ABSTRACT
Literature is defined as one of the creative and universal means of communication, and it is an emotional, spiritual or intellectual concern of mankind. It entertains the readers and refines their mind as well. People as creative human beings may observe, criticize, and understand deeper about literary works as the object of analysis. This final project is aimed at proving that incest belongs to the novel’s themes, analyzing the cause of incest as the mirror of soul depression in the story; finding out the traumatic moments of Rahel and Estha’s (the major characters) childhood; and presenting the way to overcome incest in the society.
The object of this study is Arundhati Roy’s novel “The God of Small Things”. The data of the study are in the form of words, phrases, sentences, the hidden meanings, and also dialogues. The method of investigation is reading the novel intensively for many times, identifying the hints in the datas that were related to soul depression, traumatic incidents, and incest, inventorizing the data into three groups according to statements of the problems, selecting the relevant data, and inserting the inventoried data in the appendix. Then reporting the selected data by using the methods of explanation, exposition, description, and comparison.
The analysis reveals that depression may be caused by traumatic incidents experienced in childhood. This illness stimulated people to behave in an abnormal way. One example of abnormal behaviors caused by soul depression as has been depicted in the novel is incest. This kind of sex abnormality cannot be permitted according to health, psychology, and criminology’s points of view.
The result of the study shows that Rahel and Estha suffered from depression. It brought many effects on their adult life as they faced many enigmatical problems in their childhood. Unfortunately, they committed incest as the symbolic reunification after being apart for 23 years. This study about unveiling the mystery of incest also presents the solution to overcome incest as well as sexual harassment and the therapy for the incest victim based on the expert’s views.
