The God of Small Things

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• Note the setting.

• Describe the policeman’s treatment of Baby Kochamma on p. 298. Why has it changed?

• What is Baby Kochamma afraid of? How does the use of the color blue help make her fear more clear?

• What is the “political climate” the policeman fears?

• How does Pappachi’s moth help to develop the mood on p. 300?

• What is Baby Kochamma’s motivation for getting the twins to lie to the police? How is her true motivation different from what she tells the twins?

• What is the question that we can infer that the inspector asked Estha on p. 303?

• What does it mean that “childhood tiptoed out” at that moment?

• What does Estha say to Rahel when he returns? Why? What does this signify about him?

• Who does the narrator tell us has died? Who does she say does not experience death? What do they experience instead?

• Who do we learn, at the end of this chapter, is actually the director who set the events in motion that sent Ammu and her twins away? What was her motivation for doing so? How is this different from the impression we may have had earlier in the book as to why Ammu was sent away?

• Track the setting change at the beginning of chapter 20.

• What knowledge is referred to on p. 307? How is the account that Ammu and the twins know to be true different from what was in the papers?

• What emotions do you, as the reader, experience as you read pp. 308–309? Why?

• Track the setting change on p. 310. What are we meant to infer has happened between Estha and Rahel? The narrator points out that it was not a product of happiness, but of what?

• What are the “love laws”? When else have the twins broken them? Who else has broken them?