Cutting For Stone

The perception of twins has always been perceived as being one and united. The common imagery of twins is often associated as two human beings that are closely related with several similar traits, aesthetically or internally. However, despite the conventional perception of twins, they are not always the image perfect couple we have always imagined them to be. In the case of Abraham Verghese’s Cutting For Stone and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, both authors establish a unique aspect on twins that many of us would not consider the accepted norm of twin “ideology”. In Cutting For Stone, we are presented with a epitomical situation of two twins that are conjoined by an artery in their heads. It’s an extremely typical scenario in which
In other words, Roy presents differing perspectives than the norm of what truly comprises of twins. We are introduced to the two twins as Rahel and Esthappen. From a young age, they shared an intimate relationship and both had personalities that seemed to complement each other; “..as though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities (Roy, 5). However, at a point in their life, they were split up and thus began their separation. The twin imagery throughout the novel is one that seems extremely apparent. From their shared taste of Estha’s tomato sandwiches to shared dreams, their relationship as twins was somewhat unreal (Roy, 4-5). However, due to their separation, they became a “Them, because, separately, the two of them are no longer what they were or ever thought They’d be” (Roy, 5). However, despite how separated they had become, the fact that Estha and Rahel were able to share tastes and dreams is a twin imagery that shows the true testament of their relationship. Although it may seem like the twins’ bond is extremely tight, the separation certainly created tribulations and differences while forming their individual identities. Each twin experienced their own life after Sophie Mol’s death, with Rahel living in the United States and Estha sent to
Both authors took an approach that was out of the norm, meaning that they didn’t present the twins as absolutely identical and outline the plot in the favor of the twins. In Cutting For Stone, Verghese initially expresses Marion and Shiva somewhat more grounded in reality compared to Roy’s Rahel and Estha. The twin imagery that Verghese uses is much more believable because it tackles with situational problems that readers can relate to, from betrayal, to life and death. Whereas Roy uses his twin imagery to exaggerate the actual relationship between twins with the sharing of senses, memories, and dreams. However, the similarity between the uses of twin imagery in both novels is that they presented the twins as two different people (dualist) throughout the novel but concluded the story as the two twins being one person (monist). The two authors took both twin couples as extremely different people but utilized the differences to express the strength and “durability” of the twins’ relationship. Both Verghese and Roy could have presented the twins as merely pairs of two that shared identical qualities, but they both took the troubling differences of the twins and applied it to show the readers the true bond between the