阿蘭達蒂•洛伊的處女作《微物之神》以作者的故鄉阿耶門連，一個位於印度南部喀拉拉省的小鎮為背景，述說一段發生在當地伊培家族中的故事。這段橫跨殖民歷史到獨立年代的家族史有一個核心，那是一齣導因於禁忌之戀的悲劇，其中牽涉了對「愛的法典」的逾越，深深地攝人心魂。洛伊特別在小說中創造出「愛的法典」這個名詞來指稱印度社會架構其傳統上在種姓隔離和性別差異上均嚴格管控的文化底石。在私慾衝撞印度社會政治的張力中，洛伊不單描繪出印度的社會現實面，同時也提出了針對印度人民在生理與心理上承受重重束縛的嚴厲批評。個人的肉體歸屬文化，首先是根據階級、性別差異給予不同文化符碼的運載體，同時也是社會展現規訓與懲罰力量的場所。追求禁忌之戀以圖解脫的肉體接觸將招致終極懲罰——死亡，死亡毀滅肉體，也重創了目擊者的心靈。洛伊藉著描寫兩名稚童苦於撿拾記憶的零散片段去拼湊出一個對那齣悲劇該有卻遲來的回應，以及他們對於亡故友人的冥頑愁思來揭示創傷的餘波蕩漾，還有一旦創傷受害者不得治癒反身陷其中所要遭逢的象徵性死亡。洛伊特意賦予小說富含美學詩意、感官記述、不合文法的語句、重複意象、斷簡殘篇的創傷論述結構來營造創傷的文學經驗，讓讀者在閱讀的同時就能感同身受。洛伊從歷史的角度去討論「愛的法典」，意圖暗示「微物之神」中最重大的創傷並非發生在特定年代或地區的個案，所有由古到今以至未來的印度人民都有著同樣的傷痛。「愛的法典」早已深嵌進印度文化成為重要的一部份，並且持續地重創一代又一代的印度人。書中除了呈現「愛的法典」為印度民族創傷之源始的壓迫景況，更提出了探討愛之殘酷本質的特殊觀點。在以愛為名去命令、管理、恫嚇、協議、激發忠誠性的言語中，愛被當成一項有條件賜給順從者的獎賞。在一般的認知裡，愛有著崇高的價值。但是，人們對愛的取捨懷有永不止休的慾望卻可能引發傷害、痛楚、恐懼、妒忌、猜疑、爭吵……等等足以撕裂人際關係的產物，甚至造成通常是法律在和愛的拔河中施展權力才會造成的破壞性結果。

Arundhati Roy’s debut novel The God of Small Things, set in a small village called Ayemenem in the southwestern India state of Kerala, where Roy was raised, tells a story of the Ipe family. Nestled insides the centre of the family chronicle spanning from the country’s colonial period to its independent present is a heartbreaking tragedy resulted from a profane romance involving a transgression of the Love Laws that takes the reader’s breath away. Love Laws, an oxymoronic term Roy creates for her novel, points toward the cultural basis upon which Indian society addresses its traditional and strict control of caste segregation and sexual discrimination. In the cross-border tension caused by the conflict between human desire and Indian socio-political constructs that suppress individual liberty Roy does not only depict the social reality in India but also proposes a scathing critique of the multilayer social restraints on Indians’ bodies and minds. Individual bodies attached to the culture, first of all, are the vehicles of various cultural signs that allotted according to the caste difference and gender asymmetry; at the same time, bodies are the specific location where the infliction of society’s power to discipline and to punish takes place. Body contact that pursues forbidden love as relief from the social oppressions leads to the ultimate penalty, death, which can destroy the body and also scar the witness’s mind. Focusing on two innocent children’s difficulty in piecing the memory fragments together to come up with a belated response to the tragedy and their melancholy fixation about the lost beloved, Roy tries to reveal the lingering effect of trauma and the symbolic death happening to the victims who can’t work through the trauma but trapped by it instead. Roy deliberately provides the novel a traumatic structure consisted of aesthetic poetics, sensual narratives, ungrammatical phrases, repeated images, fragmental passages, etc., to convey a literary experience of trauma to the reader as if they are dealing with trauma when reading the novel. Through discussing the Love Laws from a historical perspective, Roy purposes to suggest that the major trauma in The God of Small Things doesn’t belong to a particular age or place. All Indians in the past, the present and the coming future share the same trauma because the Love Laws have already been a significant part of Indian culture and the practice of Love Laws will continue to traumatize Indian people from generation to generation. Besides tackling the Love Laws as the cause of Indians’ national trauma by presenting the oppression of laws, the novel also offers a remarkable point of view to discuss the cruel nature of love when love is employed as a conditional reward for the obedient in the rhetoric to command, to regulate, to threaten, to bargain, and to inspire loyalty. People’s unceasing desire to win and to give love, against our common belief in love’s sublime value, may bring about hurt, pain, fear, jealousy, mistrust, quarrels, etc., all of which can make a deep cut in any human relation or even cause more serious destruction what is generally considered as the consequence of the exercise of the power of law in its tug of war with love.

I.Introduction………………………………………1
II.Chapter One
Writing Trauma in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things………………………………………………20
III.Chapter Two
Mapping Gender, Caste and Colonialism in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things………………………45
IV.Chapter Three
The Politics of Love: On Motherhood, Kinship and Romance in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things………………………72
V.Conclusion…………………………………108
VI.Works Cited………………………………111

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