RR - “The First and Final Continent”
Rude Awakening
Everyone has been there. Upon completing the interview process, you have just been hired for a job that will change your life as you know it. Besides learning the tricks of the trade, you also must learn to work with people who have different views and backgrounds. As days turn into years, you have adjusted to the job and people and reflect back to when you first started and conclude, “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” In the short story, “The Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri, a young man has to deal with life in America. Originally from India, he moves to London to continue his education and later accepts a position at MIT in Boston, Ma. Throughout the story he reflects back to when he first came to the United States and is content with how it has turned out.
As the story begins, a young man who has recently married, moves to Boston to start his new job. His first night is spent at “the YMCA which is within walking distance to MIT” (150). He is unable to sleep because of the intolerable noises such as “sirens and flashing lights [that] heralded endless emergencies, and a succession of buses rumbled past, their doors opening and closing with a powerful hiss, throughout the night” (150). However, as days go by he adjusts to the noise and begins to search for a decent place to live. He finds a home on a quiet street that is renting a room for $8.00 a week and develops a relationship with his landlord, Mrs. Croft. With the help of her daughter Helen, he discovers she is over 100 years of age and supported her family alone by giving piano lessons for over 30 years. However, his stay is shortly lived because he is awaiting the arrival of his new wife Mala.
The couple moves into another apartment and begin their new life together. In the beginning, it starts of rocky because their marriage was arranged by his older brother. “[He] waited to get used to her, to her presence at [his] side, at [his] table, and in [his] bed, but a week later [they] were still strangers” (150).
The narrator begins the story by recounting how she speculates there may be something wrong with the mansion they will be living in for three months. According to her the price of rent was way too cheap and she even goes on to describe it as “queer”. However she is quickly laughed at and dismissed by her husband who as she puts it “is practical in the extreme.” As the story continues the reader learns that the narrator is thought to be sick by her husband John yet she is not as convinced as him. According
The starting of the story kept me in suspense: the starting sentence, “No one can accuse Philippa and me of having married in haste” (Fox 1). This clearly brought up the theme of love and marriage. The selection of words by the narrator told that the speaker did not regret his marriage. The defensive tone of the narrator made me to think that perhaps people had criticized his marriage.
In the article written by Heather Pringle, “The First Americans,” she combines findings of various archaeologists across the globe that have aimed to debunk a popular theory of migration to the Americas. As stated in the article, it is commonly believed that the first to arrive in the New World traveled across the Bering Straight, a passageway far north connecting the northeastern tip of Asia and Alaska. 13,000 years ago, these hunters were said to have followed the mammals and other large prey over the ice-free passageway. Evidence of their stone tools being left behind has led them to be called the Clovis people. This article uncovers new evidence presented by archaeologists that people migrated to the Americas in a different way, and much earlier.
After reading The Book of the Unknown Americans, I realized how difficult immigrating to the United States can be. I am an immigrant also, so just reading the story makes me relate to many problems immigrants experience relocating to a different country. Immigrants often face many issues and difficulties, but for some it is all worth it, but for others there comes a point in time where they have to go back to their hometown. Alma and Arturo Rivera came to the United States to better their life, but also so that Maribel could attend a special education school. While Arturo had a job things had gone well for the family, but once Arturo lost the job and passed away the two of them had to go back because they felt that that was the best option for them. Reading this book made me realize how strong an individual has to be to leave their own country and relocate somewhere else not knowing if this will better your life or cause one to suffer.
Would you want to live with the bitter truth that your fellow kinships will eventually betray you? The people who were expected to provide freedom and liberty, end up trapping you back into the rabbit hole, from which it took decades to escape. Slavery has been an immense part of America’s past, an unforgettable past. A brutal era of suffrage through massive physical, psychological and unjustified pain for more than 200 years in the United States of America. Despite the conflict, you are always expecting your fellow race members to be supportive through the hardships being faced. Out of millions of people, they are the ones who will standup on your behalf and understand the torture you deal with, emotionally and physically.
The ominous and tragic atmosphere infusing the consummation of their relationship gives a foresight into what is going to happen in the rest of this relationship which is ill-fated. Their love fails to give them the perfect happiness that they envisioned and therefore they begin blaming the social circumstances for their dissatisfaction. The social and familial disapproval that Vronsky encounters angers him. "They have no conception of what happiness is, and they do not know that without love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us, for there would be no life" (Tolstoy, 167). After the fulfilment of their initial desire for each other, they strive to satisfy another desire, a further one. They need to be set free from the need for dissembling and lies, "it was necessary to put an end to all this falsehood, and the sooner the better" (Tolstoy, 168). Vronsky puts it, "throw up everything and let us two conceal ourselves somewhere alone with our love" (Tolstoy, 168). The two lovers eventually achieve
The fact that the fictional mothers and daughters of the story have unhappy marriages creates a common ground on which they can relate. However, marriage has different meanings for each generation in this book. In the mothers’ perspective, marriage is permanent and not always based on love. Especially with their marriages in China, which was a social necessity that they must secretly endure in order to be happ...
In “The Closing of the American Book,” published in the New York Times Magazine, Andrew Solomon argues about how the decline of literary reading is a crisis in national health, politics, and education. Solomon relates the decline of reading with the rise of electronic media. He believes that watching television and sitting in front of a computer or a video screen instead of reading can cause the human brain to turn off, and lead to loneliness and depression. He also argues that with the decrease of reading rates, there will no longer be weapons against “absolutism” and “terrorism,” leading to the United States political failure in these battles. The last point Solomon makes is that there is no purpose behind America being one of the most literate societies in history if people eradicate this literacy, and so he encourages everyone to help the society by increasing reading rates and making it a “mainstay of community.” Solomon tries to show the importance of reading in brain development and he encourages people to read more by emphasizing the crisis and dangers behind the declination of reading.
...accepts his wife’s life of royalty, and assimilates into an unfamiliar family, ending his journey.
Immediately, the narrator stereotypes the couple by saying “they looked unmistakably married” (1). The couple symbolizes a relationship. Because marriage is the deepest human relationship, Brush chose a married couple to underscore her message and strengthen the story. The husband’s words weaken their relationship. When the man rejects his wife’s gift with “punishing…quick, curt, and unkind” (19) words, he is being selfish. Selfishness is a matter of taking, just as love is a matter of giving. He has taken her emotional energy, and she is left “crying quietly and heartbrokenly” (21). Using unkind words, the husband drains his wife of emotional strength and damages their relationship.
Love is powerful and could change a person’s personality. In “The Book of Unknown Americans”, the author Christina Hernriquez tells us the definition of love. It is a book combined with different stories but each story is connected to others. It talks about the immigrants that moved to America with lots of hope, but didn’t end up with a happy ending. The story is about love, hope and guilt and different kinds of emotional feeling. In the book, Mayor has an internal change because of Maribel, and the power of love. He wants to be a strong man who can protect Maribel. He used to be someone who couldn’t defend himself and he changed because of Maribel.
Also the article talks about divorce in this kind of society and about if a younger brother wants to leave the marriage. The article then goes into talking about how this marriage is materialistic for this society. Then it goes into Dorje’s reasoning for the marriage along with the wife’s view on the marriage too.
Furthermore, this couple will get divorced because of their opposite thoughts. Men and women are two different species, and sometimes those differences stand in a way of their relationships. It is obvious that the characters in this poem can not find any equilibrium in their feelings. Every action of these characters showed negativity, which predicted their final separation.
All readers will read and interpret this story in their own way based on their life and their knowledge of marriage. One thing that is indisputable is the emotions which carry through all people and the empowerment in which marriage has on these inspirations. In life love can renew one spirit as well as kill the passion of a person.
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