Language and Speech in The Jungle Books and The God of Small Things
Language is extremely important in Postcolonial literature. As a means of communicating with the other and of representing the other, language in itself can serve as a colonizing instrument. For this reason, Postcolonial texts are actual laboratories for experimenting with language. This is the case with both Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Books and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. The two novels are very different in terms of subject and execution, but quite similar in the message they transmit. Both of them introduce language as a major issue for colonization, either as a linguistic screen between two cultures or as a means of deconstructing the other.Although there are major differences between the two texts, it is to be noted that both are presented from the point of view of children narrators, Mowgli in The Jungle Books and Estha and Rahel in The God of Small Things. This fact is important since the children are still in the process of language acquisition, and this leaves room for linguistic experiments and language games. In Kipling's text, language is a major concern since Mowgli, although a human being, is raised among the animals of the jungle and is not acquainted with human language at first and can only speak th
What is interesting here is that, through his cultural displacement, he is forced to do the same with his own language and his own laws as a human being. ' What talk is this of choosing? By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog's den till my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speak!"(Roy, 47) Textual allusion is obviously used intentionally, as Roy hints at another postcolonial text in her own. Thus, one of these conveys an incredibly vivid and intoxicating view of the general tumefaction established in Kerala during the rainy season: "Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-coloured puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-coloured minds. Deadlypurposed" (Roy, 304) In the passage above Rahel describes the approach of the Police to the History house, again recurring to word-combinations to convey a fresh meaning. Not finding a specific word to convey the idea, the writer blends two or three words together to serve her purpose. Thus, paradoxically, the jungle is introduced as an extremely orderly place, in which each species of animals and each individual member of the species has its own rights and duties. (3) Do what one will with, get off one's bands, stow away, demolish, finish, r~ settle, consume (food), kill, sell. Thus, because of his human intelligence, Mowgli is able to grow up among the wolf-cubs and gradually understand all the laws of the jungle. Significantly, the monkeys are said to be unable to define themselves in their own language, and mocked for their habits of imitating other animals and even men in their gestures and languages: "I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle-except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees. Mowgli has thus managed to preserve a free and unprejudiced spirit in the jungle, even if he is still crude in other ways. The fact that Kipling uses the wilderness as a context for the story is important because it places the events is an almost mythical context. "(Roy, 41) Roy herself hints thus that she believes in remaking new meanings from the old material, reconstituting thus language: "Little things, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted.
Common topics in this essay:
Significantly Mowgli,
Rahel Estha,
Rahel God,
Rahel Roy,
Law Jungle,
Shere Khan,
Jungle Book,
Arundhati Roy,
Sea Cow,
Miss Mitten,
jungle books,
jungle book,
linguistic screen,
miss mitten,
human society,
animals jungle,
cultural difference,
law jungle,
rahel estha,
relationship individual environment,
shere khan,
process language acquisition,
linguistic screen cultures,
arundhati roy's god,
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Acceptance Essays
