Estha's Monologue: Fear and Guilt

Fear and Guilt: Estha’s Monologue

By Dash Liddi Brown

I lie awake while Ayemenem rests

Under the dark blue sky, only the quiet hum of insects  

Their echoes innocent yet ominous

My body pleads for rest, but my mind remains restlessly active

Tears corrode my soot covered cheeks and drip onto my yellow pillowcase

I open my mouth to scream but my jaw is left ajar with only a small whimper being heard

I remember his face, his unshaven beard and portable piano smile,

How his steady gaze follows me wherever I go

The sweet strawberry taint to his breath fails to conceal

The smell of cigarette ash emanates from his overheating body

I can feel his presence even when he isn’t around

Or is he

A hurt man disguised with a mask so thin only a child could fall for his tricks

A man with the power to change one's life in an instant

A sweet refreshment as the backbone of his evil plot

In the end, he is nothing more than a coward

Tears begin to swell up again and all of the sudden I am drenched

This night is nothing spectacular,

The haunting image of that man replays itself in my mind

As if a tape recorder endlessly playing an unsettling series of events

Each play more vivid, more controlling, more real

It’s as if he has become a part of me, a part of my identity

His image ingrained in my mind, it prevents me from thinking, eating, sometimes breathing

All I want to do is get out, to leave, to go to the history house where he will never find me

Everytime I want to leave, it’s as if he knows my plan, knows my every move

I am not a bad man, only a boy

But sometimes I have to ask myself, what would a bad man do?

In a world full of danger why must I encounter it firsthand?

I fear not only for myself but the safety of my beloved mother and sister Rahel

I could take Rahel with me, but not mom

She can never know what happened,

It would break her down farther than I have been broken

If I were to escape, to leave forever, what would happen?

Would he find me?

Would I find him?

Staring blankly and wide-eyed at the ceiling

The walls of my room seem as if they are closing in on me

Was it me?

Was I to blame?

What if I had never left the theater?

Why did everything happen the way it did?

Mother Superior told Maria

“...These walls were not meant to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to live the life you were born to live.”

It’s just not that simple

The walls that prevent me from living my life seem to be within

A subtle warmth creeps through the windowsill and rests gently on my skin

The morning sun is rising above the mountains

White light engulfing my body

The lemondrink man is there

Creative Lab: God of Small Things Reflection

While reading The God of Small Things, Arundhati seamlessly threads the theme of family, class, fear, innocence, and many more into her outstanding interpretation of Indian life and culture in Ayemenem. From the start of the book, two major characters are evident, Estha and Rahel, and throughout, their lives and the people that surround them are examined and developed. A few chapters into the book, Estha is lured and harmed by a street vender, this experience carves a pathway for the book as his life has been permanently changed from that point onward. For the creative lab project, I wanted to closely examine how the incident with the Lemondrink man has affected him while focusing on a more internal view, an angle in which the reader has not seen before in Arundhati’s writing. I intended to write from the point of view of Estha, and focus on the themes of fear, guilt, blame, and innocence all in one setting. Rather than taking a simple approach to the monologue, I instead dug deeper and focused on how the Lemondrink man had become a part of Estha’s identity, how the incident has caused him to feel isolated and think how a ‘bad man’ thinks. Aside from the writing, my format and flow of words took a more poetic form, where each sentence contains its own line as to better emphasize the singularity and power of the message it is trying to convey. I would switch between narrating the setting, which took place is Esthas bedroom, and the voice inside Esthas head, speaking to him about the Lemondrink man. This method provided a balance between reality and his psychological experience. Later on in the monologue, I fused together a quote from The Sound of Music and how his view of that quote has changed after his experience with the Lemondrink man. This was especially powerful as The Sound of Music was the movie Estha had seen moments before he was harmed. In its entirety, the monologue was merely a flash in time, but, encompassed many new emotions and details one would not receive from reading solely the book. The creative project was something that the English II class was unfamiliar with as we had, in the past, been focusing on analytical writing, where now we could open-endedly write to our heart's desire about any sequence in The God of Small Things. Being free of restrictions, the project allowed me to focus on an idea or concept I was interested in, and further that understanding through my own interpretation based on events in the book. The two dominant themes, (aside from family) fear and guilt, were those I was particularly interested in and was luckily able to pursue in my monologue. What gave my monologue the most effect was the phrase “less is more.” Rather than explaining to the reader what they want to hear, I instead left much of it to interpretation, for each sentence to internalize within the reader. Using as few words to describe a powerful moment created a powerful effect on the reader. Overall, the creative project allowed me to almost be present in Ayemenem, surrounded by all the characters, and interpret the book from a more in depth or different angle, a good conclusion to a wonderful book.