Jhumpa Lahiran Culture

Each year there are many people from around the world that want to migrate into the United States making it their permanent home. Culture shapes and designs the world we live in and our place in it. Individuals and societies examine their surroundings through constant interpretations of what they do on a daily basis. Everyone who lives in any part of what we call “society,” are constantly trying to belong to that are they live in. The term “culture” is depicted in a new context, and includes everything from activities and buildings to language and practices of human beings. People from different cultures have characteristically different practices and a practice that is normal and acceptable in one culture may be abnormal and unacceptable in another.

Jhumpa Lahiri, the author of the story, “The Third and Final Continent,” grew up being aware of conflicting expectations from two different countries. As Jhumpa mentioned, “I was expected to be Indian by Indians and Americans by Americans (Lahiri, pg 50).” The Third and Final Continent leaves the reader with a positive notion of the immigrant experience in America. The narrator recalls his school days in London, rooming with other foreign Bengalis, and trying to settle in this new world. He talks about how when he was 36 years old when his own marriage was arranged and he first flew to Calcutta, to attend his wedding. This statement is unique because it depicts the differences between an American culture and an Indian culture. At the time of marriage he is 36 years old and he didn’t pick who he wanted to get married to. Marriage in India is something that most parents set compared to other countries where they can marry someone of choice. Indians settle down by an arranged marriage ma...

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...e end of The Third and Final Continent reveals the narrator is now an older man choosing to spend time with Mala in this new world instead of returning back to live in India. “When Mala misses their son who attends Harvard, they go visit him and bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with them with his hands, and speak Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die (Lahiri, pg. 59).” According to the narrator, he wants to make sure that his son lives the same way that Mala and himself have been living in America. The traditions that they carried all these years should be carried when their son grows up and goes through that journey on his own.

Each family has their own unique background that helps make the next generation different from that of another and that’s what makes a country more diverse and has a cultural atmosphere.