"He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. "

The God of Small Things is not quite a tragedy, although it touches on many tragic themes: death, abandonment, trauma, sexual exploitation, and colonialism. These themes, however, are embedded within the "small" lives of twins named Estha and Rahel only as minor events that happen to them. A trip to a movie theater, a careless word here and there, these things remind the twins of a truth repeated throughout: Things Can Change in a Day. It's only after the story is told that the twins begin to put the pieces together, which is when they begin to mourn the compiled traumas of their lived experience.

When we think global news, we're reminded of headlines about war-torn countries being exploited and colonized, about major injustices that happen to people groups. Roy's brilliance in The God of Small Things lies in her depiction of the "small things" within these headlines: the mistreated factory worker from a lower caste, the nun whose bitterness overtakes her life, or the disgraced mother who must send her children away.

Still, the story doesn't leave the reader angry about the injustices of the world. Rather, it invites the reader to imagine a world free of these evils, a place where love abounds.