Home is a concept that many consider to be a tangible place and people's perspectives of what home is to them varies from person to person. Whether it be a small apart complex to a seven room mansion, the general concept remains the same: that Home is where the heart is. The sentimental value tied to a childhood home can have a tremendous impact on a person’s identity and their overall sense of being. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Lahiri illustrates the concept of home through Ashima, who eventually learns that home is not really a physical destinations; it is when where she is surrounded by the people that she loves. When Ashima first moves to her new home in America, she shows an evident rejection of American culture. The main reason …show more content…
At the beginning of the novel, Ashima is seen attempting to make “a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks...the one thing she craves” (Lahiri, 1). Ashima longs to taste authentic food from her home in India and tries to make it America, yet she feels that “there’s something missing” (Lahiri 1). By trying to make a snack, that was found so abundantly throughout India but is uncommon in America, shows one of Ashima’s feeble attempts of trying to cling on to her old Indian life, but it is just not the same. Ashima also always “calculates the Indian time...on her watch, (on which) American seconds tick” (Lahiri 4). This shows how Asima, even though she is in America, still tries to visualize what life would be like in India at certain times, and what members of her family would be doing presently. This shows another attempt by Ashima to stay connected to her life in India, and ignore what's going on in America. Later on in the novel, when the Gangulis journey to India for a sabbatical, Gogol and Sonia witness “Ashima and Ashoke instantly slip into bolder, less complicated versions of themselves, their voices louder, their smiles wider, revealing a confidence Gogol and Sonia had never seen on Pemberton Road” (Lahiri 81). Now that Ashima and Ashoke are back in …show more content…
When she is selling their house and she hears the Walkers planning renovations, she “feels a moment’s panic, a protective instinct, wanting to retract her for, wanting the house to remain as it’s always been, as her husband had last seen it” (Lahiri 275). Ashima wants to preserve their home on Pemberton road, and keep it the same ways as it had been when Ashoke and she first moved in to start their new life in America. Over time, Ahima has developed a connection with Pemberton Road because this was the home that she inhabited along with Ashok, before his untiley death. This house contains so many memories, not of her childhood, but of the life they had started together. Ashima then reflects that she has learned to do things on her own...she is not the same Ashima who had once lived in Calcutta” (Lahiri 276). Ashima has become more independent in America, not being able to depend on her husband or her family to take care of her. Ashima then feels “suddenly lonely, horrible permanently alone…(because) she will miss her job at the library, the women with whom she’s worked...miss throwing parties...miss living with her daughter” (Lahiri 279). In this moment, Ashima realizes that she will miss her life in America because of the connections she has formed with the people there, at her work, with her friends, and with her children. Ashima reflects that
Kindred by Octavia Butler has been a respected novel since its publication in 1979. In Kindred Butler provides readers with suspense until the last page. It provides readers with two definitions of a home. Home is a place where you feel safe where you have a family to come to when you are having a horrible day at work or at school. Home is a place where you share good and bad times with family and friends. A home is place of stability in your life. A home isn’t a place that you are scared to go to. A home isn’t a place filled with only negative thoughts and hopes. A home is not a place that you endured physical and mental abuse. Dana had a home of stability and a home filled with physical and mental abuse. Dana and her husband Kevin just moved into a new home that they just bought in Los Angeles, California. This is the best birthday gift she could ever receive because before she was living in a congested apartment. This is also the first day she starts to travel back into time to visit her plantation home in the early 1800s in Maryland. The distinctions between Los Angeles and Maryland present the differences in what makes a home.
“Home” is not just a place or thing; it represents where you feel the most safe and secure, where you feel accepted or feel a part of a community, and where you overall feel you belong. However, home can also be the thing that shelters you from the outside world, leaving you unprepared to deal with situations and dangers outside your knowledge. Often in children’s stories, the character must leave their place of security and go on a journey. This is because to grow as a person you must leave what is safe and familiar and venture into the unknown to truly test yourself, and be able to return home with new knowledge and perspective.. This essay will focus on two characters who go through this transformation from leaving their ‘homes’; Bilbo and his hobbit hole in Bags-End, and Meggie and her father, Mo, and her beloved books. Both are attached to their ‘homes’, and feel anxious and lonely without them, Bilbo's and Meggie's journeys are how, when seperated from their homes, they perservere through their insecurities and doubt and become stronger and more self-reliant by the end of their respected texts.
The personification of her home lets the author express old memories the house held and will never have again, she speaks of no one ever sitting under its roof, or ever eating at its table and how in silence will it lie. By personificating the house she reveals the emotional attachment people tend
...d and left with little cultural influence of their ancestors (Hirschman 613). When the children inadvertently but naturally adapting to the world around them, such as Lahiri in Rhode Island, the two-part identity begins to raise an issue when she increasingly fits in more both the Indian and American culture. She explains she “felt an intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new”, in which she evidently doing well at both tasks (Lahiri 612). The expectations for her to maintain her Indian customs while also succeeding in learning in the American culture put her in a position in which she is “sandwiched between the country of [her] parents and the country of [her] birth”, stuck in limbo, unable to pick one identity over the other.
In this quote written by Miriam Adeney, the author talks about how the feeling of homeliness is hard to achieve once a person travels and gets to meet new people; since that person has started building relationships with them, whether as a friend, a family member, a significant other, or someone who has meaning to their life. When the bonds are created with these new people, the emotion love is starting to develop. As well as a homely feeling is created within these tight bonds causing emotions to override the ability for one to reason. This quote allows the reader to connect with the meaning that the author is trying to portray by using humanly emotions to tie the audience in.
The average person wants one thing more than anything else, and that thing is to belong. Usha, a young girl from Calcutta, is no different. Already trying the find her place in the world, Usha must now assimilate into cultural society within the United States. Usha’s uncle, Pranab Kaku, came from Calcutta as well having first come to America, his experiences start off worse than Usha’s, which causes him to join the family in an act of social grouping. With the Old World trying to pull them back and the New World just out of reach, both must overcome tradition and develop their own personal values.
A person’s home is a good representation of himself or herself. The way one takes care of their home can tell a story about the owner of the home and its residence. The members of the home may also affect the situations that take place, creating good or bad circumstances. In a story, a character's home does just that. The more or less elaborate it is explained, the more detail is presented about how the character is or will be. In “The House of Usher” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the elaborate descriptions of the characters and their homes set the story and can predict the outcome. A writer’s home and view of life may have a profound impact on their idea of home and therefore their writing that is produced.
It’s pretty clear that film and literature are very different mediums and when you try to make one into the other, such as an adaptation, you’re going to have some things that are lost in translation and seen in a different light. When an original work is made into a movie, I think they’re kind of at a disadvantage because they only have a few hours to get the whole story across while also keeping the viewer intrigued by what is taking place on the screen right in front of their eyes. Movies are able to contain special effects, visuals, and music though which can impact a viewer and make a scene stay in their mind longer which is a plus side to being able to view something. Literature on the other hand, has a greater advantage. They can keep the reader entertained for a considerably long time and you’re able to get more information about people and events such as what a character is thinking or what is happening behind the scenes during a specific event. I understand that people are going to have different opinions when it comes to whether a book or film adaptation of a work is the best and it is not always going to be the same for each and every piece of work. One thing I think though, is that The Namesake in both the film and the movie, they’re both accurate and concise in the way that they relate to one another.
...zation leads to Gogol’s discovery of his true identity. Although he has always felt that he had to find a new, more American and ordinary identity, he has come to terms that he will always be the Gogol that is close to his family. While Gogol is coming to this understanding, Ashima has finally broken free from relying on her family, and has become “without borders” (176). No longer the isolated, unsure Bengali she was when arriving in Cambridge, Ashima has been liberated from dependent and powerless to self empowering. The passing of her husband has forced her to go through her life as a more self-reliant person, while at the same time she is able to maintain her daily Indian customs. This break-through is the final point of Ashima’s evolution into personal freedom and independency.
...ds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust” (Lahiri 108). This too is a form of double-consciousness as both Ashoke and Ashima are aware of the loss of culture, of their own identity in their children as their children shun India and by extension Bengali culture, and no longer sound like the people they miss and love back in Calcutta. It is extremely sad, because in order to make a better life for themselves and for their family they came to America, but because of the search for opportunity, they also lost their sense of identity in their children even though they tried their hardest to create a kind of Bengali community in America as well. Quietly, unlike Dre, Ashoke, more than Ashima comes to understand that he cannot push his culture upon his children, especially Gogol, and instead allows Gogol to navigate being Bengali and being American, for himself.
Everyone always has a safe place in their hearts for their homes. Home doesn’t always have to be a place where someone just sleeps in. However, home to some people is where they feel comfort. Somewhere or someplace can be one’s home. Some of the characters in Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Rozario and The Odyssey by Homer express the theme of home through an emotional journey. Enrique’s Journey is about a boy named Enrique who goes on a journey to find his beloved mother who he has believed abandoned him. The Odyssey is about a mythology where a hero named Odysseus tries to find his way back to his homeland after participating in a war. Odysseus from The Odyssey shows the theme of home by trying to return home to his family. Enrique from Enrique’s Journey shows the theme of home by looking for his mother who he considers to be his home. Telemachus in The Odyssey shows home when he decides to go find his father,
In the opening sequence, Nea describes their move to ‘real America’ from “...the hot sweaty America where we lived packed together in an apartment with bars on the windows on a street where angry boys in cars played loud music and shot guns at each other in the night” (281). Despite already living in America, she has this idolistic dream of America influenced by the talks of running away when they are older between her and Sourdi. Their dream is never fulfilled due to Sourdi’s arranged marriage, furthering the physical and metaphorical distance between the two sisters. However, when she receives a phone call from her distraught sister, thinking the worst has happened, Nea goes to Sourdi’s house to convince her to run away. Nea describes Sourdi’s house as, “The lace under curtains before the cheerful flowered draperies, the flourishing plants in the windows, next to little trinkets, figurines in glass that caught the light. Every space crammed with something sweet” (292). However, the inside of the house is a mess: “Baby toys on the carpet, shoes in a pile by the door, old newspapers scattered on an end table anchored by a bowl of peanut shells. The TV was blaring somewhere, and a baby was crying” (292). These contrasting descriptions of the Sourdi’s house echos Nea’s confusion of fantasy with reality. Her idolistic dream of having a close relationship with her sister clouds her from seeing that has her sister has matured and no longer needs their relationship like she
Bharati Mukherjee’s story, “Two Ways to Belong in America”, is about two sisters from India who later came to America in search of different ambitions. Growing up they were very similar in their looks and their beliefs, but they have contrasting views on immigration and citizenship. Both girls had been living in the United States for 35 years and only one sister had her citizenship. Bharati decided not to follow Indian traditional values and she married outside of her culture. She had no desire to continue worshipping her culture from her childhood, so she became a United States citizen. Her ideal life goal was to stay in America and transform her life. Mira, on the other hand, married an Indian student and they both earned labor certifications that was crucial for a green card. She wanted to move back to India after retirement because that is where her heart belonged. The author’s tone fluctuates throughout the story. At the beginning of the story her tone is pitiful but then it becomes sympathizing and understanding. She makes it known that she highly disagrees with her sister’s viewpoints but she is still considerate and explains her sister’s thought process. While comparing the two perspectives, the author uses many
This short story has an ironic tone. When reading this short story, it is a pleasant and normal travel to a former home. Anyone can have a similar outlook when going back to a place in one’s childhood and find many thin...
“Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends (Robot check).” A place becomes a home for me when I am around all the things that I enjoy and love. For example, when I am around everyone that I love, I enjoy a peaceful environment and the beautiful landscapes around me. The interpretation of home for me is not a physical thing that I see or that I can remember or even certain thoughts that I can relate, but it is a sensation that overcomes me when I envision being in the comfort of my own home. However, I know that this is a feeling that is calming to my soul and it quietly reassures me that I genuinely belong in a place where I can be free from people constantly judging me.