Anita Desai was in a family where the father was Indian and her mom was German and with this strange and unusual heritage had an effect on the way that Anita understood different cultures. Desai was born in northern Indian town located at the foot hills of the Himalaya Mountains. She grew up in an old part of the capital called Delhi. Her family spoke 3 languages and those were Hindi, English and German but Desai learned English at school first. Desai wrote her first English story when she was 7 years old and published it when she was 9 years old. Anita Desai is also the author of “A Devoted Son” that shows 2 messages on how an India are like and one message on what it is like when you get old and your kids start to take care of you.
As Americans we take so much stuff for granite and sometimes we don’t even know because we don’t know what it would be like to not have things that we don’t expect to have like electricity. In other countries it’s hard to do what
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For example I can’t sit around all day watching movies because I have to get out and do something physical. Another example is if every day I have to do something that I don’t want to do and I may take it for a while but after a certain point I have to change the rhythm so it can get a little interesting. In this story the same thing happens to Rakesh’s dad when he gets old and can’t do anything for himself and his son give him all this medicines to help his health and one day the father cracks and just had enough. “…..I won’t take any more of- of your medicines. None. Never, and swept the bottle out of his son’s hand with a wave of his own….” This also tells me that once you get that age were you can’t do anything you just want to die and not suffer any more. Most of those types of people want to die in their sleep before they get to old to do
Gwynne Dyer titled his article “Anybody’s Son Will Do” because he claims that almost anyone can become a marine. The best candidates for a marine are young males who are about eighteen years old. It is best if they are enthusiastic and naive, so that they can easily be motivated to kill and destroy enemies. Since it is easy for trainers to brainwash and manipulate young men, there is a high demand for young men in the marines. Although some may not be strong, that does not seem to matter much to the instructors because it is more important that young men are able to kill (Dyer 212-215). In addition, Dyer writes, “Drill instructors create the illusion that basic training is an extraordinary challenge, one that will set those who graduate apart from others, when in fact almost everyone can succeed” (Dyer 216). This means that the real challenge
Jhumpa Lahiri is widely recognized as a Bengali-American author whose stories are focused on the Bengali/Indian immigrant experience. With her literary debut, she wins the 1999 O. Henry Award and the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1). “Interpreter of Maladies” is a short fiction story about the modern Indian Americans visiting India, which is considered a foreign country to them. Lahiri compellingly demonstrates that all types of relationships are unique and dependent on the efforts and communication of the individuals, which leads to misunderstanding between, couples and even failed relationships or marriages. The author has utilized the lack of communication
The book “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff is a memoir written about the author’s childhood memories and experiences. The author shows many different characters within the book. Many of them are just minor character that does not affect the author much in his life choices and thoughts throughout his growth. But there are some that acts as the protagonist and some the antagonist. One of them is Dwight, the protagonist’s or Jack’s stepfather. This character seems to be one of the characters that inhibit Jack’s choices and decisions. This character plays a huge role in Jack’s life as it leaves a huge scar in his memory. The author here spends the majority of time in this character in the memoir to show the readers the relationship between Jack and Dwight.
A traditional extended family living in Northern India can become acquainted through the viewing of Dadi’s family. Dadi, meaning grandmother in Hindu, lets us explore her family up close and personal as we follow the trials and tribulations the family encounters through a daily basis. The family deals with the span of three generations and their conflicting interpretations of the ideal family life. Dadi lets us look at the family as a whole, but the film opens our eyes particularly on the women and the problems they face. The film inspects the women’s battle to secure their status in their family through dealing with a patriarchal mentality. The women also are seen attempting to exert their power, and through it all we are familiarized to
Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri, an Indian by descent, was born in London in August 1967, to Bengali immigrant Indian parents. The Lahiri family moved from England to Rhode Island when Jhumpa was two years old. Her father was a librarian at Rhode Island University and her mother was a schoolteacher (Hansen). At age of seven, Lahiri started to embrace writing about what she saw and felt. While growing up, Lahiri lived two lives: An Indian at home and An American outside of the home (Hansen). Despite of living most of their life in the western world, Lahiri’s parents called “Calcutta” their home unlike Lahiri who thought Rhode Isl...
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.
Moving to a new town can be hard, adjusting to a new house and meeting new people. Moving to a new country, however, can be far more difficult. Not only are there new people to meet, immigrants must adjust to an entirely different culture and language. Many find it hard to assimulate into the new culture, while still maintaining they customs and traditions of their old country. One author who writes about immigrants' struggles is Jhumpa Lahiri. She heard stories first hand of the struggle to adjust from her parents, immigrants from India. Some of her short stories are based on her parents' experiences. In the stories "This Blessed House," "The Third and Final Continent," and "Mrs. Sen's," Lahiri shows how the struggle of immigrants to adjust to an unfamiliar culture can lead to misunderstandings and identity crises.
The short story ‘A Devoted Son’ by Anita Desai focuses on a father-son relationship in a traditional Indian family within a small, poverty-stricken village.With his parents sacrifices, Rakesh is able to pursue, and excel in his medical studies. The story follows Rakesh’s transition into the head of the household as his father, Varma , slips into illness. Gender roles and the power allocated to each role is a large part of Indian society, and illustrated by Desai, the male 's role within a family can lead to conflicts and power struggles.Using a sociocultural approach, Desai demonstrates the clashing of male status within a traditional Indian family through Rakesh’s character being that of an ideal son , Rakesh’s increase in maturity
In her short story “A Father”, Bharati Mukherjee presents the altercation of a man against his wife and daughter as he attempts keep his religious traditions alive despite his wife and daughter’s Americanized ways of living. Modern American culture is no longer dominated by the male gender and women are beginning to make their way up in society. The issues existing amongst the Bhowmick family force them to struggle upholding the traditional Hindu culture Mr. Bhowmick has practiced throughout his entire life. Although several aspects of the story foreshadow the tragic ending of Mukherjee’s work, by writing the story in the point of view of Mr. Bhowmick, the author creates empathy towards the character while also displaying the ironic significance of the female. If one were to read a news story about an immigrant father beating his pregnant daughter into a miscarriage, they could assume the man was a monster. However, Bharati Mukherjee refutes this view by telling her work, “A Father” from the point of view of Mr. Bhowmick, presenting him as a victim of his own patriarchal culture and superstitions, creating empathy for him despite his horrifying actions.
Bharati Mukherjee was born on July 27, 1940 in Calcutta, India. (Pradhan ) She was born into a wealthy family, which assisted her in her dream of becoming a writer. She lived in India, Europe, the United States, and Canada. Migrating to these countries that are so different from her place of birth enabled her to write very powerful novels on immigrant experiences. Mukherjee’s novels focus on exploring the migration and the feeling of alienation that is experienced by these immigrants. (Pradhan) Her works have explored such themes as isolation, sexism, discrimination, the mistreatment of Indian women, and exploring identities.
Parents play an irreplaceable role in the life of their children. They are a source of comfort and support warmth, security and protection, and they help each of their children to make sense of the world in which their live. In “Powder”, by Tobias Wolff, and “Father and I”, by Pär Lagerkvist, one of the common themes throughout the stories is the strong, irrefutable relationship between father and son. In “Powder”, the ordinary role of father and son is reversed. The boy and his father are quite different in personality, however the boy learns to admire his father and see him as a model of enjoying life to the fullest, without worrying over consequences. In Lagerkvist’s “Father and I”, the narrator feels he can depend on his father, which will
The article "Dear Dads: Save Your Sons" by Christopher Bacorn, published in Newsweek on December 6, 1992. To try and sum up this article, it begins by telling a sad story about a mother bringing her out of control son to Christopher Bacorn after charges had been filed and counseling was recommended. The father had left the family four years before. Since that time the son had become uncontrollable. Mr. Bacorn listened to the mother's story and discovered that there are no men in her life. He believes that what is most necessary is a relationship between a man and the young boy and that a boy doesn’t need a mentor in his life he only needs a more experienced friend which should be in this case his father .He reflects that in today’s world
Desai is a woman interested in feelings, in what people experience within the family sphere. Her novels usually do not present many actions and adventures, but she portrays Indian lives and social structures. She criticizes the flaws of Indian society by painting small scenes of everyday life; she shows the reader how society works and how it can put pressure on people, sometimes to the point of destroying individuals. She is more interested in the inner self of an individual rather than the vast world of politics. Relating a story of deteriorating middle-class Indian family in postcolonial Old Delhi, Clear Light of Day is described by a haunting, frigid and gloomy atmosphere, particularly in the Das family (Batts, 2011).
In all her works Jhumpa Lahiri has dealt with the themes of culture identities and the problems of generation – of Indian parents and their children growing up in America while facing challenges of coping with the demands of their parents who are nostalgic about things and memories Indian and the pressures of American life and that society’s ways and norms. These conflicting norms and values as regards life’s important affairs like love and marriage find very effective expression in her stories – both short and long. In the treatment of these themes she looks for cross-culture marriage and even there she explores the possibility of accommodation and adjustment and thereby the happiness of home and family. Several writers in our days generally deal with themes of broken families, women’s emancipation-related tales of oppression and sexual violence or of gendered identity explained as colonial/postcolonial experiences, expectations and encounters, and culture conflicts due to East-West encounters. Jhumpa Lahiri seems instead not to bother for what is in currency, what sells today-hers being a systematic purpose to tell her readers that life demands understanding, maturity and marital success leading to the creation of a happy home. It may be this leading concern behind Lahiri’s art that make her stories immensely readable and she loads them with a virtue of a different kind. Given the obvious compulsion on her part to priorities the dominant concern in the multicultural world today for a home that guarantees happiness and comfort of existence as civilized individuals, she finds the theme of happy home and intellectual adjustments in life and in love quite a natural choice on which she could concentrate. Moreover, in our days when n...
Anita Desai, an exceptional writer, wrote a many stories. One that is referenced in the text book, A Devoted Son, is a short story simply about a boy in India who had won a scholarship for a college career in which he proceeded to do. However, with that said, the son in the text becomes a type of doctor. With this young man’s schooling he will have to make a choice in the story, which will lead to taking care of his father. Between the original planning of A Devoted Son and the final product, written by Anita Desai, she in fact has a different outcome then what she had expected. In Fact, when Desai plans her writing, it was far different than what she was used to. A short story, like A Devoted Son, was something that was very difficult, but was a present day story that will probably be used in the texts to come in the future. Again, between her original text, A Devoted Son and the final product there are many difference and similarities in which the story was written: the old man had lost his mind, the son staying to take care of his father, and finally the old man embarrassed his family by wondering the streets.