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The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss: a
comparative analysis

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The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and


The Inheritance of Loss: a comparative analysis

ABHISHEK K. KASHYAP
Department of English, PolySystemic Research Group,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Poetics deals with problems of verbal structure, just as the analysis of painting is concerned with
pictorial structure. Since linguistics is the global science of verbal structure, poetics may be
regarded as an integral part of linguistics.
— Roman Jakobson

1 Introduction

The above quote from Jakobson (1960: 350) comes after a much debated
issue whether linguistic theory can be applied to the analysis of literary texts, e.g.
novel, poetry, play, etc., for a more objective understanding and informed by
scientific analysis. This issue continued to be debated even after the Jakobson’s
concluding statement in his frequently cited paper on “Closing Statement:
Linguistics and Poetics” (cf. Fowler, 1996), but with many inspiring applications
of linguistic tools to the analysis of literary texts and their critical interpretation
based on the analyses (e.g. Chatman, 1968; Halliday, 1971; Hasan, 1971; Corns,
1990; Toolan, 1990), the applyability of linguistic analysis and the subsequent
interpretation of literary texts is now widely accepted, as we can draw from the
following quote:

Although linguistics is not essential to the study of literature, it can contribute to a better
understanding of a text. It can … give the conscious reader a point of view, a way of looking at a
literary text that will help them develop a consistent analysis, and prompt them to ask questions
about the language of a text that they might otherwise ignore (Ajtony, 2014: 256).

There are numerous works that can be cited, but we will mention just a few
of them. Going back to the initial phase of study in stylistics and within the
linguistic framework we apply here, Halliday (1971) showed some interesting
linguistic patterns in William Golding’s The Inheritors. Halliday’s study was
informed by transitivity analysis in which he points to patterns in Golding’s
narrative style which had specific meaning: for example, “the ‘agent’ [in most
parts of the novel] is seldom a human being; and where it is a human being, it is
seldom one of the people” [the main characters] (Halliday, 1973: 128), which
corresponds to the theme of powerlessness. More recently, Moya and Á vila
Zamorano (2009) have shown in their analysis of short stories that “[t]he
characters about which information is given at the clausal level … are often
located in the thematic slot of the clause” (p. 770) and they are mostly “human
participants (or at least humanized)”.
In this paper, I examine two novels written by Indian creative writers and
explore their stylistic properties in textual metafunction. More specifically, I
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

examine the most and least preferred choice of grammatical Theme in Arundhati
Roy’s (1997) The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s (2006) The Inheritance of
Loss. The paper presents for the first time linguistic analysis of the novels
informed by the theory of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and thus
contribute the existing literature on the novels by Indian creative writers.
The paper has the following structure. In Section 2, I briefly discuss the two
texts analyzed in this paper and some methodological constraints. In Section 3,
the relevant theoretical concepts are explained. Sections 4 and 5 focus on the
thematic choices made in the texts. Section 6 concludes.

2 The text and some methodological issues

I use two fictional texts for this study: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small
Things (Roy, 1997) and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (Desai, 2006),
though we also use a few examples from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
(Rushdie, 1993[1981]).
Both The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss raise the some
social issues existing in Indian societies. The story of The God of Small Things
revolves around two main characters, the twins Estha and Rahel and through
them the author portrays the life of “small” people who are on the periphery of
the hierarchical Indian society. There are a number of other “themes” playing
underneath the story (cf. Section 3.1 for different implications of the term
“theme”). The Inheritance of Loss has two stories running in parallel: the story of
Sai, who has come to live with her grandfather, a retired judge, and that of Biju,
the only son of the cook who works for the judge. Biju is a cook by profession and
an illegal immigrant in the USA. He has to struggle in the USA in the absence of
work rights, which in tern leads to the absence of a stabile job and living, making
his life worse. Thus, both the texts draw attention to some social issues by the
depiction of stories about those who are on outer edge of social structure and
have to struggle for petty things.
The novels won the respective authors the prestigious Booker Prize for
fiction in 1997 and 2006, respectively, and they are widely read, reviewed, and
acknowledge for their contribution to Indian writings in English.
The first chapter of both the novels is very important, as is the case with
most other novels. They serve like an introduction to the story that follow in the
forthcoming chapters. Arundhati Roy clearly indicates that at the end of the first
chapter by guiding the reader “for practical purposes, in a hopelessly practical
world” (p. 34). In The Inheritance of Loss, it is not overtly stated, but the readers
know after reading that the first chapter introduces the story and server as the
macro-Theme for the rest of the text. I have therefore concentrated on the first
chapter of both the novels for detailed manual analysis, though we also refer to
other parts of the novel wherever needed.

Table 1: The amount of data analyzed in detail

text words
The God of Small Things (Text 1) 2971
The Inheritance of Loss (Text 2) 3265

2
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

The detailed analysis involves clause-level analysis of the whole chapter 1 of


The Inheritance of Loss, which comprises 3265 words (Table 1). The first chapter
of The God of Small Things is much longer (comprising over 10,000 words in
length). Therefore, ten excerpts of comparable size were randomly selected from
that chapter for the clause-level analysis. This discussion in this chapter is
primarily based on analysis of these two sets of excerpts, though certain
examples from various parts of the novel are carefully selected and provided
along the discussion.

3 Meaning of Theme

The term “theme” has multiple implications in the study of linguistics and
verbal art. Therefore, it is crucial to say a few words on the meanings to this
study and spell out what we mean by the term.

3.1 Theme in the study of literature

In the study of literary works, e.g. novel and play, the term “theme” refers to
the subject-matter and purpose underlying the depiction of the work and
through its characters, setting, and style (cf. Langbaum, 1977). For example,
talking about the theme of the Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things,
Sharma writes: “Critics, interviewers, and reviewers have generally spoken of
several themes expounded in The God of Small Things. From what Roy herself
has said, it has been possible to single out certain topics” (1998: 42, bold added).
In this context he talks about broad subject-matters such as the evocation of
“child’s world through the twin’s experiences”, “separation of people from one
another and from society”, “a depiction of alienation”, “class division and casteist
oppression”, and several others that permeate the issues of relative socio-
political milieu (also see Dhawan, 1999). In other words “theme” in literature (as
opposed to linguistics) refers to a broad social or personal issues that the author
intends to raise through the story of his characters. And in general it is perceived
that “[t]he proper reading strategy requires an assumption that the novel has a
single theme and that the other concerns given voice to in the story are
subordinate to the central argument” (Sharma, 1998: 42). This is not what I
mean by the term here. My concern is the writer’s perspective in terms of
organization of text and how the writer uses linguistic constituents building
blocks to form a unified texture (Halliday, 1994[1985]; Ghadessy, 1995; Halliday
& Matthiessen, 2014: Chapter 3). We briefly explain this in Section 3.2.

3.2 Theme in the SFL clause grammar (or lexicogrammatical organization)

In SFL a clause is interpreted to have three strands of meaning — ideational,


interpersonal, and textual, all three realized at the same time by different
functional constituents (cf. Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014;
Matthiessen, 1995a, But et al., 2000; Martin et al., 2010, among others).
Ideational (with a further distinction of logical and experiential) meaning is
concerned with the construal of the world as human experience — how the

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Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

experience of world around us is perceived, conceptualized and represented


through language. The interpersonal meaning is concerned with enacting social
relationship and exchanging commodities, which can be either information or
goods-&-services. For example, the clause the cook carried in two bowls of sour
and peppery tomato soup (from The Inheritance of Loss) is in ‘declarative’ mood,
meaning it is supplying information rather than asking for it (see Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2014: Chapter 4). (This is realized by the structure Subject^Finite:
Figure 1a). Ideationally, the clause construes the meaning of material action in
which a participant (the cook) carries a commodity (two bowls of sour and
peppery tomato soup) into a place. Thus, each constituent of the clause, as
analyzed in Figure 1(a), has a function by which meaning is construed by this
clause. The cook is construed as Actor by whom the action of “carrying” is carried
out, two bowls of sour and peppery tomato soup is the commodity that is being
carried (Scope) and the verb is the element by which the action of carrying is
construed.

(a) The cook carried in two bowls of sour and peppery tomato soup.
Ideational Actor Process: material Scope
Interpersonal Subject Finite/Predicator Subject
Mood Residue
Textual Theme Rheme

(b) and on cold nights she was wrapped in a shawl of angora


rabbit wool.
Ideational Time Scope Process Means
Interpersonal Adjunct Subject Finite Predicator Adjunct
Resi- Mood -due
Textual Theme Rheme
Figure 1: Three strands of meaning in clause

There is a third meaning, the textual meaning, that contributes to the


organization of the message conveyed by each clause. Here, clause has two
clearly identifiable parts: The cook and carried in two bowls of sour and peppery
tomato soup, where the cook serves as what Halliday (1994; Halliday &
Matthiessen 2014) called the “the point of departure” of the message, i.e., what
the speaker/author had in mind to begin the message with. This is the concern of
message from the author’s perspective. The author decided to begin the message
with the cook; or in other words, she chooses the cook as the concern of her
message. This is the THEME of the clause. And the rest that is not theme is called
the RHEME (Figure 1a)1.
The textual function of language relates to the organization of text and it is in
the context of overall text that significance of Theme and Rheme becomes clear.
It is concerned with the construction and organization of discourse in order for
meaningful processing of the ideational and the interpersonal meanings
(Matthiessen, 1995b).

1Theme and Rheme of the textual grammar are functional constituents like Subject and
Predicator of interpersonal grammar, and Actor and Process of ideational grammar. For
analytical consistency and following Halliday & Matthiessen (2014), we will write the all
functional constituents, including Theme and Rheme, with initial capital.

4
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

In English the Theme, the prominent part of the message, is placed in the
initial position of clause. Thus in the construction of discourse, an author (or
speaker in spoken discourse) carefully organizes the sequence of information
and in doing so he or she selects carefully which element in a given sentence
should come first (in the Theme position) and which should come next (as part
of the Rheme). For example, in the clause analyzed above, the author is
concerned about the cook; or, in other words, she is going to tell the reader about
the cook. So the cook has been placed to the beginning of the clause. And this is
an unmarked Theme, in that there is no requirement of the special context to
interpret this clause. The unmarked structure of a clause in English is Subject
followed by Finite, where Finite is the auxiliary verb in a verbal group, e.g. was in
the example in Figure 1b (Subject ^ Finite), while sometimes it is fused with the
Predicator, as in carried in the example given in Figure 1a (Subject ^
Finite/Predicator).
In natural discourse, however, a writer does not always follow the unmarked
structure. In a clause, any constituent that has a role in experiential meaning can
function as the Theme, as in the example given in Figure 1b: and on cold nights
she was wrapped in a shawl of angora rabbit wool (taken from The Inheritance of
Loss, p. 36). In this clause the Theme is not Subject; it is an Adjunct of Time: and
on cold nights, where the conjunction and does the service of linking the clause
with the message that has gone before. The author here is concerned about the
cold nights and, therefore, she decides to bring this element to the initial position
of the clause. It was perfectly fine to have said and she was wrapped in a shawl of
angora rabbit wool on cold nights, in which case too the sentence was
grammatically correct, but the orientation of message in that case was going to
shift to the participant she and the reader was going to get a signal that the
message was about her — something about her (and not about cold nights or
anything else) is going to follow. A comparison of the selection of unmarked and
marked Themes in (1) and (2) makes it clearer2:

(1). The two are quite different. He is frugal, but she likes to spend money. He is religious,
but she is frankly atheist. (Fries, 1983. 132)

The extract in (1) describes two human beings and the description is
contrastive in nature. The default selection in such context is the two phenomena
being described, each being in the role of both Subject and Theme. But the
context is always not as simple as that in (1), and, therefore, the author is under
some kind of pressure to select unmarked Theme. For example, compare the
selection of Theme in example (1) with that in example (2) below:

(2). It was cold, || but inside the house, it was still colder, the dark, the freeze, contained by
stone walls several feet deep. (The Inheritance of Loss, p. 1)

2 Notational convention — single underline xxxx: clause in focus; double underline xxxx: Theme
of the clause; plain double underline xxxx: topical Theme; double underline and italics xxxx:
textual Theme; double underline and bold xxxx: interpersonal Theme. Note that the textual and
interpersonal components of Theme will be shown from Section 4.2. Before that we simply show
Theme by double underlining.

5
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

This clause-complex constitutes two clauses. In the first clause, the Theme is
composed of the dummy Subject it and the verb3, which is still unmarked in this
particular clause, but in the next clause the Theme is a circumstance of Place: but
inside the house, by which the author shows the shift of his focus and a contrast
between weather temperature in general and that inside the house: in general it
was cold, but as for inside the house, it was even colder.
The un/marked Theme refers to the degree of im/probability. The element
most probable is unmarked, while the element that is improbable is marked. For
example, the default choice for Thematic position in English declarative clause is
the nominal group that is also the Subject in the interpersonal structure of
lexicogrammar. And this is what occurs in the Thematic position unless there is
good reason to choose a constituent other than Subject (see Matthiessen 1994,
1995). In a declarative clause of English, the Theme mapped on to anything other
than the Subject is treated a marked; in an imperative clause, in comparision, the
unmarked Theme is the Predicator (which is Process in the experiential
meaning) and in the wh-interrogative, it is the wh-element (see Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2014, chapter 3 for details).

4 Theme in the novels

Now we discuss the selection of Theme in the two texts selected for this
study, as discussed in Section 2. Let’s begin by some statistical figures that we
obtain from the analysis. The results of the analyses are given in Table 2 through
Table 4. For the safe of convenience, I refer to The God of Small Things as Tex 1
and The Inheritance of Loss as Text 2.
Table 2 reveals that Agent and Medium are the two favorite functions
deployed for Theme function by both authors. In Text 1 (e.g. The God of Small
Things), nearly 46% Themes are mapped on to Agent, and about 31% Themes
are mapped has the function of Medium (Table 2). The corresponding figures in
Text 1 (e.g. The Inheritance of Loss) are slightly different, with 53% Themes
having the function of Agent and 21% of Medium. Importantly, however, the
combined frequencies of Agent and Medium in the Theme position reach nearly
the same ratio in both texts: 77.01 % in Text 1 and 75.33% in Text 2. This shows
that Agent and Medium take the higher share of attention in the novel. This is not
surprising given that the story of the novels concerning social issues often
concern the descriptions and actions of their characters, with other components
in the Thematic position serving as a subsidiary to convey the message. This is
confirmed by a high number of occurrences of unmarked Theme in the two
novels (see Table 3), though sometimes authors adopt different narrative style.
Halliday (1971) and, more recently, Mwinlaaru (2014) show that the protagonist
of their novels does not occur as Actor up to certain stage of the narrative.
In a large number of clauses characters of the novels by Roy and Desai serve
as the Subject of clause, as in (3), and many of them are selected for the function
of Theme. That is not to say that the Subject is always the Theme. Of course, they

3Note that the Theme includes the first experiential element of the clause. It in this clause is a
dummy Subject with no experiential function. Therefor I interpret the combination of dummy it
plus the verb as the Theme, which is the first experiential element in this clause, as the Theme.
The verb as part of Theme in this declarative clause is still unmarked.

6
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

are not; and that is why we get about 10% marked Theme in each novel (cf.
Section 4.1). The example in Figure 1(b) above has a non-Subject element as the
Theme of the clause, an Adjunct of Time, and example (4) contains another such
clause, where the Adjunct of Place on the dining table is used as the Theme and
the Subject the tablecloth is pushed to the Rheme section, despite the clause
being in the active voice:

(3). Rahel grew up without a brief. Without anybody to arrange a marriage for her.
Without anybody [[who would pay her a dowry]] and therefore without an
obligatory husband looming on her horizon. (Text 1, p. 17)
(4). On the dining table was the tablecloth he had spread out, white with a design of
grapevines interrupted by a garnet stain where, many years ago, he had spilled a
glass of port while trying to throw it at his wife for chewing in a way that
disgusted him. (Text 2, p. 8)

The narrative in a novel is depicted through its characters that are human
beings and therefore the characters are often used in the Subject/Theme
position, as in (3). Moya and Á vila Zamorano (2009: 770) find that in their short
stories that human characters were mostly the Theme. But in the two texts
explored here also have a large number of non-character elements that are made
Theme. The following are an example from each of the two texts:

(5). And because the house was locked and dark, and because she only believed in
forty-watt bulbs, her lipstick mouth had shifted slightly off her real mouth. (Text
1, p. 21)
(6). Some of the bottles’ contents had evaporated completely but the boys put them
in the trunk anyway. (Text 2, p. 7)

Table 2: Experiential (ergative) functions of the Theme in the two novels

Text 1 Text 2
Function % # % #
Agent 45.98% 120 53.77% 207
Medium 31.03% 81 21.56% 83
Process 2.68% 7 12.47% 48
Location 9.96% 26 3.90% 15
Range 3.83% 10 2.86% 11
Beneficiary 1.15% 3 2.08% 8
Manner 3.07% 8 2.08% 8
Cause 0.77% 2 1.04% 4
Contingency 0% 0 0.26% 1
Extent 0.77% 2 0% 0
Angle 0.38% 1 0% 0
Matter 0.38% 1 0% 0
Total 100.00% 261 100.00% 385

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Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

Table 3: Theme selection: textual, interpersonal, and un/marked Theme

textual interpersonal markedness


+ – + – marked unmarked
Text 1 30.65% 69.35% 2.68% 97.32% 11.88% 88.12%
(80) (181) (7) (254) (31) (230)
Text 2 22.79% 77.20% 3.90% 96.10% 9.875% 90.13%
(88) (298) (15) (369) (38) (348)

Table 4: Transitive function of the topical Theme

Experiential function Text 1 Text 2


Agent
Actor 93 156
Initiatior 0 2
Behaver 7 18
Sayer 20 31
Medium
Goal 3 3
Senser 24 25
Carrier 48 46
Existent 0 1
Identified 6 7
Target 0 1
Beneficiary
Possessor 2 6
Receiver 1 2
Range
Phenomenon 5 2
Scope 3 7
Verbiage 2 0
Attribute 0 2
Process:
Process 7 48
Cause:
Reason 2 4
Extent
Duration 1 0
Frequency 1 0
Location:
Place 9 12
Time 17 3
Manner:
Means 6 4
Quality 1 2
Degree 1 0
Comparison 0 2
Contingency:
Concession 0 1
Angle:
Viewpoint 1 0
Matter
Matter 1 0

8
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

In a longer text like novel, the author uses a wide range of Themes, which
includes both marked and unmarked Themes and the almost all sorts of
grammatical elements are pressed into the service. In the forthcoming section I
give a detailed description of different types of Theme and the elements that
make the Theme of clause in these two texts.

4.1 Unmarked and marked Theme

The default choice for Theme in English clause is the nominal group that is
also the Subject of the clause, as noted above, unless there is good reason to
choose something other than Subject. In novel there is a pressure to set the
contexts for what follows, for which the author makes a choice between
unmarked Theme (the default) and marked Theme (one with special meaning).
Sometimes, the author chooses marked Theme for a striking beginning. Look at
the following opening lines to Anita Desai’s introduction to Rushdie’s Midnight’s
Children:

(7). One dusty summer evening in 1981 an extraordinary event took place in the
sedate setting of India International Centre in New Delhi with its lawns, rose-
beds and select circle of society members. A young writer from Britain with a
Muslin name, whose second novel had just been published gave a reading in the
small auditorium that drew a crown so unexpectedly large that it spilled out
under the trees and loudspeakers had to be set up to broadcast his voice, a voice
that everyone present recognized instantly as being the voice of a new age:
strong, original and demanding of attention.

Here Anita Desai had the option of choosing the Subject an extraordinary event as
Theme of the first clause, but she seems to be under some kind of pressure to
select something else for an atypical beginning and she decides to choose an
Adjunct that has temporal reference. This circumstance of Time evokes a feeling
of historical description and something that happened in real time and location.
This is true: the event took place in real time (1981) and location (India
International Centre in New Delhi), but probably this is not Desai’s main concern,
as she is writing the introduction to a book. Her concern was to introduce the
novel and she could have begun with a reference to the novel itself, but that was
going to be a typical introduction, as in following opening lines of the foreword
to Language typology: a function perspective, where the text begins with
reference to the book in the very first clause:

(8). This volume explores the clause grammars of eight languages — two from
Europe (French, German), ….

So, being pressed by the field of the phenomenon about which she was going to
write, i.e. recreation of a narrative. Therefore, to satiate a desire to give a
remarkable beginning, but at the same time also appear factual, an atypical
beginning is not unprecedented.
The marked Themes are something that attract attention and have special
pragmatic functions and therefore they receive focus of study (see, e.g., Goatly,
1995). They are often fewer in number than unmarked Themes in a text. In both
the novels that we study in this article, major share is taken by the unmarked

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Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

Themes. In the beginning when Arundhati Roy begins the novel with a
description of the setting in the first page, she uses unmarked Theme in most
clauses:

(9). [1.1] May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. [2.1] The days are long and
humid. [3.1] The river shrinks [3.2] and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in
still, dustgreen trees. [4.1] Red bananas ripen. [5.1] Jackfruits burst. [6.1]
Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. [7.1] Then they stun
themselves against clear windowpanes [7.2] and die, fatly baffled in the sun.
(Text 1, p. 1)

The Theme of each clause in this first paragraph of Text 1 is unmarked. The
author selects very simple clauses to describe the local setting and the Theme
constitutes mostly very simple nominal groups. In none of these clauses the
information provided is not linked with the preceding clause, or the clause that
follow it, for interpretation. Therefore, we find no more than a couple of
conjunctions (e.g. and in [3.2] and then in [7.1]) that combine the clauses. The
pieces of information provided in this extract do not need to be in a specific
sequence and therefore no conjunctive adjunct is required. And there is no
reason for the selection of marked Theme. But as the story progresses, we notice
ample uses of marked Theme, as in the following examples:

(11). The wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives. In
the undergrowth a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening stone. Hopeful
yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates. (Text 1, p. 1)
(12). But the skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins was still parked outside, and
inside, Baby Kochamma was still alive. (Text 1, p. 2)
(13). It wasn’t clear where he’d got this information from, or how he knew these things,
but for years the twins harbored a faint resentment against their parents for
having diddled them out of a lifetime of free bus rides. (The God of Small Thngs, p.
3)

Text 2 begins with a an marked Theme:

(14). All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature
across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.

and the choice of marked Theme continues with the progress of the story. The
following are a few more example of marked Themes from the two text:

(15). They dipped the Marie and Delite biscuits in the tea, drew up the hot liquid
noisily. Two trunks they found in the bedrooms they filled with rice, lentils,
sugar, tea, oil, matches, Lux soap, and Pond’s Cold Cream. (Text 2, p. 7)
(16). Here, at the back, inside the cavernous kitchen, was the cook, trying to light the
damp wood. (Text 2, p. 1)

The frequency of unmarked Theme in Text 2 is close to that in Text 1, with


the use of unmarked clauses being slightly higher in Text 2 (Table 3). But there is
a pattern of preference in both the texts. In Text 1, majority of marked Themes
are Location (both Time and Place) in the experiential function (see Section 4.3),
while in Text 2 most of marked Themes are Processes, which is in the style of a
typical “verbal” clause of narrative. An example of each type is given below:

10
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

(17). At each corner of the pool lolled a pink plaster-of-Paris gnome with rosy cheeks
and a peaked red cap. (Text 1, p. 26)
(18). Two years later, Baby Kochamma returned from Rochester with a diploma in
Ornamental Gardening, but more in love with Father Mulligan than ever. (Text 1,
p. 26)
(19). He is late, said the judge, meaning the cook with the tea, not Gyan. (Text 2, p. 2)

4.2 Simple and multiple Themes

The experiential component known as the “topical” Theme is an obligatory


element of Theme, e.g. the Actor the baby bat in (20) below: the Theme in English
clause extends to the first experiential constituent of clause. But a Theme can
constitute a composite of more than one functional elements. If the Theme that
constitute only experiential element, as in (20), it is called simple Theme because
it involves only one functional element. Even if it constitutes a complex of the
same functional meaning, e.g. the nominal group complex both Sai and the cook
in (21). In both Sai and the cook the two nominal groups Sai and the cook are
combined by the conjunction and and the nominal group complex functions as
the Subject. It is still an example of the simple Theme.

(20). The baby bat flew up into the sky and turned into a jet plane without a
crisscrossed trail. (Text 1, p. 6)
(21). Both Sai and the cook had averted their gaze from the judge … (Text 2, p. 8)

The complex Theme, in contrast, constitutes elements of different functional


meaning, as in the underlined clause in the following excerpt:
(22). When she finished school, she won admission into a mediocre college of
architecture in Delhi. It wasn’t the outcome of any serious interest in architecture.
Nor even, in fact, of a superficial one. She just happened to take the entrance
exam, and happened to get through. The staff were impressed by the size
(enormous), rather than the skill, of her charcoal still-life sketches. The careless,
reckless lines were mistaken for artistic confidence, though in truth, their
creator was no artist. (Text 1, p. 17)

In this clause, though has a textual function; it links the message encoded in
this clause with the message in the preceding clause; in truth has a interpersonal
meaning: it indicates the author’s subjective assessment of the validity of the
message; and their creator has an experiential function of Carrier, which serves
as a topical Theme. Thus, though in truth, their creator in though in truth, their
creator was no artist is a complex of three meanings: textual, interpersonal, and
topical. This kind of complex Themes with all three kinds of functional
component is not very common in written text and this is precisely what the
analysis of the two texts in this paper reveals.
The complex Themes in the two novels are mostly composed of textual plus
topical elements or interpersonal plus topical elements. The complex Themes
with all the three functional components (textual, interpersonal, and topical) are
rare. The extracts from Text 1 analyzed in this study contain only two complex
Themes, of which one is exemplified above in (22) and the other, given below in
(23), is an interrogative clause, with interpersonal and topical components
jointly realized in what else:

11
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

(23). But then, what else could she have done? (Text 1, p. 21)

The story is no different in Text 2. The whole first chapter contains merely two
clauses in which the Theme is composed of the all three kinds of functional
elements:

(24). Both Sai and the cook had averted their gaze from the judge and his humiliation,
and even now and then their glances avoided the tablecloth and took the longer
way across the room … (Text 2, p. 8)
(25). It came to them that they might all die with the judge in the kitchen; world was
upside down and absolutely anything could happen. (Text 2, p. 6)

The multiple Themes are found in both texts. Most of them, however, are
composed of textual and topical elements. As given in Table 3, 30% clauses in
Text 1 and 22% in Text 2 have a textual component, as in the following
examples:

(26). … and for the rest of the journey Estha and Rahel’s father had to hold their
mother’s stomach (with them in it) to prevent it from wobbling. (Text 1, p. 3)
(27). … as though hidden spiders had spun sudden cobwebs in them. (Text 1, p. 6)
(28). Both Sai and the cook had averted their gaze from the judge and his humiliation,
and even now and then their glances avoided the tablecloth and took the longer
way across the room, for if the cloth were acknowledged, there was no telling
how he might punish them. (Text 2, p. 8)

The interpersonal Themes are uncommon in each, less than three percent in Text
1 and well below four percent in the Text 2 (see Table 3). A few examples of the
Theme that constitutes interpersonal and topical components are given below:

(29). Oddly, neglect seemed to have resulted in an accidental release of the spirit.
(Text 1, p. 17)
(30). … please, I’m a poor man, please. (Text 2, 6)
(31). Never ever was the tea served the way it should be, … (Text 2, 3)

It is hard to say based on the analysis of the short extracts of the novels what
the preferred interpersonal Theme is in novel, but modal adjuncts seems to be a
preferred choice. The analysis, however, indicates interesting variation between
the two fictional texts. In Text 1, the preferred interpersonal Theme is the modal
adjuncts (of obviousness, predication, admission, and probability), exemplified
in (32) through (35) in order, although other elements, e.g. vocative and
exclamative are also found, as in (36) and (37), respectively:

(32). Of course, there were no zebra crossings to get killed on in Ayemenem, (p. 4)
(33). Oddly, neglect seemed to have resulted in an accidental release of the spirit. (p.
17)
(34). Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. (p. 32)
(35). … though in truth, their creator was no artist. (p. 17)
(36). Father, how can all things be lawful for Him? (p. 23)
(37). ‘Oops! We’d better catch him before a cold does.’ (p. 24)

In Text 2, in comparison, adjuncts of usuality, obviousness, and probability as


interpersonal Theme, as in (38) through (40), and exclamative (41) do occur, but

12
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

there are also other items, e.g. subjective modality (42) and finite part of verbal
group (43):
(38). Every now and then she looked up at Kanchenjunga, observed its wizard
phosphorescence with a shiver. (Text 2, p. 1)
(39). Of course, all the boys were familiar with movie scenes … (Text 2, p. 5)
(40). and absolutely anything could happen. (Text 2, p. 6)
(41). Hai, hai, what will become of us? (Text 2, p. 8)
(42). “Yes, it’s so foggy,” Sai said. “I don’t think the tutor will come.” She jigsawed the
cups, saucers, teapot, milk, sugar, strainer, Marie and Delite biscuits all to fit upon
the tray. (Text 2, p. 3)
(43). Don’t mind me, love, … (Text 2, p. 4)

There is one item that has occurred several times: the adjunct of entreaty, which
has a special function of making request:

… please, I’m a poor man, please.


Please living only to see my son
… please don’t kill me
… please I’m a poor man

All these instances of “entreaty” have occurred in the lines spoken by the
same character, the cook. There is an episode in the novel in which a group of
insurgents (identified as naxalites in India) intrude the house of the judge, where
the cook is employed. When the cook finds that the insurgents are about to kill
every person in the house, he begins begging for mercy. It is in that context that
the repeated use of please occurs.
The fewer uses of interpersonal Themes in the two novels show that neither
author prefers using many interpersonal elements in the Theme position;
interpersonal constituent do occur in the clause, but the author seems to prefer
pushing that to the Rheme section, as in (44):

(44). That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that
lay down who should be loved, and how. (Text 1, p. 33)

In natural discourse the textual elements (i.e., continuatives, conjunctions,


and conjunctive Adjuncts) have very important function. They set up a link
between two clauses through rhetorical clause-combination in the system of
TAXIS (parataxis and hypostasis) as well as they create a link between the present
context and what has gone before. Therefore, the presence of textual Theme is
not uncommon in natural discourse. This is even more significant in a longer text
like novel in which the author has to ensure that texts should not fall apart.
Understandably, we have quite larger number of textual Themes in these novels.
But there are a larger number of Themes that are simple Themes composed of
only topical (i.e. experiential) elements, as the figures in Table 3 show.
There is an interesting contrast in the use of simple Themes in the two
novels. While there are lot of clauses with group/phrase simplex as the Theme in
both novels, as shown in the examples in (45), there are also lot of Themes that
are nominal group complex, as in the examples in (46):

(45). a. May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. (Text 1, p. 1)

13
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

b. Thing One was the newly painted high dome of the yellow church that Rahel
hadn’t ever looked at from the inside. (Text 1, p. 5)
c. A single bald light bulb dangled on a wire above. (Text 2, p. 1)
d. His father could not remember or understand or pronounce the names, … (Text
2, p. 3)
(46). a. In a conference room beneath a Jesus in a dhoti pinned onto two varnished sticks,
the nuns conferred anxiously. (Text 2)
b. A few bits of rickety furniture overlaid with a termite cuneiform stood isolated in
the shadows along with some cheap metal-tube folding chairs. (Text 2, p. 6)
c. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a
burned house-the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture–
must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for.
(Text 1, p. 32)

Such complex-looking Themes are pregnant with details. The groups/phrases


functioning as simple Themes are sometimes so complex that at first instance
they look like a multiple Theme, though they are still simple Themes as the
topical element has only one function in the experiential grammar. Look at the
following examples:

(47). a. In Kalimpong, high in the northeastern Himalayas where they lived—the retired
judge and his cook, Sai, and Mutt— there was a report of new dissatisfaction in
the hills, gathering insurgency, men and guns. (Text 2, p. 9)
b. In a conference room beneath a Jesus in a dhoti pinned onto two varnished
sticks,the nuns conferred anxiously. (Text 2)
c. The car in which Baba, their father, was taking Ammu, their mother, to hospital in
Shillong to have them, broke down on the winding tea-estate road in Assam.
(Text 1, p. 3)
d. With the queer compassion of the very poor for the comparatively well off, or
perhaps only because they saw how hugely pregnant Ammu was, seated
passengers made room for the couple … (Text 1, p. 3)

In (47a–b), the Theme has the function of Place, in (47c) it is Actor, and in (47d)
Manner. The number of the Themes that constitute group/phrase complex is
much higher than Text 1 than in Text 2.

4.3 Topical Theme

Above we have noted that Agent is one topical element that is prevalent in
the narratives, followed by Medium in terms of the frequency of occurrence. The
Agent (of ergative analysis) includes Actor, Initiator, Inducer, and Sayer. Of these
Actor is the most preferred function for the Theme in both texts and the Initiator
is the least preferred.
There is marked difference between the occurrences of Process as topical
Theme between the two texts. This is for the two reasons. First, Text 2 is found to
have used more interrogative, (48), and imperative, (49), moods in which Theme
mapped on to Process is an unmarked choice, but also there are more existential
processes, (50), and the processes representing the meteorological events, (51):

(48). Biju was his son in America. He worked at Don Pollo— or was it The Hot Tomato?
Or Ali Baba’s Fried Chicken? (Text 2, p. 3)
(49). Too soft-hearted, sahib. You should show this kind side to your guests, also. Go
on, prepare the table. (Text 2, p. 6)
(50). This was a ridiculous threat as there was no telephone. (Text 2, p. 6)

14
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

(51). It was cold, but inside the house, it was still colder, the dark, the freeze, contained
by stone walls several feet deep. (Text 2, p. 1)

As the first topical element in the existential and meteorological clauses is


the Process, we consider it the topical Theme of the clause4. Secondly, Text 2
contains many verbal clauses with the Process preceding Sayer, as in (52), where
the Process is a (marked) Theme.

(52). “He hasn’t done anything, leave him,” said Sai, hating to see him humiliated,
hating even more to see that the only path open to him was to humiliate himself
further. (Text 2, p. 5)

In Text 1, in contrast, we do not find any such clause in which Process


precedes Sayer. Here, when the Process precedes the Participant, e.g. Carrier in
the following example, it is for some other reason. In (53) the choice of Process
as marked topical Theme of a declarative clause is for narrative emphasis —
Estha was NOT backward or particularly bad at anything:

(53). After Sophie Mol’s funeral, when Estha was Returned, their father sent him to a
boys’ school in Calcutta. He was not an exceptional student, but neither was he
backward, nor particularly bad at anything. An average student, or Satisfactory
work were the usual comments that his teachers wrote in his Annual Progress
Reports. (Text 1, p. 11)

One particular type of topical Theme that stands out in Text 1 is the location
in time. Of 26 circumstances of Location that we find in this text, 17 are the
circumstance of Time. This is remarkable as the novel is not concerned with
historical events, unlike Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The author Arundhati Roy
herself once declared that “her book is not about history” (Sharma 1998: 11). Yet,
the historical timeline receives remarkable attention. This is consistently
indicated by frequent use of Time adverbials in Theme position. The novel opens
with reference to time in the very first clause of the novel and the temporal
reference is chosen to be Theme:

(54). May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month.

Here the reference of time is combined with location; the nominal group May
in Ayemenem is a Carrier/Medium in terms of its experiential function, not
Location; still the locational reference reveals something significant: the author
shows in the very beginning that keeping track of time is within the narrative
fabrics and we witness the author’s commitment to it as the story progresses:
readers are consistently reminded of time by her use of temporal references to
events. The temporal references are dispersed throughout the novel and the use
of time adverbials as Theme is found almost everywhere. The following are a few
examples:

4The identification of topical Theme in existential clauses has been debated and researchers
have different opinions on what should be considered as topical Theme in this clause type (see
Fries, 1983; Downing, 1991; Leong Ping, 2000). I take Halliday’s (1994[1985]) and Halliday &
Matthiessen’s (2014) definition that the Theme extends to the first experiential element of clause,
which is the Process in existential and meteorological clauses.

15
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

(55). Two weeks later, Estha was Returned. (p. 9)


(56). A whole year of Thursdays went by. (p. 24)
(57). Two years later, Baby Kochamma returned from Rochester with a diploma in
Ornamental Gardening, but more in love with Father Mulligan than ever. (p. 26)
(58). Early next morning they would go to Cochin Airport to pick up Chacko’s ex-wife-
their English aunt, Margaret Kochamma-and their cousin, Sophie Mol, who were
coming from London to spend Christmas at Ayemenem. Earlier that year,
Margaret Kochamma’s second husband, Joe, had been killed in a car accident. (p.
35)
(59). In November, after a hair-raising, bumpy bus ride to Shillong, amidst rumors of
Chinese occupation and India’s impending defeat, Estha and Rahel were born. (p.
40)

And Time also occurs in the Rheme section:

(60). It was October of 1962. Planters’ wives and children were evacuated from Assam.
Ammu, too pregnant to travel, remained on the estate.

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in this respect is remarkable. The novel


is considered, among other things, a fictional biography with historical elements
(Mitra, 2009; Barbuddhe, 2009). The author himself declares in the very
beginning how significant the precision of reference to time is for his narrative:

I was born in the city of Bombay … once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting
away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15 th, 1947.
And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it’s important to be more … On
the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. (Rushdie, 1993[1981]: 1)

References to historical timeline are inevitably expected. Indeed, this is


precisely what readers find in the narrative style right from the beginning. There
are many clauses sprinkled across the text that have the adverbials of Time
serving as the topical Theme. A few examples are given below:

(61). One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz
hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray.
(p. 12)
(62). By 1918, Aadam Aziz had come to live for his regular trips across the lake. (p.
27)
(63). On April 6th, 1919, the holy city of Amritsar smelled (gloriously, Padma,
celestially!) of excrement. (p. 33)
(64). During Ramzan, the month of fasting, we went to the movies as often as we could.
(p. 178)
(65). A few months later, when Mary Pereira finally confessed her crime, and revealed
the secrets of her eleven-year-long haunting by the ghost of Joseph D'Costa, we
learned that, after her return from exile, she was badly shocked by the condition
into which the ghost had fallen in her absence. (p. 246)

The author of Text 2 has also made incidental references to time and placed
them in the Theme position, not in the first chapter but in the chapters that
follow, as in (66) and (67), but they are not many:

(66). As early as 1955, Khrushchev had visited Kashmir and declared it forever part of
India, and more recently, the Bolshoi had performed Swan Lake before a Delhi
audience … (p. 26)

16
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

(67). In 1961, a chimp named Ham had made the journey. After him, in the same year,
Yuri Gagarin. (p. 26)

These temporal references are made in the context of a description about


Sai’s parents, who were a space scientist and who went to Russia to work for a
space project at a time when the diplomatic relationship between India and
Russia was blooming. There are a few more Time adverbials functioning as
Theme in the text. All of them occur when the author describes some historical
events. For example, the following example occurs in the context of a leader’s
speech in which reference to the independence of India from the British rule is
made:

In 1947, brothers and sisters, the British left granting India her freedom, granting the
Muslims Pakistan, granting special provisions for the scheduled castes and tribes, leaving
everything taken care of, brothers and sisters — (Text 2, p. 158)

In Text 1, in comparison, Time refers to the events that take place in the life
of its characters and it is central to the narrative design.

4.4 Nominalized- and predicated-Theme

Two particular grammatical categories that are well-known for their special
discourse-pragmatic functions, nominalization and it-cleft, deserve some
discussion here. What we call nominalized-Theme here is also known as wh-cleft
and pseudo-cleft constructions (Prince, 1978; Collins, 1991). The it-cleft is called
predicated-Theme in SFL (cf. Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014: 122-125). Both
nominalization and it-cleft have the thematic function. It-cleft is always placed in
the position of Theme, while a nominalized element can be in the section of
Theme as well as Rheme. When it is brought to function as Theme, it has a
special contextual meaning. Because it can be used to function as the Theme of
clause, we will refer to it as normalized-Theme. We do not intend to explore its
discourse-pragmatic meanings here, but we will say a few words on its
occurrence in the two novels we are exploring in this paper.
Nominalized-Theme and predicated-Theme are not many in the novels. In
the whole first chapter of The Inheritance of Loss (Text 2) there is no
nominalized- or predicated-Theme at all, though we find some examples in The
God of Small Things (Text 1). For example, the underlined clause in the following
extract has nominalized-Theme:

(68). Mr. Hollick had been frank with his young assistant. He informed him of the
complaints he had received from the labor as well as from the other assistant
managers.
“I’m afraid I have no option,” he said, “but to ask for your resignation.”
He allowed the silence to take its toll. He allowed the pitiful man sitting across the
table to begin to shake. To weep. Then Hollick spoke again.
“Well, actually there may be an option… perhaps we could work something out.
Think positive, is what I always say. Count your blessings.” Hollick paused to order a
pot of black coffee. “You’re a very lucky man, you know, wonderful family, beautiful
children, such an attractive wife…” He lit a cigarette and allowed the match to burn
until he couldn’t hold it anymore. “An extremely attractive wife…”

17
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

Here, a nominalized element think positive, is what has been deployed to


function as Theme of the clause. It occurs in a tense situation when, Baba, who is
Rahel and Estha’s (the two central characters of the novel) father, is going
through a sudden shock from his boss, Mr. Hollick. Mr. Hollick threatens Baba of
firing him as he has received many complaints against Baba, but he also wants to
take advantage of the situation. He likes Baba’s wife, Ammu, who is a good-
looking attractive and young lady. Mr. Hollick is trying to use the complaints
against Baba as a weapon to reach his wife and make physical relationship with
her. So, here the nominalized-Theme is part of his strategic dialogue with Baba.
First he gives Baba a shock by threatening that Baba will have to resign and
when he notices that Baba is in a state of cognitive breakdown and unable to
think reasonably, he tries to control the situation by pacifying him. It is in this
context that the nominalized Theme occurs.
The uses of predicated-Theme are not many in the novel. The first
predicated-Theme, given below in (69), occurs when Ammu humiliated in the
police station returns crying. This was a sock to the children Rahel and Estha
who were barely three. As they had never before seen their mother cry, this
made the children frightened. The author uses the predicated-Theme in that
context:

(69). When they left the police station Ammu was crying, so Estha and Rahel didn’t ask
her what veshya meant. Or, for that matter, illegitimate. It was the first time
they’d seen their mother cry. She wasn’t sobbing. Her face was set like stone, but
the tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her rigid cheeks. It made the twins
sick with fear. Ammu’s tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.
(Text 1, p. 22)

The following are few more examples of predicated-Theme and nominalized-


Theme from the text.

predicated-Theme:

(70). It was Baby Kochamma’s mother who eventually realized that Koh-i-noor was
none other than Baby Kochamma herself. (Text 1, p. 25)
(71). It was while she was at the School of architecture that she met Larry McCaslin,
who was in Delhi collecting material for his doctoral thesis on Energy Efficiency
in Vernacular Architecture. (Text 1, p 18)

nominalized-Theme:

(72). Though what exactly they meant by ‘Group Activities’ they never said. (Text 1, p.
11)

The nominalized- and predicated-Themes are even fewer in Text 2, as noted


above. There is no predicated-Theme in the first chapter of the text, nor is there a
nominalized-Theme. However, there are some nominalized- and predicated-
Themes in the forthcoming chapters. We do not go into discourse-pragmatic

18
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

details, as discussing them will take much space, but provide below examples of
each from the two texts we are analyzing5:

predicated-Theme:

(73). “Hello Dolly,” Uncle Potty said, waving to Sai from his veranda, which projected
like a ship’s deck over the steep incline. It was on this veranda that Said first hear
the Beatles. (Text 2, p. 41)
(74). It was, of course, Saeed Saeed who found out about the van and took Omar,
Kavafya, and Biju to Washington Heights, and there they waited on a street
corner. (Text 2, p. 100)

nominalized-Theme:

(75). “***!!!!” said the Frenchman.


It sounded to their ears like an angry dandelion puff, but what he said was
that they were a troublesome pair. (Text 2, p. 22)
(76). Biju had though the man from his village was claiming that India was so far
advanced that black men learned to dress and eat when they arrive, but what he
had meant was that black men ran about attempting to impregnate every Indian
girl they saw. (Text 2, p. 76).

5 Absence of Theme: elliptical clause

In this section we briefly discuss a particular type of utterances that, unlike


in texts such as editorials, reports, and news stories, we find in abundance in
novel: elliptical clauses, which are “some part of the clause that has gone before”
(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014: 127). They make very significant contribution to
the construction of fictional narrative.
We find a large number of elliptical clauses in the two texts. In Text 1, in
particular, the author uses them to recreate and add some additional effect to
her fictional narrative and narrates the story as if she is in deep thoughts, moved
by the character’s sufferings, pains, sadness, and sometimes by happiness. Let’s
look at the following extract, for example:

(77). Rahel grew up without a brief. Without anybody to arrange a marriage for her.
Without anybody who would pay her a dowry and therefore without an
obligatory husband looming on her horizon. So as long as she wasn’t noisy about
it, she remained free to make her own enquiries: into breasts and how much they
hurt. Into false hair buns and how well they burned. Into life and how it ought to
be lived. (Text 1, p. 17)

Here the author is narrating the neglected life of Rahel and how she had to
suffer. She does not have her parents to look after her and find as her a husband.
In traditional Indian society it is difficult for a girl of lower or lower middle class
to find a husband herself (especially without dowry). Rahel’s situation therefore
is not very comfortable. In narrating this strand of the narrative, the author uses
a number of unpredicated expressions that would be analyzed elliptical clauses:

5In fact, the use of nominalized- and predicated-Themes deserve a detailed discussion, as they
show some interesting discourse-pragmatic functions in the texts and they are crucial for
understanding the narratives. I will discuss them in a separate more focused article.

19
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap

without anybody who would pay her a dowry, without an obligatory husband
looming on her horizon, into breasts and how much they hurt, into false hair buns
and how well they burned, into life and how it ought to be lived. It is part of the
initial predication that the author is making: Rahel grew up without a brief and
the elliptical clauses appear as a continuation of that predication. There is no
particularly specific punctuation to show it, but the full stop seems to indicate a
pause after every elliptical utterance and project an image of a story-teller deep
in thought and delved deep into the character’s life and narrating the story.
There are many such examples in both texts. Such clauses do not have a Theme.
They are continuation of the Rheme of the preceding clause.
Some elliptical clauses, however, do have Theme, but a part of Rheme is
dropped, as in the following:

(77). He wasn’t her responsibility.


Or was he? (Text 1, p. 21)

The second clause here is elliptical: Or was he?, in which or was is the Theme and
the part of the Rheme her responsibility is dropped. The clause here will be
interpreted as Or was he her responsibility?, which is transparent when the two
clauses are read together. The Finite/Predicator was followed by the Subject he
indicates that the missing element is the same as the one in the preceding clause,
i.e. her responsibility.

6 Conclusion

In this paper I have presented the analysis of two fictional texts in the
framework of Systemic functional Linguistics, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small
Things (Text 1) and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss(Text 2), and explored
the authors’ narrative style in terms of the selection of grammatical Theme in the
clause. The analysis shows that Agent, especially Actor and Medium, are the two
preferred experiential elements used as Theme in the two novels, and the use of
other experiential elements such as Angle, Extent, Cause, and Beneficiary in the
Theme position are minimal, as the result given in Table 2 in Section 4 show.
This selection is very much motivated by the “field” of discourse. The Themes are
characters in the role of Actor and Medium, but even non-human characters, e.g.
natural elements that contribute to the description of settings and other
inanimate objects, also are presented in the role of Agent and Medium. They
should have some special meaning relating to the broader subject-matter of the
story. I have not tried to interpret the significance of these grammatical tools in
detail; I primarily focused on describing what is and what is not selected as
Theme in the text, but we needs to attend to this aspect in future research.
From the analysis of these two fictional texts it is clear that the preferred
textual choice in the narrative of this kind is the unmarked Theme and it is
remarkable that we do not find many interpersonal components as part of
Theme in the two texts. Another element that occur infrequently in the two texts
are nominalized- and predicated-Themes, which in general are not very frequent
in written texts, but have remarkably low frequency of occurrences in the texts
under investigation. We need to explore whether this is a typical feature of texts
written by Indian speakers/writers of English. If this is found to be true, then the

20
The choice of Theme in The God of Small Things and The Inheritance of Loss

question to be explored will be what mechanism Indian English speakers use to


achieve the discourse-pragmatic functions that nominalized- and predicated
Themes serve.

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