Gothic atonement in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This study offers an analysis of the concept of the Gothic atonement in Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things. Through character analysis, it examines how Arundhati Roy inverts the classical tragedy's concept of catharsis, which entails emotional release and the restoration of order, by trapping her characters in cycles of silence. Focusing on the concept of silence in Jean-François Lyotard's theory of différend, it argues that silence, transformed into a phrase, contributes to the concept of Gothic atonement. This study also examines the postcolonial effects on the characters and the spread of anhedonia like a plague in the novel The God of Small Things by referring to Homi Bhabha's concepts of mimicry and hybridity, René Girard's concepts of plague, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's definition of the subaltern in the novel.