Separation Friends grow apart. People change. Shifts in relationships are as natural as the relationships themselves. In her collection Lahiri’s characters go through their own separations that are either caused by nature, accidental or self inflicted. Some characters then use additional separation as a way to avoid future pain and as a way to repair themselves from the pain they’ve felt before. While the characters in the stories “A Temporary Matter”, “When Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine”, and “A Real Durwan” respond differently to the tragedy of separation, each story is a testament to the ways that the separation and decay of relationships causes pain yet still cause. Lahiri insists on the idea that separation is a constant, and the only thing …show more content…
However, even though he is trying to stay connected to his family by sending letters every day and trying to hear as much as possible about the condition of Dacca, he is still separated from them and the loss is still there. In “A Real Durwan”, Boori-Ma suffers a similar loss in that her “deportation to Calcutta after Partition… had separated her from a husband, four daughters, a two-story brick house, a rosewood almari, and a number of coffer boxes” (71). She had no choice when she was forcibly removed from Calcutta and every day she must bare the loss and loneliness that comes with her situation. She lost her family, her home, her belongings, and the right to live in her home country. Throughout the story, she is unable to come to terms with her loss, and is constantly thinking about everything that she had, even exaggerating her own memories so as to distract herself from her pain and make it seem like a dream. Together these characters all have been through such unwanted pain, such loss and separation that effect how they interact with their own worlds and the people they meet. These forced separations cause pain, yet also a unifying theme of the formation and the collapse of relationships throughout the
However, instead of allowing the corruption and grief of losing a significant figure in her life completely consume her, Leah embraces a new culture and turns to another male figure, her husband Anatole, for guidance. With new surrounding influences, Leah encounters various forms of separation, whether it be from her birthplace, father, or husband, and accepts all the drawbacks and loses that come along with the isolation. At the same time, Leah also challenges herself to overcome the loss and succumb to the loneliness that could potentially bring her closer to a new aspect of life never explored before. Through it all, Leah turns her experiences with exile into bittersweet memories sprinkled across the time span of her life for each rift allowed her to obtain a sense of self identity during periods of time free of human contact or, in Leah’s case,
Sen had been forcefully removed from her homeland Boori Ma also had to emigrate, unfortunately when Boori Ma arrives at her new home she has a warped sense of reality. While Mrs. Sen left for marital reasons, Boori Ma left due to the Partition. Written by Lahiri, A Real Durwan Portrays the life of Boori Ma, an elderly woman who was separated from her family. She spends her days cleaning the apartment complex and warding off strangers all the while reminiscing about the good times of her old life. While reminiscing about her old life Boori Ma talks about possessions from that life. “The turmoil had separated her from a husband, four daughters, a two-story brick, house, a rosewood almari, and a number of coffer boxes whose skeleton keys she still wore, along with her life savings, tied to the tree end of her sari.” (Lahiri 71) This displays what Boori Ma has lost from her separation. Clashing with what Boori Ma currently has living in the apartments as well it is clear that Boori Ma has lost a lot of her culture in the partition as well. She went from a happy mother of four to a durwan. A durwan is a gatekeeper whose job is to keep away strangers, this is the position of a warrior. The cultural shift for her was detrimental. In addition it is interesting that even though Boori Ma does not possess any of the locked items that the skeleton keys unlock she still keeps the keys with her. They are in practice useless, she cannot unlock anything with them. They
Elizabeth Jennings, author of “One Flesh”, uses the idea of love diminishing over time in order to represent a difficult relationship between the couple. For the couple are “lying apart now, each in a separate bed”, suggesting the separation has gradually increased over a prolonged period of time perhaps caused by domestic tension consequently resulting in a strangely uncomfortable dissipation of the intimacy and closeness they once possessed. This is a literal and metaphorical representation of the isolation and emotional distance that has led to the mental and physical solitude. Another example of the waning of love is the “Silence between them
Now, in modern times, affairs seem to be a natural phenomenon of daily life. They are popularly seen in movies, novelas—soap operas and also expressed through literature. Although they are conventionally characterized as passionate and exciting, they can also catalyze a lot of thought and uncertainty for the individuals involved. “Migration” written by Rosa Alcala is a poem that takes a different approach in describing what an affair is. In her poem she rather focuses on describing the stressful cognitive affects that occur as a result of being involved in an affair. Through figures of speech, persona and images the author is able to establishes the feeling of the poem as cautious uncertainty.
It is human nature for people to attract themselves to others. However, when put in a difficult situation, one can either work through it or run from it. If one chooses to run, he makes the conscious decision to isolate himself. In the novel Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer, isolation is a common theme found within the stories. Particularly in “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” and “Our Lady of Peace”, Dina and Sheba’s inabilities to form and maintain relationships with others lead to their constant seclusion.
Boo’s story begins in Annawadi, a trash-strewn slum located by the Mumbai International Airport. This “sumpy plug of slum” had a population of three thousand people living within 335 huts (Boo, 2011, xi). The land owned by the Airport Authority of India and was surrounded by five hotels that Abdul’s younger brother described as “roses” versus their slum, “the shit in between” (Boo, 2011, xi). Abdul is a Muslim teenage who buys garbage of the rich and sells it to recyclers to support his family. Abdul’s family, Muslim, is a religious minority in the slum of Hindus; in fact a major element of tension within the book can be distilled to these Hindu-Muslim tensions. This difference in religion makes Abdul fearful of his neighbors for two reasons: (1) they would attempt to steal the family’s wealth, and (2) if Abdul were caught, he would not be able to support his family. The other major character was Fatima, a woman who burned herself by attempting suicide through self-immolation. She accused Abdul, his father, and sister of beating and threatening her; in India, it is against the law to convince someone else to kill him or herself. With a corruption-ridden legal sys...
Almost everybody feels a sense of alienation or isolation at some point in their life. Maybe it was when you were a young kid at a playground in school, being left out of activities. Or maybe this feeling is being experienced by an adult who is having economical or social issues. Whatever the source is for these feelings, it is not a pleasant one, and one we tend to try and avoid as much as possible in life. In the two stories I’ll be discussing, “ The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, there are two characters who experience feelings of alienation, isolation and oppression quite heavily. The effects of alienation and oppression are hindering to women’s independence and well-being. This is seen in the situations of two women we are going to be focusing on for this paper. Alienation and oppression can hinder the well-being and happiness of the individual experiencing it. It can also have long lasting psychological effects and cultural effects as you’ll see in this research paper.
All in all, the emotions one feels from the death of a loved one can either make or break one’s relationships. Through various characters, the author further demonstrates the possible ways a person can react to adversity, and how their decisions and character influence their relationships. The ability to maintain relationships through adverse situations reveals the internal strength and determination in the person’s character.
Finally, even though, for a long time, the roles of woman in a relationship have been established to be what I already explained, we see that these two protagonists broke that conception and established new ways of behaving in them. One did it by having an affair with another man and expressing freely her sexuality and the other by breaking free from the prison her marriage represented and discovering her true self. The idea that unites the both is that, in their own way, they defied many beliefs and started a new way of thinking and a new perception of life, love and relationships.
The Lais of Marie de France is a compilation of short stories that delineate situations where love is just. Love is presented as a complex emotion and is portrayed as positive, while at other times, it is portrayed as negative. The author varies on whether or not love is favorable as is expressed by the outcomes of the characters in the story, such as lovers dying or being banished from the city. To demonstrate, the author weaves stories that exhibit binaries of love. Two distinct types of love are described: selfish and selfless. Love is selfish when a person leaves their current partner for another due to covetous reasons. Contrarily, selfless love occurs when a lover leaves to be in a superior relationship. The stark contrast between the types of love can be analyzed to derive a universal truth about love.
Khadaroo triumphantly achieved her goal of appealing to the reader’s emotions in her writing with her use of strong pathos, which evoke specific emotions in the reader that make them become more easily persuaded. Through this article, the reader’s emotions are caught by telling of how men who have failed relationships are
Love is a concept that has puzzled humanity for centuries. This attachment of one human being to another, not seen as intensely in other organisms, is something people just cannot wrap their heads around easily. So, in an effort to understand, people write their thoughts down. Stories of love, theories of love, memories of love; they all help us come closer to better knowing this emotional bond. One writer in particular, Sei Shōnagon, explains two types of lovers in her essay "A Lover’s Departure": the good and the bad.
The Crucible is a political allegory written to reflect the mass hysteria that occurred in America during the Cold War. The play is based on the factual historical events of the witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts. Like most of Miller’s works, it contains interesting characters with complex personalities that move the plot of the story. Although some are more important than others, every character’s actions act as a domino in a chain of appalling events. In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, the characters Tituba, John Proctor, and Abigail Williams are responsible for the witch trials because their actions wreak havoc in the town of Salem.
The story told in “Beloved” contains a process of memorialization and change. In this process, the relationship between women is very important. Some relations are dominated by violence and hate, others are full of confidence and love. In those relationships rememory and storytelling are important factors, because the women get to know each other better by telling stories about the past. They get to know much more about each other, through which their relationship dóes change.
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