The Second Exile By Jhumpa Lahiri Analysis

For many, losing something can be a painful experience, whether financially or sentimentally, it can be just as painful. The loss of something is a dreadful event which can completely change your life, or just simply make it harder to move on, to focus on anything else, or to gain anything else. The loss of something can be hard in a general sense, but losing something which you have just gained, or something which you have pursued can be harder than anything else. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words she explores many different emotions on her journey as she learns Italian, one of the many emotions is an anxiety caused by losing the language for which she has just learned, showing that something you have pursued and consequently something you

Lahiri shows in the chapter titled “The Second Exile” that though she has only been away from the Italian language for a very short amount time it has already forced her to miss the language she is just coming to learn, also showing her fear for losing the language of Italian. In this chapter Jhumpa Lahiri speaks of her parents as she wrote “In America, when I was young, my parents always seemed to be in mourning for something. Now I understand: it must have been the language.” (127). Lahiri understands that her parents mourned for language, she understands how they feel now, she is now like them, separated from Italian with an ocean between her and what she loves. Lahiri shows that she knows her parents feeling and understand the loss of something as meaningful

And yet it’s still useful to me, it still guides me. It remains full of secrets. This little book will always be bigger than I am.” (11). This shows that Lahiri consistently shows examples of how she’s disconnected from the Italian language throughout the entire book, it also shows how it almost seems like a mystery to her and that she’ll never achieve knowing all that she could. Jhumpa Lahiri is constantly showing how she feels about her exploration of the Italian language throughout the entire story. The entire story can be related to the chapter “The Second Exile” and this chapter greatly expands upon the idea of loss that is shown throughout the entire book, a lot of her struggles of the Italian language can be shown within this chapter and is a great representation of the rest of the