Jhumpa Lahiri composed the two short stories: “Interpreter of Maladies” and “Sexy” that conveyed the recurring theme of feeling like an outsider. During the first story, “Interpreter of Maladies,” there was a character named Mr. Kapasi, a “self-educated man,” who was a “devoted scholar of foreign languages,” who dreamed of becoming an interpreter for diplomats and dignitaries, where he could aid in “resolving conflicts between people and nations, settling disputes of which he alone could understand both sides” (Interpreter of Maladies). This dream became a fantasy after his parents settled his arranged marriage that turned for the worse. Mr. Kapasi’s wife “had little regard for his career as an interpreter,”and she despised the thought of him …show more content…
Das “was so intrigued by his job” (Interpreter of Maladies). Mrs. Das was the wife of Mr. Das who had the secret of conceiving a son that was not her husband's. An eight year secret that drove her feelings for her husband away with guilt, the struggling marriage became apparent to Mr. Kapasi. He, noticing the struggling marriage, wondered if “Mr. and Mrs. Das were a bad match, just as he and his wife were.” Building a fantasy around this thought, Mr. Kapasi let his loneliness get the best of him, and this led to him getting the wrong idea about Mrs. Das and why she was so interested in his work (Interpreter of Maladies). At the end of the story, Mr. Kapasi was crushed as he realized Mrs. Das does not feel the same way as he does; she thought of him as a tool to interpret her feelings of guilt. Mrs. Das stating, ”I was hoping you could help me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy” (Interpreter of Maladies) established this revelation. Mr. Kapasi was again feeling like an outsider, insulted and disgusted, bursting his illusions, realizing Mrs. Das was just another one of the patients who needed him to interpret
In “Interpreter of Maladies,” lonely Mr. Kapasi acts a guide for the Das family of tourists. His intrigue in Mrs. Das is not due to her particular beauty, but rather from the minimal attention she gives him. The car rides from one tourist attraction to another represent both Mr. Kapasi’s and Mrs. Das’s subtle desire for control in their lives, he with his need for passion and she with her selfish secrets. Additionally, the car ride in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” also in some way represents control, as exhibited in Arnold Friend’s sway over young Connie. The flashy gold paint on the old model car is representative of Arnold himself and the persona he is wishing to portray. Furthermore, the sexual energy of the car rides is presented in the two stories as both pathetic (a married man’s lust), and nefarious (Arnold’s fetishization of fifteen-year-old Connie). The commonality of specious appearances is what really links the two works, with both Mrs. Das and Mr Kapasi not being quite what they seem, and Connie and Arnold’s desire to play a different character than their own, despite the contrast of innocence and
In his novel, Hosseini writes with a deceivingly simple form of prose. Instead of assaulting the audience with his extravagant vocabulary, he entices them with the minds of his characters. Leaving the audience with feelings of empathy and repulsion, the work exhibits Hosseini’s adept abi...
People’s decisions can be majorly influenced by love and insanity. In “Prophyria’s Lover”, the speaker has to face his inner emotions of love towards his wife, which in the end lead to the murder of his own wife. The struggles of facing inner self has been a cause of the deaths of many people in the world. It can be the struggles of a single person alone, or can be struggles a person may have in which they take another persons life because of the relationship they have between one another.
In the beginning, the narrator talks about her surroundings, and why she is in her current situation. Her state of mind is clear, as she describes what is going on prior to her being set in this room. As the narrator writes about her husband she alludes to the fact that she suffers from an illness that her husband, who happens to be a well known physician, does no...
Lahiri, a second-generation immigrant, endures the difficulty of living in the middle of her hyphenated label “Indian-American”, whereas she will never fully feel Indian nor fully American, her identity is the combination of her attributes, everything in between.
Readers are often baffled by the openness of some stories where the ending can go either way they are put into situation where they must imagine or assume how the story does end. Open-ended stories can be found in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, where few stories of open-endings have an immense impact on the reader by creating a hunger to know what happens next.
Although the story does not pictures him quite evil, he believes the treatment is helping her and ignores his wife’s opinion that causes her to hide her feelings. He restricts her actions as part of her “rest cure”, and does not understand his wife any further than superficially by not seeing the pain she is inside. He is ignorant of her truly needs and the unbalanced relationship between them builds up as a wall keeping him from understanding her. He cares for her however his treatment destroys her and he faints in shock of seeing her creeping in the
Jhumpa Lahiri was born as NalanjanaSudeshana. But as Jhumpa was found easier to pronounce, the teacher at her pre-school started addressing her Jhumpa. In the course of time it became her official name. Jhumpa Lahiri tries to focus on the issue of identity what she had faced in her childhood. Nikhil replaces Gogol when he enters Yale as a freshman. Here nobody knows his earlier name. He feels relief and confident. No one knows him as Gogol but Nikhil. His life with new name also gets changed. His transformation starts here. He starts doing many activities which he could not dare to do as Gogol. He dates American girls. He shares live in relationship. His way of life, food everything changes. But a new dilemma clutches him. He changes his name but “he does not feel like Nikhil” (Lahiri, 105). Gogol is not completely cut off from his roots and identity. He tries to reject his past but it makes him stranger to himself. He fears to be discovered. With the rejection of Gogol’s name, Lahiri rejects the immigrant identity maintained by his parents. But this outward change fails to give him inner satisfaction. “After eighteen years of Gogol, two months of Nikhil feels scant, inconsequential.” (Lahiri, 105) He hates everything that reminds him of his past and heritage. The loss of the old name was not so easy to forget and when alternate weekends, he visits his home “Nikhil evaporates and Gogol claims him again.” (Lahiri,
... of language and education is the most important in this story and society. The make use of two different languages in a narrative, provides a reader a perplexing yet fascinating image of characterization and customs. Multilingual story telling pushes the reader to decelerate and acquire supplemental focus on the expressions which are in the small fragments, however as soon as the reader has figured out the foreign words, he or she acquires a priceless picture of the theme of this story. The panorama of native words and phrases, cultural perceptions, and class dispute taken from the incorporation of two different languages are helpful for the reader to obtain significance that he or she couldn't gain if exclusively one language was employed in the story. Just as the power of language is applied to unveil a society, a better comprehension is provided to the reader.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. "Interpreter Of Maladies." The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Vol. 8. Boston [etc.: Bedford-St. Martin's, 2003]. 1024-1028. Print.
There is no one to listen to her or care for her ‘personal’ opinions. Her husband cares for her, in a doctor’s fashion, but her doesn’t listen to her (Rao, 39). Dealing with a mentally ill patient can be difficult, however, it’s extremely inappropriate for her husband to be her doctor when he has a much larger job to fulfill. He solely treats his wife as a patient telling her only what could benefit her mental sickness rather than providing her with the companionship and support she desperately needs. If her husband would have communicated with her on a personal level, her insanity episode could have been prevented. Instead of telling her everything she needed he should’ve been there to listen and hear her out. Instead she had to seek an alternate audience, being her journal in which he then forbids her to do. All of this leads to the woman having nobody to speak or express emotion to. All of her deep and insane thoughts now fluttered through her head like bats in the Crystal Cave.
As the story begins, the unnamed doctor is introduced as one who appears to be strictly professional. “Aas often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.” (par. 3) The doctor leaves the first impression that he is one that keeps his attention about the job and nothing out of the ordinary besides stating his impressions on the mother, father and the patient, Mathilda. Though he does manage to note that Mathilda has a fever. The doctor takes what he considers a “trial shot” and “point of departure” by inquiring what he suspects is a sore throat (par. 6). This point in the story, nothing remains out of the ordinary or questionable about the doctor’s methods, until the story further develops.
Amy cries, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t” when her husband begins to speak about the dead child, and this does back up the idea that she is unable to reconcile reality with her emotions (Frost 30). They also explain the realistic grasp the husband has on this situation when they say, “ ‘The little graveyard where my people are! /So small the window frames the whole of it.’ At the present, the things of the past are condensed into a mere window to the past” (Hanif, Jamil, and Mahmood 10). The husband establishes himself as a more practical and realistic character when he is identified as a farmer and is shown doing the necessary steps to bury the dead child. As a character that is so realistic the husband cannot understand why Amy, the wife, is so distraught so long after the funeral. Amy believes him to be unable to understand when Frost writes, “She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see” (Frost 15). The practicality of the husband makes Amy feel like she is unable to share her sorrows with him. Through these explanations of the characters Hanif, Jamil, and Mahmood effectively show how the husband and wife’s relationship is quite strained as they write, “According to his husband’s point of view the
In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, the protagonist, Gogol, struggles with his cultural identity. He is an American-born Bengali struggling to define himself. He wants to fit into the typical American-lifestyle, a lifestyle his parents do not understand. This causes him tension through his adolescence and adult life, he has trouble finding a balance between America and Bengali culture. This is exemplified with his romantic relationships. These relationships directly reflect where he is in his life, what he is going through and his relationship with his parents. Each woman indicates a particular moment in time where he is trying to figure out his cultural identity. Ruth represents an initial break away from Bengali culture; Maxine represents
Lakunle was a poor village school teacher who had greater admiration for Sidi, “THE VILLAGE BEAUTY WHO WANTED EVERYMAN TO LOOK AT HER SO, SHE MADE A SHOW OFF” when carrying a pail of water, through her way of walking and improper dressing which did not cover the parts of her neck and shoulders. Sidi wanted to attract Lakunle also and “BEING LITTLE INFLUENCED BY HIS LOVE BUT DID NOT ACCEPT HIM FULLY AS HE WAS NOT ENOUGH TO PAY A BRIDE-PRICES FOR HER”.