Decoding Narrative: Applying Barthes' Five Codes To Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things

Abstract

In this paper, the theory of the five codes of S/Z (the hermeneutic, proairetic, semantic, symbolic and cultural codes) by Roland Barthes (1970) is applied in interpreting the nonlinear narrative and postcolonial themes in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997).^[1]All three goals of the research include defining the codes put forward by Barthes; analytically exploring how they work in the novel through the lexia segmentation; and evaluating how well they fit the multiplicity of the writerly in the novel faced by caste, gender, and colonial oppressions. With the help of qualitative textual analysis, the novel is being broken down into about 400-500 lexias, with codes being mapped by means of inductive coding to uncover mysteries of forbidden love (HER), action chains that lead to tragedy (ACT), connotative motifs of small things (SEM), binaries that are inverting the Laws of Love (SYM), and intertexts of the Kerala history (REF). Results confirm the effectiveness of the codes to reveal ideological divides, but Malayalam-English hybrid prose and Roy living with embodied trauma enhance the model by disrupting its Eurocentric linearity, politicising its meaning interpretation in a postcolonial society. This makes a connexion between narratology and the study of Indian literature, establishing the subaltern readings democratically, and syncretic resistance. The framework may be expanded to Rushdie or Adiga in future research to continue the development of the decolonial narratology.