Comparison and Contrast between American and Indian Families

Fasting and Feasting is a novel written by Anita Desai that narrates the story of the protagonist, Uma, and her family’s life. The novel is divided in two parts. Part one deals with Uma’s life in India until the tragic death of her cousin Anamika, and part two tells the story of Uma’s brother, Arun, as he spends his summer with the Pattons, a typical American suburban family. Throughout the novel, Desai explores the theme of family life and uses the novel’s two settings, America and India, to compare and contrast the values and customs that constitute each respective culture’s family life. At first glance, American and Indian families are foils of one another because of the relationships between the family members that composed them. As expected, Indian families are much more traditional and close-knit than American families whose members can, at times, be completely segregated from one another. However, there are some dark cultural elements dealing with the treatment of women, which are still embedded in both American and Indian families.

In the typical Indian provincial family, unity does not just exist in immediate families. It diffuses into extended families as well. This phenomenon is evident when all of Uma’s family congregates in order to preform the sacred ritual of the scattering of Anamika’s ashes. “Anamika’s parents climb the boat very slowly, as if with pain, because they are holding the jar. There are other relatives who have come with them from Bombay.” This quote shows that family members in India will travel long distances in order to attend rituals of importance, showing the close relationship extended family can have with an Indian individual. Another example of how much influence even distant family members ca...

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...ted unity that exists in Indian families. This is shown by the great amount of influence characters like Mira-Masi have on Uma. On the contrary, in the lives of the Patton family, there is no evidence of any strong extended family connections. Even through all of these differences, Desai manages to spot a similarity between these two families. This similarity is the sexism that exists in both cultures which leads parents (especially fathers) to favor their male over their female children. Uma and Melanie are both victims of this phenomenon, as they were both overshadowed by their respective brothers resulting in their dearth of confidence. Throughout the novel, Desai explicitly suggests that both sets of families have their flaws; flaws that could be solved by the family becoming either more liberal in the Indian family’s case, or more embracing in the Pattons case.