Rachel Grundl

Environmental World Literature

Comparative Analysis
5 November 2015
The Nature of Loss in Speak, Memory and God of Small Things
In Speak, Memory, and God of Small Things Nabokov and Roy evoke a strong
sense of loss plaguing their beings, and reflect that coming solemnity and loneliness well
through their descriptions of nature. Where they differ is that Roy used nature to
illustrate her characters personalities and inner strife while Nabokov used nature to drive
his message home, and allow for further analysis from the reader. However, both pieces
had circumstances in which the characters lost bits of themselves little by little and there
was nothing they could do to control it.
Beginning with Speak, Memory with perhaps the strongest, most vivid description
of loss Nabokov tells us of the snow, The snow is real, though, and as I bend to it and
scoop up a handful, sixty years crumble to glittering frost-dust between my fingers. (pg.
100) In this small sentence his words echo the loss of what he has known his whole life,
his home an is now an icy cold remembrance of which he had such a warm childhood is
reduced to this frost-dust that slip and fall between his grasp.
This frost-dust made up of snowflakes, all wildly different and intricate, like his
memories and descriptions of his tutors all waste away. Reduced to nothing that he will
ever experience again, as he has been exiled from the one place he has ever considered
being his home. Those intricate memories incased in this cold will be carried like the
dear memories of his home by the wind and settle out of reach and soon melt away from
the incorrigible sun rays. And with the snows vanishing, it will be like it was never there
in the first place, like Nabokov.

This extreme loss of being and home is mirrored in God of Small Things, in two
sections the first being,
Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well,
green mossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea colored puddles the way
memory bombs still, tea colored minds. The grass looked wetgreen and pleased. Happy
earthworms frolicked purple in the slush. Green nettles nodded. Trees bent. (pg. 11)
This natural explanation of shows a quiet complacency playing in the world
around us. How this heavenly water has come down, in droves, in the powerful moment
to weigh everything down. This water, either in a sense of rebirth, or of feeding the
vulnerability of his character and allows for monotony to come to life. This monotony of
the hammering rain is shown as it allows for the memory bombs still a mind that is lost
in the memory of something tragic. Unbeknownst to us at this reading, we do not know
Esthas true thoughts; just that he has suffered such molestation of his mind and body that
he cannot escape it. Thus leaving him vulnerable to this heavenly water that is
hammering down, so as to cleanse him. At this moment his mind and body are their
most vulnerable, thus easiest to be effected.
This is most apparent in this quotation, Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and
spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. (pg.
13) These swampy arms are made from this heavenly water, which keeps his old wounds
open only allowing them to fester in his silence. This silence has now trapped in within
his solitary suffering memory, but also in this infinite loneliness, as he will not
acknowledge his other half. His dizygotic twin, Rahel, who has other memories she has
no right to have. (pg. 5) And she is traveling far from her other home to see her brother
who was taken from her life, without explanation, but she cannot reach him as he is so
lost to this memory encasing himself willingly in solitude.

This solitude within Estha, is stated pretty early on as well, as Roy uses the
weather, in this case the rain, to dictate his emotional state. Specifically, what emotional
state is being felt or what feeling is being exploited. The rain for Estha mirrors his inner
struggle and despair; it shows the harsh storm brewing inside him. The line, Slanting
silver ropes slammed into the loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire, illustrates this best.
(pg. 4) This was the tone laid out when Rahel arrived to see her brother, her other half,
after so many years. I imagine in that moment Rahel is the storm, as she is the more
vivacious twin, forcing her way back into Esthas soft life. And Estha as the loose
earth just stays silent allowing this, falling apart a bit more, so much so that he doesnt
even acknowledge her. Yet again, he became the rain, and just washed away in darkness.
Nabokov undergoes a similar loss of the one closest to him, Tamara, a girl equated
to being his first love. Not only did he lose her, but also at the same moment he lost his
true love, his country. The loss of my country was equated for me with the loss of my
love. (pg. 245) This loss is then preceded by the hints of nature around him, who
blinded him with the creation of his first love so true to him that he will not reveal her
real name only hint at it,
I would find it written with a stick on the reddish sand of a park avenue, or
penciled on a whitewashed wicket, or freshly carved (but not competed) in the wood of
some ancient bench, as if Mother Nature were giving me mysterious advance notices of
existence. (pg. 229)
These two passages show a depth of loss, beginning with the flirtations laid out by
Mother Nature, teasing Nabokov with the thought and presence of his first love. It was as
if Mother Nature allowed for this name, this future love of his to exist, like she created
the name so naturally, Tamara which was found everywhere within her. Thus leading to
Nabokovs beautiful discovery of her being,

when I discovered her standing quite still (only her eyes were moving) in a birch
grove, she seemed to have been spontaneously generated there, among these watchful
trees, with the silent completeness of a mythological manifestation. (pg. 230)
This is magnificently heartfelt, something so deep to be experienced by a
teenager, who tend to create feelings fast and fall hard for their first love. So the loss of
his first love is easily equitable with the loss of his country. For him it was as if he had
found all the answers in his life, his love life anyway. He had been complete, had
adventures, even the scandalous secrets creating a deep connection that is not easy to heal
once broken. And never easy to forget, in fact it is unforgettable, as he had trusted
himself to be kept within her. This like the connection to his country was occurred
naturally, and is something that all can relate to especially when it is loss. Sadly in his
case they both had to come to an end, when he was forced from his country due to
political upheaval.
Continuing with political upheaval, within God of Small Things we learn briefly
of the workings of it and how it has contaminated Mother Nature as well as its own
people. In this case Estha, Some days he walked along the banks of the river that
smelled of shit and pesticides bought with World Bank loans. Most of the fish had died.
The ones that survived suffered from fin-rot and had broken out in boils. (pg. 14) This
choice of nature again illustrates the loneliness within Estha. Like the fish that died from
the pesticides bought with World Bank loans, he is suffering from those who made the
choice of taking advantage of a vulnerable situation. Estha was a vulnerable boy meant
to suffer a tragedy at the hands of another, against his will. However, this poison put into
his soul has not caused him to die. Instead, it has called for alienation from those around
him because he cant accept that which was done to him.

This has paralleled his being to that of the fish surviving such tragedy, scarred
now with fin-rot and broken out with boils. Estha has survived this tragedy as well,
however his scars from this tragedy are not visible they are subcutaneous. They are
hidden, buried deep within his mind, tying themselves to his tongue and entangling in
vocal cords that will not be used. His silence and alienation will continue to fester in this
polluted environment he considers home. A home that once was clean, safe and
innocent for him like the river before it became molested by mans inventions.
These deep-seated emotions tied to loss are what connect Nabokov and Roy, and
for Nabokov there is one moment that illustrates this. It is preceded by the statement of,
A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. (pg. 77) It
is commonly found that when we feel our safest, our happiest, we are warm, or warmed
by something. This warmth is so fulfilling and comforting that it acts as a shield to keep
us safe from the thing around us that would harm us. Especially memories, and these
memories from his past, of his country he had lost set him in this solemnity of
remembrance. So he keeps himself shielded and trapped by this summer warmth in a
memory of what was. To keep himself from feeling that loss of what will never be again,
as he will never experience a true Russian summer again, of which he presents to us in
such awesome description and voice. That it makes it real once again. Continuing on he
sends this point home with, Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change,
nobody will ever die. (pg. 77)
The summer warmth of that memory, in which nothing will ever change brings
about such a concrete feeling of loss. Because in his mind nothing will ever change,
because he has trapped that memory, so that everything is perfect. And he will live in

perfected version of such, and look back in such nostalgia to keep the real feeling of loss
at bay. He is living in abject denial of losing that preciousness of home to him. Because
really how can he lose it, if it is forever with him in his mind? In truth he has lost it, and
in an act of remembrance we tend to over embellish or change the memory so that it is
exactly how we want it to be. In truth, he will never experience that summer warmth
again, and everything has changed, and along with the connection to his country, people
will die. But at this moment, Nabokov isnt ready to accept that. The loss of such
innocent access is too much for him to accept in an abject manner.
Roy echoes this abject denial of a perfect setting, in this case a perfect future for
Baby Kochamma and of her first love the Priest. Every Thursday, undaunted by the
merciless midday sun, they would stand there by the well. (pg. 24) Desperate like this
merciless middy sun, Baby Kochamma becomes this heat, desperate to cling to
people. This again leads to a loss of love, of potential love between, The young girl and
the intrepid Jesuit, both quaking with unchristian passion. Using the Bible as a ruse to be
with each other. (pg. 24)
She should have known that this loss was inevitable, religiously it never would
have worked, but it was an innocent and primal desire that hits hard. And yet again is
something that is not easily quieted or forgotten. So this potential of love has stuck with
her and led to be her emotional and physical downfall, as she stewed in her feelings of
what could have been but wasnt. And that juvenile mindset is something still prevalent
in the character, which is why I think heat was used any time her character was described.
Heat like her is something you cant just brush or wash off, instead it is something that is
ever nagging and annoying, like a child.

As this child, she continued to brood over her loss and had to be redirected by
her father into keeping a garden which she raised to be fierce and bitter, like her heated
feelings about a lost love. But like her own life she wasnt able to control it completely
and Left to its own devices, it had grown knotted and wild, like a circus whose animals
had forgotten their tricks. (pg. 27) Instead, she quit working through that loss with
something beneficial and took solitude and safety in becoming obsessed with television.
She would rather live on the outside of facilitated drama then accept that she lost one in
real life.
This inevitable loss is what allows Speak, Memory and God of Small Things to
resonate. Everyone has experienced this feeling, at one point or another, and can recall in
the utmost detail what happened that day, what the day was like and how it was perfect or
could have been perfect before everything changed. And this tie to nature, only makes it
stronger as it allows our senses to be at their peak performance, and in each retelling of
the loss, they only get stronger. This loss and isolation for both pieces make each
character, even Nabokov, isolated in their own worlds. Theyve all been exiled to the
furthest area from their haven. Nabokov exiled literally from his love and his country.
Estha with his loss of Rahel, as he willingly ignores her being, even though she is
inexplicably a part of him, continues to exile himself from her comfort. Because for him
it is easier, because she knows, she knows whats happened and he cant face the reality
of it. This becomes a sick truth, because any sense of belonging has been lost and forced
away.
In the end it is important to note that each character is paralleled to a piece of the
natural world to expedite this loss, exile. Nabokov, like the snow, has drifted away,

forced by the wind from the unique atmosphere he has fallen upon. Estha, like the rain, is
ever falling, flooded with grief and drowning in the loss of what was. Rahel is the storm
forcing her way to her brother, because he is all she knows to be true. Lastly, Baby
Kochamma represented by heat, the clinging, nagging and thick with inescapable loss of
what could have been, if only they had acted.
Each person represents a piece of Mother Nature, but unlike her they are unable to
control their loss and fall to pieces. And they have tried until they are overwhelmed by
this loss, this exile, to reclaim what was. Like Nabokov said, Everything is as it
should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die. (pg. 77) Not if we can help
it, because really with our memories, we can relive the times weve been exiled from.
And that in some cases can be exhilarating like for Nabokov or exhausting like for Estha.