In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy explores dreams and their connection to heritage and social identity. While a dream, which has a positive connotation, is usually personal and unique to oneself, a dream re-dreamed, on the other hand, reflects oppression by domination. First, a dream must be captured by an outsider. Then, the dream must be changed by the capturer, making the dream officially re-dreamed. Rahel, who has been exposed to British influence and Anglophilia all her life, has her dreams re-dreamed for her at a young age by Kari Saipu, an Englishman who appropriates Indian culture. After Saipu steals and re-dreams Rahel’s dreams using his power as an Englishman, Rahel becomes disoriented and loses her identity, which weakens over time and eventually develops into a sense of loss.

Roy establishes that Kari Saipu easily captures and re-dreams Rahel’s dreams, highlighting that he uses his power as an Englishman over Rahel. The narrator uses a metaphor that juxtaposes Kari Saipu’s malicious exploitation of children and childlike innocence: “He pluck[s] [dreams] from the minds of passersby the way children pick currants from a cake. That the ones he craved most of all, the dreams he loved re-dreaming, were the tender dreams of two-egg twins” (190). Ironically, Kari Saipu nefariously steals Rahel's dreams, despite the comparison to the innocent action of “children pick[ing] currants from a cake.” The juxtaposition emphasizes how powerful and terrifying Kari Saipu is because he can capture Rahel’s “tender” dreams as effortlessly as children can grab sweet fruits and not just any fruit. “Currants,” which children seem to love, are fruits that originate from Europe, indicating the prevalence of British influence and thus Kari Saipu’s power as an Englishman.

While lecturing Rahel and her twin brother Estha on the negative consequences of British imperialism, Chacko, their uncle, asserts that anglophilia strips the family of their heritage and values, which later leads them to develop a sense of loss when the British re-dream their dreams. When explaining to Rahel and Estha that they are disconnected from their own history, Chacko uses the imagery of losing a war to communicate the dangers of Anglophilia: “Our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures our dreams and re-dreams them” (52). Chacko compares Anglophilic minds to minds “invaded by a war.” The negative connotations of “war” suggest the destructiveness of Anglophilia. Although the family is higher in the social hierarchy, which might imply that the family “won” the war, the violent imagery of conquerors “capturing” dreams reveals that the family actually “lost” the war because their dreams are lost. Lacking their own dreams, the members of the family, whose family business seeks recognition from the British, are left pointed in the wrong direction once their dreams are “captured.” Chacko further explains the sense of loss that develops from conquerors re-dreaming the dreams of the Ipe family:  “‘We are Prisoners of War,’ Chacko said. ‘Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter’” (52). The recognition of the family members as “Prisoners of War” reinforces the fact that the Ipe family lost the war in being deprived of their dreams, and the capitalization highlights the prominence of the loss. A “doctored” dream signifies not only the seizure of the dream but also the forgery and contamination of it. Once their dreams are “doctored,” the family begins to “sail unanchored,” suggesting instability and unsteadiness. Moreover, the repetition of “never [being] enough” indicates self-hatred, which Rahel starts to feel as she tries to emulate a British child, and thus the beginnings of loss from having dreams re-dreamed. By re-dreaming Rahel’s dreams, Kari Saipu causes Rahel’s sense of loss to grow.

When Rahel becomes an adult, she has trouble connecting with her husband because of her developed sense of loss. When having sex, Larry McCaslin, Rahel’s ex-husband, is exasperated because he cannot understand why Rahel’s eyes look elsewhere. Confusing Rahel’s wandering eyes for despair and indifference, McCaslin demonstrates their disconnect; however, “what Larry McCaslin saw in Rahel’s eyes was not despair at all, but a sort of enforced optimism. And a hollow where Estha’s words had been. He couldn’t be expected to understand that. That the emptiness of one twin was only a version of the quietness in the other” (20-21). “Enforced optimism” suggests masked hopelessness and powerlessness, referencing Kari Saipu and Rahel’s inability to protect herself and her dreams. “Hollow[ness]” and “emptiness” imply the loss and grief that stays with Rahel as a result of her dreams being re-dreamed. Further, the loss of love in an intimate personal relationship with someone else demonstrates that Rahel’s sense of absence continued to develop and grow over the course of her life.

The effects of having dreams re-dreamed in The God of Small Things relate to the system of power the British imperialism brought. As oppression continues and Anglophilia becomes internalized, Rahel struggles to maintain her relationships with people who have not had their dreams re-dreamed for them. Roy's statement against colonization centers on stolen dreams and re-dreamed dreams that cause loss and erasure.