In this weeks novel I noticed that Roy's depiction of Velutha was something that needed further examination. In our discussion last week the question arose about why Velutha was given so many great traits and yet was to remain an untouchable?
I thought that the main reason why Roy did this was to show how incredibly inescapable social labels can be. Velutha is beautiful and skilled and yet he will never be able to move beyond what people have made him out to be.
Having thought of this, I began to compare to the questions of poverty that have been brought up in class, in particular, can someone escape a life of poverty? As we have seen in the short fiction and in Q & A, poverty is escapable, at least more so than escaping caste labels. It seems that Roy has given Velutha every tool, every method, to escape a life of an untouchable yet he cannot. Swarup gave Ram many chances to escape poverty and through many failures, in the end, Ram made it out and lived happily ever after. Velutha did not even live, happily or sadly, ever after.
It is interesting to put these two things side by side and compare which one is worse than the other. But through all the readings we have discussed in this class it seems that caste takes the cake.
I agree that Velutha's beauty, talent, and goodness of soul juxtaposed with his untouchability focuses the reader’s attention on the seemingly inescapable tragedy of the caste system. However, it also brings attention to the question of why human beings have the need to displace their fellow creatures. Why does man feel the need to create artificial barriers between himself and others? Is it because of the base part of our nature that wants someone to hate, to look down upon so that we may feel elevated ourselves? If everyone was considered to have the potential for equal value, would this somehow displace an individual’s ability to feel they have value altogether? This separation and demonization of certain groups of people has always existed throughout known history so can this psychological inclination be avoided, and what would happen if it was?
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