"Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory; dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it" (Roy 13).

In the novel The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy uses imagery and sibilance to emphasize the visceral experience of Estha’s response to his trauma, reflecting the complexity of losing oneself and one’s identity due to past memories. Throughout the passage, the theme of memory is constantly alluded to, because of Estha’s traumatic experience with sexual assault. Estha’s response to his traumatic sexual assault is embodied by an imaginary octopus in his mind, which “sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull” (13). The imagery of the octopus brings forth a vivid picture of a monster, creeping quietly in his mind, just like the secrecy around his traumatic memories and his resulting silence. The sibilance in the words “sent,” “stealthy,” suckered,” and “skull” creates a dramatic and hushed whispering sound that adds to the spooky and solitary space in Estha’s mind caused by his traumatic memories. The imagery of the octopus that “squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past” (13) refers to the octopus’s escape mechanism. Just like how an octopus squirts ink to hide from its enemies and flee, Estha’s response to his trauma was to hide his memory and forget. The octopus effectively removes a part of Estha by covering up his past in this metaphorical ink. In this passage, Roy uses imagery to portray Estha’s response to his traumatic memories so that readers can understand the impact of traumatic memories. Ultimately, the use of the octopus as a representation for Estha’s silence demonstrates the profound effect that memories have in people’s lives, in that memories can completely reshape people’s identities.