...A Stranger: “Interpreter” of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” exhibit a fine collection of short stories each with own original narrative and Lahiri’s sophisticated way of expression. An interesting point is that all the short stories barely have anything in common: each has a different voice, different main characters, a different setting, and a different kind of conflict. Nonetheless, the stories tie up together so well that they really do form a “collection” under same objectives: the “maladies.” Every story introduces characters with certain trauma and Lahiri shows how the characters cope with their own problems. Among nine stories, I would like to especially focus on two, “A Temporary Matter” and “Interpreter of Maladies,” and discuss what they have in common and how they relates to each other by sharing some fundamental factors. The two stories share numerous similarities: the couples have difficult time dealing with their relationships; it is described in detail how burdensome the life of characters became because of the problematic matters between them; the characters lack enough communication needed for solving their problems; and the children are centered on the incidents. The most significant and thought-provoking similarity is that there exists a figure or event that motivates the characters to confide their secretive and sensitive issue to another. In “A Temporary Matter” the darkness plays the role; in “Interpreter of Maladies,” Mr. Kapasi....
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...Themes of “Interpreter of Maladies” In the “Interpreter of Maladies” different themes are used throughout the story. The use of these different themes enables the reader to become aware of what the author is trying to get across to he or she. The themes in “Interpreter of Maladies” include marriage/love, communication, and environment/nature. With each taking on a role of its own, the story becomes both compelling and informative. Marriage and love comes across as complicated in the story. A marriage is known to be the start of a beautiful partnership between two people who love each other. In “Interpreter of Maladies” marriage is just that but also much more. It is secrets, regret, and mystery. Although Twinkle and Sanjeev are married under their own free will it comes across, as the two are strangers. No matter the romantic feelings that come about the couple remains individuals in their own right. As a direct result Sanjeev is regretting the love he has for his wife. Although as it progresses the narrator shows us that distance can sometimes be closed by shared experiences. When Shukumar and Shoba deal with the death of their child, the bond between the two strengthens. The story shows us that love can be found in the most unexpected ways and can alter in the event of a joint experience. The lack of communication weighs on several characters throughout the story. While Shukumar and Shaba are individually consumed by their own grief they fail to communicate...
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...Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her book Interpreter Of Maladies. The book is a collection of short stories that addresses the topic of romantic relationships and marriages of Indian Americans, who are entangled in a new culture (the United States). Lahiri illustrates the nature of relationships throughout her book. She includes examples of love and tolerance. However, I believe that Lahiri puts the most emphasis in exploring the portrayal of romantic relationships as a type of malady with accompanying symptoms. One symptom that indicated the malady of marriage is the lack of communication. This is most easily seen in Shoba’s and Shukumar’s relationship in “A temporary Matter”. Their breaking down of communication is driven by their...
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...Bloomed or Doomed? Relationships can be rewarding, yet they can cause frustration and hardship as well. Though there are many types of relationships, each requires a dependency or interaction between counterparts. Many people have a different perspective of what ingredients are needed for a successful relationship or marriage. Some people think they can be compatible only with someone who is very similar to themselves, while others feel that opposites attract. Even though there are many variables to a successful relationship and marriage, there are some crucial elements that need to be constant. If those elements are ignored, the connection may be lost. Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories “A Temporary Matter” and “The Third and Final Continent” demonstrate the need for communication and adaptation between two individuals to have a successful marriage. Communication is mandatory in almost every aspect of life where more than one person is involved. It can mean the difference in any outcome if there is too little or more than enough. Communication can come in many forms such as verbal, non verbal, and physical. As every relationship begins with two strangers who come to know each other better through communication, a lack of communication can cause those who once knew each other to become strangers once more. In Lahiri’s story “A Temporary Matter,” Shukumar and his wife Shoba become very distant from each other after the tragedy of their stillborn child. They create as much space as possible...
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...based on the importance of communication and relationships. Her stories are influenced by relationship problems, and the ups and downs one faces in maintaining relationships. Most of the characters, in her stories have been facing a difficulty in communicating their feelings to the opposite character. Jhumpa Lahiri is an American Indian, who was born in London and brought up in the United states. Through her stories, in the book ‘Interpreter of Maladies’, she communicates her thoughts about relationship problems faced by couples, parents and american indian children. Some of the characters from the book are engaged in an arranged marriage, whereas the others commit in a love marriage.Couples fitting in both the categories have been facing relationship problems due to different reasons. In the story, ‘interpreter of Maladies’, Communication breaks down repeatedly often with hurtful consequences. Mr Kapasi is engaged in an arrange marriage, whereas Mr and Mrs Das are committed in a love marriage. Mr. Kapasi, who is the interpreter of maladies, has lost his ability to communicate with his wife, forcing him to drink his tea in silence at night and leading to a loveless marriage. Mr and Mrs Das have lost the ability to communicate because Mrs Das has been keeping a dark secret from Mr Das which can kill their marriage. On the other hand, Shukumar in ‘The Temporary Matter’, has not had a proper conversation with his wife, since their child’s death. The...
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...RESEARCH PAPER JHUMPA LAHIRI’S “MRS. SEN’S” (INTERPRETER OF MALADIES) Name: Babar Ali Kaiser Student ID: 1142131 Instructor: Dr. Christina Sommerfeldt Course: English 111 Term: Winter 2007 Jhumpa Lahiri, through the stories in her book “Interpreter of Maladies”, sheds light on the experience of immigrants from the subcontinent who face difficulties in adjusting and integrating and as a result feel homesick and isolated in a new world so different from their homeland. The short story “Mrs. Sen’s” is about a thirty-year old Indian woman who migrated to the United States with her husband. Her husband is a professor of mathematics at the university and is gone all day leaving Mrs. Sen behind by herself. She feels lonely and isolated when her husband is away and she therefore baby sits an eleven year old boy named Elliot. She thinks of the times she had back home “sitting in an enormous circle on the roof of her building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night” (115). She attempts to find the life she had in India but finds it hard to do so in this society which is new to her. Her only connection to the society is the little boy, Elliot. The short story “Third and final continent” is also about a young woman just like Mrs. Sen, who migrates to the United states after getting married but unlike Mrs. Sen, she adjusts well to the life in the United States. At the start of the story, Lahiri describes Mrs. Sen’s apartment as...
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...Jumpa Lahiri Jumpa Lahiri was born on July 11, 1967 in London to Bengali parents. She was named Nilanjana Sudeshna by her patents, but she goes by her pet name Jumpa. She moved to South Kingstown, Rhode Island when she was three years old. Jumpa Lahiri learned her Bengali heritage from her mother from a very early age. Jhumpa Lahiri is the daughter of a librarian and school teacher. She has always been inclined to creative writing. She married Alberto Vourvoulias Bush in 2001. They have two children from their marriage Octavio and Noor. Jumpa Lahiri received her B.A in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She went on to earn an M.A. in English, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Boston University. From 1997-98, she held a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center. Right from a very young age she felt very strong ties to her parent’s homeland, India, as well as the United States and England. A sense of homelessness and an inability to feel accepted took place as she grew up with the ties to all three countries. To her it is an inheritance of her parent’s ties to India. “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially so for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously, as is the case for their children.”- Jhumpa Lahiri. She is indeed the storyteller who weaves the lace of love, identity, crisis, lies and...
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...Suggested Reading List This section wouldn’t be complete without a list of some great books to read. Reading about reading and answering test questions is fine, but the best way to improve your reading ability is to read.This list is compiled by category.Help yourself. Choose one from the list, pick it up at a local bookstore or library, open the cover, and enjoy. Autobiography/Memoir Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X Black Boy by Richard Wright The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank Having Our Say by Sarah L. and Elizabeth Delany The Heroic Slave by Frederick Douglass I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing by Maya Angelou Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi Coming of Age The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros A Separate Peace by John Knowles Detective/Thriller Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries The “A is for…” series by Sue Grafton The Client by John Grisham Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Shining by Stephen King Watcher by Dean R. Koontz Fantasy The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony Any Harry Potter book by J.K. Rowling Historical/Social Issues The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel The Color Purple by Alice Walker The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Lord of the Flies by William Golding ...
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...For Stone" by Abraham Verghese 20. "Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead" by Brene Brown 21. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1" by Jeff Kinney 22. "Dune" by Frank Herbert 23. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury 24. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson 25. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn 26. "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown 27. "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens 28. "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond 29. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling 30. "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote 31. "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri 32. "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison 33. "Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest...
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...How Different Cultures Shape up the Psychological Upbringing of Lilia Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” is a beautiful story narrated by Lilia, an Indian American girl who is born and raised in the United States where people are sheltered from foreign affairs. The story has taken from Interpreter of Maladies (1999), Lahiri's debut short story collection. The story is told from the first person perspective of Lilia, primarily in her 10th year, through the eyes of a child. Lilia—our narrator—is telling us all of this as an adult remembering her 10-year-old self. Clearly, Mr. Pirzada made an impression on her back then. In the story, the American culture has its major impacts on Lilia and kept her away from her own culture, Indian culture, until Mr. Pirzada comes. After meeting Mr. Pirzada, she becomes interested in her culture and history. Assimilation of Indians to America is one of the overarching themes in “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine”. Lilia and her parents are on either side of a divide. Identity issues are typically compounded generation to generation. Though Lilia’s parents remember their own experiences in India vividly, Lilia is an American and therefore a step removed from the culture of her parents. Her mother is proud of her being American and she thinks that Lilia has “assured a safe life, an easy life, a fine education, every opportunity.” On the other hand, Lilia’s father is afraid of her isolation from her own culture. Her father asks...
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...Mrs. Sen’s The process of assimilation if very difficult for Mrs. Sen. Unlike the narrator of The Third and Final Continent or even Lilia’s parents, Mrs. Sen finds it impossible to integrate into her new country. Her refusal to learn how to drive is the culmination of her distress. Her frustration is voiced loudly only to Eliot, who is dealing with his own distress. There is a childish, tantrum-like angle to Mrs. Sen’s complaints. She even remarks to Eliot that he is much wise than she was at that age; she never thought for a moment that she would be separated from her family. While the reader sympathizes with her plight, her stubbornness seems greater than it need be. Her husband tries to accommodate her, the policeman does not arrest or fine her for the accident, and the workers at the fishmarket put product on hold for her. In the end, it is Mrs. Sen’s responsibility to make an effort. Unlike Mala in The Third and Final Continent – who was equally distraught about leaving her family – Mrs. Sen does not try to adjust. She is trapped in a cage of her own making. As in Sexy, the main characters have mirror images within the story. Here, Eliot and Mrs. Sen are quite similar. He is trapped in his life as well. The loneliness and distress that Mrs. Sen expresses are familiar emotions. He has front row seats for his mother’s sadness. Unlike Mrs. Sen, Eliot is unable to tell anyone about his plight because, again unlike Mrs. Sen, he is truly powerless. The sympathy one has for Eliot...
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...Aanand Davé EWRT 1B Mary Cudahy March 23, 2015 From Arranged Marriage to Love Marriage In the United States, where a multitude of cultures and races live together, we are not accustomed to the idea of arranged marriages. We are blessed that we are given our own right to choose our own spouse to marry instead of being arranged upon or have no say in who we get to spend the rest of our lives with. True love has been drilled into our heads, giving us the idea that finding somebody special is nothing out of the ordinary. However there are still those who do not grow up with the same ideas or values in choosing their own loved one. India’s culture has since forever been based off of religion and the honors of family. From those comes an important aspect of the Indian culture that is the idea of an arranged marriage. An arranged marriage is when, usually the parents or father, of both sides of the family meet with potential suitors to be wed to each other without any true saying coming from mainly the woman herself. Basically the man’s family advertises his achievements, wealth, and well being to other families, and if a family seeking for a husband for their daughter agrees or likes these qualities, a meeting is set between the two families. After the one meeting goes well, they set up a wedding date for the two to become married. The bride and groom have not even spent a full day with each other and it is decided that they should become married. The biggest misunderstanding...
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...Lucy Character Lucy is a young girl whose wealthy parents send her to camp every summer. She is adventurous and free thinker, not caring what others think about her, unlike her friend Lois. She becomes unhappy with her life in Chicago because of problems with her parents. We never know why or how she disappears when the campers go on the canoe trip. The similarities Lucy and Mrs. Das share with each other is that they are both female who lives in US. As the story begins to grow more intense we find out that these two females aren’t honest. For example, Mrs. Das lied about her affair that happened eight years ago that she cheated on her husband with his friend. Mrs. Das became pregnant with a child and hide this secret from her husband. Setting Araby Setting and story are closely integrated in "Araby." The alleyway, the busy commercial street, the open door of Mangan’s house, the room in back where the priest died, the way to school—all are parts of the locations which shape the life and consciousness of the narrator. Before the narrator goes to Araby, it is his thoughts about this exotic, mysterious location that crystallize for him his adoration of Mangan’s sister, who is somehow locked into his "Eastern enchantment" (paragraph 12) of devotion and unfulfilled love. At the end the lights are out, the place is closing down for the night, and the narrator recognizes Araby as a symbol of his own lack of reality and unreachable hopes. Seemingly, all his aims are dashed by his...
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...stage, information stage, clarification stage, encouragement stage, interpretation and recognition stage, knowing stage, missing experience stage, doing differently stage, reinforcement stage, community feeling stage, goal-redirection stage and the support and launching stage. During the different stages of therapy the therapist and client take on different roles. In the beginning part of therapy the client may simply talk about any and everything that may be bothering them, or life in general. While this is going on the therapist may simply listen, and offer very little feedback. The therapist uses this time to listen closing and try to find reasons behind the clients’ feelings. According to Adler people experience an array of emotional maladies, which are caused by their inability to feel apart of their community (Bruck, 1978). Also, there can be a great deal of trust formed when one person is able to speak freely to another. Next, the therapist will begin to ask the client different questions to “[clarify] the client’s core beliefs about self, others and life” (Stein 1990). During the middle stages of therapy the therapist tries to have the client find courage within themselves, and the answers to their problems within themselves. After all, Adlerian therapy is based on the premise that we are the only ones who can change the way we think or feel. Lastly, the therapist may suggest role-playing with the client, as well as guided and eidetic imagery to reach an emotional breakthrough...
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...The Third and Final Continent SUMMARY In 1964, an Indian man leaves his native country to sail to London. He studies at the London School of Economics, sharing an apartment with a group of other expatriate Bengalis. Five years later, at age 36, the man gets a job offer from a library at MIT. Around the same time, his marriage was arranged so he flies first to his wedding in Calcutta and then onwards to Boston. He reads a guidebook warning that America is less friendly than Britain. On the plane he learns that two men have landed on the moon. He studies the differences and expectations and finds a cheap room at the YMCA in Central Square for his first weeks in the country. The fist meal he has in America is a bowl of cornflakes. He is on a budget, resolving to spend little money until his wife arrives, but the noise of Massachusetts Avenue outside his window is too much to bear. He spends each day drinking tea out of a newly purchased thermos, reading the Boston Globe cover to cover and then sleeping fitfully in his room. He comes across an ad for a room for rent and calls. He is told the room is only rented to boys from Harvard or Tech (MIT). He makes an appointment for the following day. He finds the house with the room for rent on a pretty, tree-lined street. It would be the first detached house he lived in, and the first home without Indians. The woman who owns the house is the quite old Mrs. Croft. She is dressed as if she lived in the turn of the century. They talk of...
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