The story of Mrs. Sen’s Depression Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “Mrs. Sen’s” tells the story of Eliot who spends most of his time in his new babysitter, Mrs. Sen’s house. Throughout their time Eliot learns more about Mrs. Sen’s Indian culture and her. Through Eliot’s perspective, Lahiri depicts Mrs. Sen’s as the most sympathetic character by conveying her struggles with adjusting to her new life, portraying her to be lonely and dissatisfied. Lahiri establishes Mrs. Sen as the most sympathetic character by introducing her emotional connection to India during her first interaction with Eliot. The first glimpse of Mrs. Sen describes her as a dressed up woman in traditional Indian clothing, a sari, establishing her physical connection …show more content…
Sen’s isolation through the incorporation of family and loss. Throughout her description of India, she focuses on the closeness between people, showing the importance of people ranging from acquaintances to family. This dedication to family is shown when Mrs. Sen tells Eliot “My sister has had a baby girl. By the time I see her… she will be three years old. Her own aunt will be a stranger” (Lahiri 112). Lahiri uses unsure dialogue to convey the isolation Mrs. Sen feels from her family. Since through the time Eliot spends with Mrs. Sen, Lahiri establishes the importance of family for her, the phrase “her own aunt will be a stranger” highlights the separation, heightening the feeling of loneliness through disconnection. Lahiri continues to show Mrs. Sen’s isolation through her lack of interaction with family. She writes “This time when her grandfather was speaking, she stopped the tape. She told Eliot she’d received a letter over the weekend. Her grandfather was dead” (Lahiri 128-29) to show Mrs. Sen’s loss. Her grief is heightened since she has to find out her loss through “a letter” and couldn’t say goodbye to her grandfather. The grief adds on to the pattern of a lonely tone as there is a cycle of people leaving each other, allowing readers to sympathize with her. To sum up, Mrs. Sen has only suffered since beginning her new life in New England and because of the distance between India and New England, she is unable to have …show more content…
Sen’s dissatisfaction through her continuous interactions with Eliot. Mrs. Sen shares her family’s views with Eliot by stating “‘send pictures of your new life’ what picture can I send? She sat, exhausted, on the edge of the bed, where there was now barely any room for her.” They think I live the life of a queen” (Lahiri 125). Lahiri uses contradicting diction with “send pictures” “[no] room” “queen” and “exhausted” to create a bitter tone, conveying Mrs. Sen’s unwillingness to live in New England. The phrase “what can I send” shows that she believes her life is not special and is worse off than when she lived in India, showing that she is dissatisfied with her living conditions. Her desperation to leave her new life is clear when she states “could I drive all the way to Calcutta? How long would that take Eliot? Ten thousand miles, at fifty miles per hour” (Lahiri 119). Mrs. Sen’s desire to leave is cleared as she is willing to drive to India, showing that it is her only motivation. The phrase “ten thousand miles at fifty miles per hour” indicates that she is serious, amplifying her anguish. Lahiri uses Mrs. Sen’s interaction with Eliot to show her eagerness to go back to India, inherently suggesting she is not happy with her new life. In Mrs. Sen’s, Jhumpa Lahiri establishes Mrs. Sen as one of the most sympathetic characters by revealing her struggles with
Before Mrs. Ames and the mother realize the restrictions of their old lives, their worlds have been full of disillusionment and ignorance. Mrs. Ames, for example, is oppressed by her husband’s silence and the search for love and tenderness from anyone, because she lives each day alone, ignored by her scornful husband. And, as a result of being left companionless, she does not mature, rather she longs for tenderness. In other words, Boyle explains her dysfunctional relationship with her husband, “The mystery and silence of her husband’s mind lay like a chiding finger of her lips. Her eyes were gray for the light had been extinguished in them” (57). That is, Mrs. Ames’ spirit remains oppressed by her husband who treats her as a child, and, in doing so, isolates her from his world.
In her short stories, Lahiri presents the condition as a ramification of the degree to which characters adapt to society (Bhardwaj 12-13). This is to say that immigrants experience this crisis differently, depending on how much they have integrated into their new surroundings. Mrs. Sen cannot seem adapt to American culture as she continues to embrace her Indian upbringing. Her traditions cannot be fulfilled at her house or in her community as she yearns to return to India. However, she realizes that she should try to adjust and becomes a babysitter for a short while until she gets into a car accident. Because Sen barely accepts her environment, her challenge is embracing Western
Lahiri is very much a member of both the Indian and American world. She has many different attributes
examines the effects of Eliot’s first marriage on his views of love and time. She
“It didn 't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different” (Lahiri).Even though she wears the same clothes as everyone else and looks normal on the outside, she knows she 's not different because of her background, her physical features, and most of all because of her name she wanted to pull away from anything that marked her as being ‘different’, so she wanted nothing to do with anything that made her parents(culture) different that would cause her to become an outsider . In the book Namesake by jhumpa lahiri the character gogol goes through similar experiences as the author,
Mukherjee then begins to compare and contrast her sister in a subject-by-subject organization. She states, “…she clings passionately to her Indian citizenship and hopes to go home to India when she...
...is an American by virtue but Indian due to her parent’s upbringing. That is the reason why she is referred to being an Indian-American author which she has embraced. Due to the fact Bengali marries within their caste, Lahiri married a Latin American Journalist Alberto Vourvoulias and have two sons, Octivian and Noor. After getting married, Lahiri does not feel the need to be shy about speaking in Bengali or any other language. Currently residing in Rome with her family to feel how immigrants adapt to change and to go experience what her characters and parents do in her short stories. Through writing, Lahiri has discovered the fact she belongs to both the worlds and the generations of Indian-American immigrants will change and bring intense joy. "It has been liberating and brought me some peace to just confront that truth, if not to be able to solve it or answer it.”
Kothari employs a mixture of narrative and description in her work to garner the reader’s emotional investment. The essay is presented in seventeen vignettes of differing lengths, a unique presentation that makes the reader feel like they are reading directly from Kothari’s journal. The writer places emphasis on both her description of food and resulting reaction as she describes her experiences visiting India with her parents: “Someone hands me a plate of aloo tikki, fried potato patties filled with mashed channa dal and served with a sweet and a sour chutney. The channa, mixed with hot chilies and spices, burns my tongue and throat” (Kothari). She also uses precise descriptions of herself: “I have inherited brown eyes, black hair, a long nose with a crooked bridge, and soft teeth
Mrs. Sen was forced to face the reality that she was no longer in India and her life was completely different from how it used to be whenever she was on the driver seat. It was something she did not need to do in India, she used to have a chauffeur to fetch her around in India. So, Mrs. Sen tried her best to avoid driving by coming up with lots of excuses. When Mr. Sen asked her the reason why she refused to drive, she used Eliot as an excuse to not to drive. Even when she was practicing driving with Eliot, Mrs. Sen shared with Eliot that Mr. Sen told her everything will improved once she gets her license. She, then, proceeded to fantasize about driving all the way back to Calcutta. In Mrs. Sen’s world, better means putting everything back in place, going back to where she truly belongs, India. On top of that, when Mr. Sen forced Mrs. Sen to drive, she chose to turn on the radio as an distraction to delude herself from facing the overwhelming reality. And, when Mr. Sen told her what to do and shut off her radio. Mrs. Sen snapped. She vowed to not driving anymore. Mrs. Sen just couldn’t bear living without her family around her. So, she chose not to move on but stuck in her past, and not to live in the
Louisa’s feelings for her lover have disappeared throughout the years and when her lover returns to marry her, she feels very uncertain of the marriage. Similarly, many engagements are broken due to the fact that the feelings between couples fade after there is a distance between them, for years. Another example that relates to life is, “[i]n that length of time much had happened. Louisa's mother and brother had died, and she was all alone in the world” (Freeman p). When immigrants return to their country, many deaths have occurred in the time period of their absence and sometimes the deaths include their own relatives. To their misfortune, they never have a chance to say a last good bye. The story, A new England’s Nun is very similar to the lives of many people and in many cases the same.
Her character is portrayed as being anxious through the author’s choice of dialogue in the form of diction, which is “waves of her [the mother] anxiety sink down into my belly”. The effect of this is to allow the readers to establish the emotions of the narrator, as well as establish an the uneasy tone of the passage, and how stressful and important the event of selling tobacco bales for her family is. Additionally, the narrator is seen to be uncomfortable in the setting she is present in. This is seen through the many dashes and pauses within her thoughts because she has no dialogue within this passage, “wishing- we- weren’t- here”, the dashes show her discomfort because the thought is extended, and thus more intense and heavy, wishing they could be somewhere else. The effect of the narrator’s comfort establishes her role within the family, the reason she and her sister does not have dialogue symbolizes that she has no voice within the family, as well as establishing hierarchy. The authors use dictation and writing conventions to develop the character of the narrator herself, as well as the mother. The narrator’s focus on each of her parents is additionally highlighted through
In Lahiri’s story the attention and the plot of the story both stayed in one same direction that was the cultural clash. Lahiri’s story “Imperator of Maladies” revolves around people who are Indian’s living in India, Indian’s living in America or people Americans with an Indian decent. As her being a second generation immigrant in America, she realized at a very young age that her family is settled here but she was still not sure about the fact which place she could call her real home because of the different cultural she was witnessing in her everyday family life. In the story when the Das’s family did decided to visit India they did witness the same exact feeling. As the story progresses Lahiri gives us a brief background about Mr. and Mrs. Das as they both were born and raised in America but after sometime their retired parents decided to move back and spe...
Some people believe that opposites attract. Others believe that people who are more similar will have a better relationship. Some prefer relationships with older people, and some prefer them with younger people. Jhumpa Lahiri, author of the short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, explores the dynamic of relationships in her works. In her short story “Interpreter of Maladies” a married woman confesses a secret to a man she barely knows. In her story “This Blessed House” a couple fights over the religious relics they find in their new home. While one reads Lahiri’s stories, a theme begin to emerge that shows the woman of the relationship behaving like an adolescent and the man behaving like her father due to the internalized idea of
In T.S Eliot's poem, Portrait of a Lady, he gives a glimpse into the upper class of post war society- something rather dispirited and forlorn. It is filled with people from the higher social standings and they are as soulless and empty as the lady in the poem. The upper class was also represented by the main character himself, who is truly unable to connect as a whole to his surroundings. He initially describes the world in the poem as dark, covered in smoke and haze – the scene that is in and of itself a mere half life, the individuality of the characters already swallowed by the abyss of ritual that has devoid of meaning. The truly shocking part that links this poem to the author’s previous poems is the underlying brokenness and the soullessness that the characters seem to inhabit. The main character of t...
Faced with a world lacking variety, viewpoints, vibrancy, and virtue- a world without life- a fearful and insecure T.S. Eliot found himself the only one who realized all of civilization had been reduced to a single stereotype. Eliot (1888-1965) grew up as an outsider. Born with a double hernia, he was always distinguished from his peers, but translated his disability into a love of nature. He developed a respect for religion as well as an importance for the well-being of others from his grandfather at a young age, which reflected in his poetry later in life. After studying literature and philosophy at Harvard, Eliot took a trip to Paris, absorbing their vivid culture and art. After, he moved on to Oxford and married Vivien Haigh-Wood. Her compulsivity brought an immense amount of stress into his life, resulting in their abrupt separation. A series of writing-related jobs led Eliot to a career in banking and temporarily putting aside his poetry, but the publication of “The Waste Land” brought him a position at the publishing house of Faber and Gwyer. His next poem, called “The Hollow Men” reflected the same tone of desolation and grief as “The Waste Land.” Soon after, he made a momentous shift to Anglicanism that heavily influenced the rest of his work in a positive manner. Eliot went on to marry Valerie Fletcher, whom he was with until the end of his life, and win a Nobel Prize in literature. T.S. Eliot articulates his vast dissatisfaction with the intellectual desolation of society through narrators that share his firm cultural beliefs and quest to reinvigorate a barren civilization in order to overcome his own uncertainties and inspire a revolution of thought.