The Role Of Family In Unaccustomed Earth By Jhumpa Lahiri

Responsibility and duty is a heavy theme throughout this book, highlighting specifically on the responsibility revolving around family. Where in America, there is always a sense of duty to your family, there is always more to be striving for: a better job, more friends, a bigger house. In Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, the emphasis is on Indian families and the duty that they, and their children carry. Lahiri wants to show how the responsibility of an Indian family is generational, and each generation carries duty in a different way.

For the older generation of the families in Unaccustomed Earth, the duty for your family is the most valued. In the first story, Ruma’s late mother held her family at the highest of responsibilities. Ruma’s

She confesses that “As I walked back downstairs, embolden by this information, in the jeans I’d had to roll up and in which I felt finally like myself,” (80). Basically, the narrator felt the best when she wasn’t being guided by customs or culture. The narrators responsibility is geared away from her family and customs she grew up with, and more who she wanted to become as a person. Feeling more comfortable in the clothes that makes her look more American, the narrator prefers to stand apart from the rest of her family and their friends during Thanksgiving, showing a more individual duty to oneself than

Unaccustomed Earth is not only a melancholy beginning to the rest of the book, but a role reversal. Where we see the differences of responsibilities between the younger and older generation respectfully, Unaccustomed Earth gives individualistic values to the Ruma’s father, and familial duties to Ruma. Ruma inherits family duties similar to her mother, when her father remarks that “like his wife, Ruma was now alone in this new place, overwhelmed, without friends, carrying for a young child” (40). Nevertheless, Ruma’s father also notices his own duties change into more individualistic ones, saying that “his daughter was no longer his responsibility.” Essentially, Unaccustomed Earth stands out, not only just by being the starting story, but by breaking the pattern set by Lahiri for the rest of the families within the book, making Unaccustomed Earth an important opener for the rest of the