Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 20, 07 December 2023
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The Triple Tragedy of Ammu in The God of Small Things in the Perspective of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory
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Abstract
In the novel The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy’s heroine Ammu’s short life is surrounded by multiple tragedies. As a divorced woman from a high caste class in India, the significance of Ammu’s tragic death is not only the literary aesthetic of the novel that serves to accentuate the conflict of the plot, but it is also a powerful political statement embodying the unlimited downward pressure exerted by the powerful class in Indian society. In this paper, the five-order model of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory is categorised into three levels, namely, basic needs, middle needs and high needs, in accordance with the bottom-up order of the pyramid pattern and is combined with the traditional laws and institutions of Indian society embodied in the text to explore the causes of Ammu’s tragedy. Through analysing Ammu’s motives and behaviours of human needs, the readers can intuitively understand the opposition between the growing human needs of Indian women and the multiple ruling interests of the powerful class. In the process of pursuing the fulfilment of her human needs, Ammu, unfortunately, touches and even destroys the ruling pattern on which the powerful class relies, which is the main reason for her tragedy.
Keywords
Abraham Maslow, The God of Small Things, tragedy
References
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-83558-183-4
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-83558-184-1
- Published Date
- 07 December 2023
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/20/20231289
- Copyright
- 07 December 2023
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited