Jhumpa Lahiri's recently published fictional tome, "The Lowland" yields to a variety of interpretations because of the complexity of its plot and texture that have gone into its shaping imagination .Lahiri has rather intentionally turned her novel into" a tome of many-colored glass" ( to quote Shelley out of context), and leaves everything to the imagination of the circumspect reader to fill in the gaps in the multivalent mosaic of the narrative structure before he arrives at evaluative finality .There are two of the most significant strands that stand out transparently interwoven into the texture of the narrative -the one that deals with , as Lahiri calls elsewhere ," relational autonomy", and the other, the pivotally positined, and intricately melded with , is theme of existentialism. The central characters llike Udayan, Gauri and Subhash, around whom much of the narrative action revolves are meant to exemplify some of the basic tenets of Sartre’s existentialism. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines Existentialism, succinctly , thus: "Existence takes precedence over essence and holds that man is totally free and responsible for his acts, and this responsibility is the source of the dread and anguish that encompasses him". I would like to interpret the novel from two of these important foci which, seemed to me, are the conduits through which one must attempt to disinter the novel’s latent intention .I have a strong feeling that Lahiri intends her narrative to be an intricate oeuvre that turns out to be a challenge to the reader to piece its interests together .
The one obvious strand of this multiplex narrative is concerned with interpersonal relationships .Udayan and Subhash are from the typical Bengali f...
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...ess”. Lahiri has written a novel that is as significant as her earlier novel “Namesake’ that won her many plaudits, but this time, she wrote her novel with a changed perspective of man’s existential angst that was more or less internalized rather than revealed. Gauri’s dream of her meeting her dead husband is her deflation into the virtual reality that is both as fervid as her desire to her transition into “nothing” is an interesting episode that adds to the thematic gravitas and also to my argument that everything that transpires in the novel is glued to the same theme of man’s search for roots. The purely Indian theme of interpersonal relationships and redemptive options are all conducted inter alia the epistemological axis which morph the novel into an existential parable, with the parabolic content completely subsumed into the texture of narrative action.
...is an American by virtue but Indian due to her parent’s upbringing. That is the reason why she is referred to being an Indian-American author which she has embraced. Due to the fact Bengali marries within their caste, Lahiri married a Latin American Journalist Alberto Vourvoulias and have two sons, Octivian and Noor. After getting married, Lahiri does not feel the need to be shy about speaking in Bengali or any other language. Currently residing in Rome with her family to feel how immigrants adapt to change and to go experience what her characters and parents do in her short stories. Through writing, Lahiri has discovered the fact she belongs to both the worlds and the generations of Indian-American immigrants will change and bring intense joy. "It has been liberating and brought me some peace to just confront that truth, if not to be able to solve it or answer it.”
In his novel, Hosseini writes with a deceivingly simple form of prose. Instead of assaulting the audience with his extravagant vocabulary, he entices them with the minds of his characters. Leaving the audience with feelings of empathy and repulsion, the work exhibits Hosseini’s adept abi...
Lahiri, a second-generation immigrant, endures the difficulty of living in the middle of her hyphenated label “Indian-American”, whereas she will never fully feel Indian nor fully American, her identity is the combination of her attributes, everything in between.
Pressure from society influences everyone but human synergy keeps people connected and able to accomplish unexpected situations that life throws at us. In the book Interpreter of Maladies written by Jhumpa Lahiri, Lahiri illustrates the seriousness for human affection and the necessity of belonging in a community to demonstrate the characters gains and losses while being surrounded by harsh cultural expectations.
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
“Pleasure may come from illusion but happiness can come only of reality.” –Anonymous. Although finding pleasure by means of illusion may be effective temporarily, a relationship is incapable of flourishing without the assistance of reality. In the book Interpreter of Maladies, there are constant battles of characters escaping illusion involving Indian culture, told through short stories. Indifferent relationships will cause a couple to stray from reality and separate themselves from reaching mere happiness. In the stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Interpreter of Maladies,” the use of alliteration and symbolism emphasize the failing relationships of Shukumar and Shoba and the two marriages of Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi with the common theme of
The author of the story was born in 1967 in London, and soon after she moved to Rhode Island in the United States. Although Lahiri was born in England and raised in the United States and her parent’s still carried an Indian cultural background and held their believes, as her father and mother were a librarian and teacher. Author’s Indian heritage is a strong basis of her stories, stories where she questions the identity and the plot of the different cultural displaced. Lahiri always interactive with her parents in Bengali every time which shows she respected her parents and culture. As the author was growing up she never felt that she was a full American, as her parents deep ties with India as they often visited the country.
The woman narrator of ‘‘Yellow Woman’’ does not reveal what she is running away from when she leaves her home and family. In fact, she does not seem to know what is wrong with her, or what the importance of the old stories might be in her life. Catherine Lappas explains in an essay excerpted in this volume, that ‘‘Hers is a condition born of cultural dislocation: She is an Indian woman living in a Western world that dismisses all stories as irrelevant.... In her Indian world, however, stories have an ongoing connection to people's lives.’’ Or do they?
With Indian parents and being raised in America from the age of two, Lahiri states in her essay that in her earlier years “Indian-American” was how she was described as, however, she hardly felt as if she could identify with “either side of the hyphen” (97,98). In other words, having these two cultures present in her life that supposedly made up who she was ended up making her feel that because she fell into both categories she could not fully relate to either culture, causing her to feel alienated. She goes on to say, “As a child I sought perfection and so denied myself the claim to any identity” (98). This thinking is a prime supporter of the correlation between culture and identity because it was culture that affected Lahiri’s claim of identity, even if that claiming was no identity at all. Through the examination of Lahiri’s early life, it is evident that there is a correspondence between identity and
Jhumpa Lahiri has the ability to interconnect the lives and perceptions you see within her characters whether they’re from India or America. Take with her story “Interpreter of Maladies” she was able to show multifaceted characters in the form of Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das and their alike strains in their lives. What is so unique about her storytelling is her usage of a third person narration, through the eyes of Mr. Kapasi. Within Lahiri’s story, we are presented with a family the Das having an exploration vacation in India while being driven around by their interpreter tour guide driver Mr. Kapasi. She’s able to demonstrate the theme about romanticizing and lack of communication throughout the story showing her character nature faults.
“The empty path is open, All the choice is mine. There is nothing definite About what I will find.” through various poems like “Banishing the Hauntings,” poet, Hilary Thorpe, questions the uncertainty of one’s choices. Isolation incites independence which causes exile and leads to deviation from family. It is in the face of banishment that Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel; the namesake divulge into the struggles of individuals and their choices that controversial conflicts occur.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland describes a Bengali family’s struggle to maintain stability as their world shatters in the instant of the sudden and brutal death of a treasured son, Udayan; the continental separation of the family headed irreversible changes between relationships that caused the greatest rift in the family: a young woman’s inability to love her fatherless child. The trans-atlantic variation in setting from Calcutta to Providence, Rhode Island inspires a progressive evolution for the travelers-Subhash and Gauri-while the mourning parents continue to dwell in their loss by staying in India where civil war is on the rise. The glue that keeps Udayan and Subhash’s parents living in India is the memories of Udayan’s life in the country.
... who are subservient to them. This, however, is reconciled through research of Lessing’s literary perspective. Lessing believes that a person needs space in order to find their purpose in the world. In “The Old Chief Mshlanga”, Lessing allows the narrator to find that space in the community in which she lives.
Urvashi Butalia in her book, The Other Side of Silence, attempts to analyze the partition in Indian society, through an oral history of Indian experiences. The collection of traumatic events from those people who lived through the partition gives insight on how history has enveloped these silences decades later. Furthermore, the movie 1947 Earth reveals the bitterness of partition and its effect of violence on certain characters. The most intriguing character which elucidates the silence of the partition is the child, Lenny. Lenny in particular the narrator of the story, serves as a medium to the intangibility created by the partition. The intangibility being love and violence, how can people who grew up together to love each other hate one another amidst religion? This question is best depicted through the innocence of a child, Lenny. Through her interactions with her friends, the doll, and the Lahore Park, we see silence elucidated as comfort of not knowing, or the pain from the separation of comfort and silence from an unspoken truth.
Garg in ‘Hari Bindi’ discusses the story of a common woman and made it extraordinary by the active force she was experiencing in herself to live her life. The husband of the protagonist symbolises the power and control of patriarchy that had restricted her life in such a way that she was far from experiencing her freedom at the least level. Big things are no doubt powerful and able to control small things, yet small things are no less important. The overall personality of a person is the result of various small things being joined together.