, so he gets removed from the theatre and molested by the Orange Lemondrink Man. When Rahel gets the gut feeling that something is happening to Estha, she goes to their mother, Ammu, and tries to make her aware. Instead of taking action, she praises the man and says she loves Rahel less, which leaves deep scars in her emotional state. Throughout the many narrative shifts from the past and the present, it shows the death of Ammu at the age of 31 in an interview outside of town, the real cause of death of Sophie, the affair between Ammu and Velutha and eventually the incestuous relationship between the twins. They both have a deep affinity for the small things, and both are appreciative of the riverbank in the story, where they first make love.

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Boyz N The Hood:

Boyz N The Hood is an American drama-thriller film directed by John Singleton, and it was released in 1991. This film gives the audience a perspective of the lives of inner-city youth in Los Angeles and the importance of making the right decisions in time and having a father. The story of this movie follows Tre, a child growing up in South Los Angeles with his single mother. He gets into a fight with another student in the classroom, and after getting temporarily suspended from school, he is shown a letter that he wrote promising not to get into any fights at school. While working towards a degree to get a better job and provide a better life for herself and her son, she sends him over to the father, Furious to temporarily live there. At this point, we are introduced to Tre’s friends Doughboy, Ricky and Dooky. Tre has to now adjust to the strictness of his father in his new home environment and his new life. He sees his father shoot at the door of the house as an intruder has entered the house, but manages to escape in the middle of the night. Time goes by 7 years into the future, and all the characters grow up and have different sorts of lifestyles. Tre works at a mall and is still in school studying and balancing his relationship with Brandi, Ricky has a child and is incredibly focused on his goal to play football, and Doughboy is involved in gangs and selling drugs to get through his day to live. The audience just sees how life goes for all three of the characters, and start to have a good idea on what is most likely going to be the future for all these characters. Ricky meets with an agent from the University of SC to discuss a football scholarship and is told he needs to pass his SAT with a score of 700 or more to proceed. Things get shaky for the protagonists as they get into a fight with a rival gang on Crenshaw. After this, Doughboy and Ricky get into a fight after Ricky watches an ad on TV about joining the military and seeing his brother as a nobody. When walking to the store and back, he runs into the rivals from the night on Crenshaw, tries to escape but gets shot and dies in the alley as he runs. Doughboy finds out and retaliates soon after, and acting out of anger, Tre decides to ride with them even after his father spoke to him. During the ride, however, Tre leaves the car and Doughboy and his friends go looking for the rivals. They end up seeing them at a restaurant, and Doughboy and his gang kill all of them, with Doughboy getting out and shooting them all to death. Ricky’s mother opens the SAT results and found out he passed. The movie ends with messages saying Ricky was buried the day after, Doughboy gets murdered two weeks later and Tre goes onto study at college in Atlanta.

Critical Understanding:

Both The God Of Small Things and Boyz N The Hood have deeper similarities and differences to one another in terms of the storyline itself and how both express the meaning of the ‘truth’. In The God Of Small Things, both Rahel and Estha have an infatuation with the truth and to see what’s real. They both have felt that Sophie Mol was really buried alive and the acknowledgement of the twins has not recognized the funeral, resulting in a difference of perspective at the funeral and burial of Sophie. The God Of Small Things even opens up with an epigraph that states “Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one.”(Berger, Opening). The Epigraph was used for Roy to showcase the non-linear chronology of the story as her way of proving that you can tell a story in multiple different ways, and you can never hear the same story once, depending on the perspective of the story as well. The order of the story is a key aspect in the telling of the story, and the point to get across on the truth. Another thing about the book is that Arundhati Roy, the author of the book, was born and raised in Ayemenam, Kerala, India, so the vivid imagery and cultural norms she applies in this story are from her perspective of the truth and how things are perceived to her as an individual growing up in a small village in Kerala. In Boyz N The Hood, the three protagonists are all paradigms of different circumstances and life decisions being made. All three characters are raised on the same street, but very different households and obligations that make them all so distinct from one another. Tre wants to be educated and to be in a meaningful relationship, Doughboy is just in the streets and Ricky wants to become a football player. They also have Tre raised by his father, Furious and Doughboy and Ricky being raised by the mother. This shows the number of differences between the household and the rules, and both are subjective to the relativity of truth, whether it is better to be raised by a father or a mother, whether making the right decisions at the right time really leads to good things or if there’s really a purpose to this life. In The God Of Small Things and Boyz N The Hood, there are many examples seen through media and literary forms, conventions and techniques that make both these pieces shape content that creates or affects meaning. In The God Of Small Things, this is demonstrated throughout the constant narration shift between 1969 and 1993 is Roy’s way of storytelling from multiple standpoints and how the shift affects how the story is told and the truth of the events. It gives the reader an insight of how many different events during different times really shape the story of one event, and how time changes things so much, especially for the twin siblings. The same applies for Boyz N The Hood, as the story starts off with the protagonists being children, and it already shows what the kids want to achieve in their lives. It shows Tre having interest in the girl and hanging out with his friends, Ricky already playing football and saying he’s going to grow up and be a star, and Doughboy being reckless and violent, as he gets arrested for stealing before the time changes seven years later and even says “I wish I could kill that motherfucker” as he was a kid and the bullies took Ricky’s football. As the children grew up, Ricky and Tre have continued to pursue what they were into as children and reach new opportunities while Doughboy has actually gotten worse, as they throw a party for when he gets released from jail. This change of time is parallel to the change of time in The God Of Small Things as it shows the journey of how the protagonists drifted through life for years at a time and how they end up being in the present. One connection that can be concluded is that both stories tell the audience about the character development is that their ultimate fates begin as children, and it shows how they change so much as time goes by. In terms of filming techniques, specifically for Boyz N The Hood, demonstrate how Singleton wanted to add a dramatic take to show the audience how disastrous and toxic the environment is for the children growing up in South Central Los Angeles. The camera zooms into where the kids are walking as one of the kids say “Do you guys want to see a dead body?” in the beginning of the movie when they’re all children. The eeriness of the music and the slowness of the camera zooming in the show the suspense building around what the children are about to uncover. However, only the audience feels the suspense and fear, but the characters don’t. The reason behind this is for Singleton to show the audience that this is everyday life for these inner-city children, and they wouldn’t feel the suspense or fear of what’s to come like the regular person would. The harsh reality of death, crime and poverty is no stranger to these children but can be a completely different reality for many different people, resulting in fear and shock. The scene in the film that shows all three characters whereabouts in a quick little montage is an editing technique that simultaneously shows different situations for each protagonist, and this entirely comes from the choices and decisions made by each character being in the same place. It shows Tre trying to work out his relationship, Ricky practising football and Doughboy getting drunk on the porch. Just like the time transition from childhood to adulthood, these are all decision based and influence based factors from being children into grown men, with Singleton telling the audience why it’s important to have parental figures and to think thoroughly of what choices are to be made. John Singleton also grew up in South Central Los Angeles, and recalls growing up hearing gunshots at night time and witnessing lots of crime on his way to and from school, and police regularly patrolling the area. Using the different camera techniques, character development and establishing the perception of the environment in the movie, Singleton is really showing the audience his own experiences growing up. During the scene on Crenshaw, Doughboy shows disbelief in God, saying “If God is real, why’s he letting us get killed?”. Shalika, a secondary character in the car says what if God is not a man but a woman, and Doughboy talks down on her and shows disrespect to women regularly. Singleton is trying to express how many inner-city youth may feel about religion due to what’s happening around them in the world that they live in, and having no role models in or any positivity leads to disbelief in God and a will to live. This is both creators, Roy and Singleton, effectively use literary and film techniques to establish their view on the ultimate meaning and the overall ‘truth’.

Marxism Theory:

From the lenses of a Marxist, many conclusions can be drawn, compared and contrasted between the stories of The God of Small Things and Boyz N The Hood. The Marxism Theory is a theoretical lens created by Karl Max in the 1800s, and it’s basically a theory that assesses conflict in society, and Marxism states that this conflict is between the upper class and the lower class economically, so generally the rich vs the poor. The system was also seen to assess how the poor stay poor and the rich to get richer. In The God Of Small Things, the marxism theory is applied through the different castes that exist. A caste is an economic class of a group of people, and can also include social status and political status as well. In the story of The God Of Small Things, Ammu and Velutha serve as effective paradigms modelling the marxism theory. Ammu owns the pickle factory, and Velutha works as a labourer for the factory. He’s in the untouchables caste, which is extremely low and due to this, he is barely paid any money and is disrespected by the other workers. Ammu and Velutha actually end up in an affair later in the story, and this is considered taboo and a violation to the Caste society, and Ammu’s family and the local police department act in anger. They actually end up beating Velutha to death due to this reason, and Ammu feels guilt for it and feels she’s the reason it happened. Due to Velutha’s status as an untouchable, it is considered absolutely worthless to those in Kerala and the police are only attacking him at a deadly level since they sense fear that they see a little bit of Velutha in themselves. The divide between the untouchable caste and the touchable cast is extremely visible and important, and due to the untouchables being a place no one wants to be, everyone doesn’t appeal to it and avoid it at all costs. In Boyz N The Hood, Marxism theory can be seen through two good examples. The first one is when Furious, Tre’s dad takes Tre and Ricky to Compton to view a realty billboard. The local residents came around to listen to Furious go on about why things are the way they are, and he mentions how they open up many liquor and gun shops in the black communities since they want them to continue to kill and harm themselves. This is an example of the Marxism theory since it is seen as another society wanting to see themselves strive and this society to continually fail with no growth or room to improve as a group of people. These are also largely based off race, and can be compared and contrasted with the caste system and how the marxism theory is applied in that state. The second example is how they receive no help or no support from the government due to the state of their situation and their class. As seen in the beginning of the film, Furious fired a gun at the front door in the worry that the intruder has entered the home. When they call the police and they show up, they take an hour to arrive and disrespect Furious. The cop himself was black and said he hated all these people. This clearly backs up the Marxist theory as there is an obvious class divide between the common inner-city residents and the local law enforcement. Both the book and the movie have parallelism to one another as mistreatment due to economic statuses and even races are brought into place, and these two are also connected to the real world as well. It’s connected since we still see these problems persist into today, as there are always civil battles against religions and cultures in India and even the world, and police brutality and setting communities up for failure is still alive and well today, which is the point both Roy and Singleton wanted to get across.

Conclusion:

The God Of Small Things and Boyz N The Hood are two powerful pieces of not literature or film, but two powerful pieces of art that really highlight and give the audience a strong analysis of the faults of our world and society. Arundhati Roy and John Singleton are only two different people from opposite parts of the world who grew up in two different universes but were effectively able to grasp the atmosphere around them and create a meaning of what the ‘truth’ is to them. With the story of The God Of Small Things and how things change significantly in a matter of years, and how Boyz N The Hood demonstrates the ultimate fate of those who have nowhere to look no matter what they make out of their lives, one thing that can’t change is how the story is told and the essence of existence. Whether analyzing the truth or looking through the lens of a Marxist, both of these pieces of art change how the world is seen, and the creators have done this effectively by using many real-world examples. There’s always more to things than what meets the eye, and you have to face reality one day or another.

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