Characters

Rahel
As a child, Rahel has an incredibly intimate connection with her twin brother,
Estha. Their bond leads them to think of themselves together as "Me." They share
a type of telepathic communication and a spoken language that is uniquely theirs.
Rahel is also very sensitive about her mother's feelings and responses to her and
gets easily hurt. So when both of these beloved people are taken from her at a
young age and Rahel is basically left to fend for herself, she dissociates herself
from making any new emotional connections. She grows up to be an indifferent
woman, not interested in relationships or any sort of significant work. This is why
she yearns so much to have again with Estha the type of intimate relationship
they enjoyed as children when they are reunited after 23 years. However, the
intimacy they find is an inappropriate sexual bond.
Estha
For Estha as a child, his relationship with his twin sister, Rahel, is more important
than anything. They can communicate without speaking, and they live in their
own world, with their own way of viewing it and talking about it. He is viewed by
adults as a quiet and practical child; most do not seem to understand how
sensitive he is. He experiences trauma beyond what Rahel endures. He is
molested, forced to betray Velutha while looking at his broken body, and sent to
live with his alcoholic father. His response is to withdraw into himself, ceasing to
speak and mostly wishing to be invisible. When he is reunited with Rahel as an
adult, Estha's interior quiet is disrupted. The memories he has successfully
repressed threaten to overtake him, and so he finally seeks safety in the sexual
embrace of the one person he has always loved most, Rahel.
Ammu
Beginning in her teen years, Ammu seems to feel robbed of the chance for a
happy life. Her parents move their unhappy marriage and her to Ayemenem at
that time, and she longs to escape. When she finally goes to Calcutta for a family
wedding, she jumps at the chance to marry practically the first man she meets.
However, Baba is a bad choice—an abusive alcoholic—and soon enough Ammu is
back at Ayemenem, this time with twins. Back to feeling trapped in a dead-end
life, Ammu is suddenly drawn to Velutha. In his arms she feels alive, but the price
she and the family must pay for her unacceptable relationship with an
Untouchable is death, on many levels. Ammu herself will not survive for long,
dying of asthma at age 31 while applying for another dead-end job in a long string
of them.
Velutha
Born a Paravan (an Untouchable), Velutha nevertheless experiences many
privileges because of his association with the Ipe family. When he is around 11,
Mammachi notices his great skill with making things. She makes sure he goes to
school, and he also studies with a German carpenter to hone his abilities. As a
teenager he can design and build furniture, house additions, and theatrical
settings and props. Velutha also takes care of all the machinery at the factory. He
has a kind of quiet confidence about him that causes his father to worry he will
one day be forced back into his place as a Paravan. This worry seems unfounded
until Velutha does the unthinkable and has an affair with Ammu. That is when the
only thing people seem to know about him is that he is an Untouchable who must
die for his act.
Baby Kochamma
The daughter of a Syrian Christian priest, at 18 Baby Kochamma falls in love with
her father's young Irish monk friend, Father Mulligan. Quite attractive in her
youth, Baby seems to catch his attention, but nothing comes of a casual flirtation.
So she then converts to Catholicism and joins a convent in Madras to be near
Father Mulligan. This plan also fails, and Baby leaves the convent. She gets a
diploma in Ornamental Gardening in New York and returns to Ayenemen an
obese woman still pining for Father Mulligan. She designs incredible gardens for
the house and cares for them for some 50 years before abandoning that pursuit
for constant TV viewing. Eighty-three years old at the time of the present
narration, Baby remains a spoiled and vain woman, still in love with the now dead
Mulligan and intent on preserving the family honor through any means necessary.
Theme of Love
Love is a powerful force in the novel, yet it is not easy to comeby. In the Ipe
family, love is withheld as a means of getting others to conform to your will, as is
the case of Ammu's love for her children. Or as revealed by Pappachi's
personality, love is warped and turned into something that produces only
violence and fear. In contrast love is given freely to Sophie Mol, a fact that
confuses adults and children alike. What makes someone so deserving of love?
The "Love Laws," society's rules for who can love who and how, don't explain it.
Out of this confusion arises Ammu's willingness to give in to her love for Velutha,
grabbing at her only chance to live fully. Yet the outcome is far from life, and
Rahel and Estha are condemned to an inability to love. In losing any opportunity
for love, they also lose the chance to feel joy, pleasure, or hope. Only in
rediscovering their love for each other do they have the chance for redemption.