Adapting The New World Freedom, equality, creativity, opportunity — these are the qualities of living granted by the United States. For hundreds of years, people who sought for opportunities and better living lifestyles left their homelands, crossed hundreds of miles mountains, deserts, oceans and came to America. In the long years of migration, plenty did not even make it to their destination; those who have succeeded to see America, faced many other unexpected challenges as well. The poem Amphibians, written by Joseph Legaspi, expressed a mixture of respect and empathy toward the immigrants. Comparatively, in the novel Namesake written by Jhumpa Lahiri, the author also told a story related of immigrants attempting to adapt America — a …show more content…
In Namesake, Ashima is constantly struggling with the fact that she was far away from her family; although she had a baby and a husband, these two figures were just not enough to fill up the lonely void in her heart. “Three days later, Ashoke is back at MIT…in the silent home, suffering from sleep deprivation far worse…cries the whole day,” (Lahiri, 34). Despite the fact the Ashoke tried his best to comfort his wife’s upsetting feelings, he had to go back to work, and that usually takes a large chunk of time in a day. When Ashoke is not with her, Ashima is alone, trapped in the walls of an empty apartment, with a messy room and a crying infant to take care of. Unlike language, homesickness is not very easy to adapt; it made her anxious and tired, she was covered with sweats and tears, yet her sadness cannot be seen or heard. Similarly, the poem Amphibian also described new immigrants’ struggles with loneliness — “Through damp skin, amphibians oxygenate. Immigrants toil and sleep breathlessly.” (Legaspi, 18-21). Living in an environment where no one recognizes you is hardly imaginable. For many us, we were born and raised in a land where our ancestors once lived; we were always accompanied by our friends and relatives, who also live in the same piece of land. However, this is not true for the hundreds and thousands of immigrants in our country. Especially women, who crossed countless miles across the Pacific ocean with their husbands and raised children in an unknown land. They too have a family, yet they might not see them
However, instead of allowing the corruption and grief of losing a significant figure in her life completely consume her, Leah embraces a new culture and turns to another male figure, her husband Anatole, for guidance. With new surrounding influences, Leah encounters various forms of separation, whether it be from her birthplace, father, or husband, and accepts all the drawbacks and loses that come along with the isolation. At the same time, Leah also challenges herself to overcome the loss and succumb to the loneliness that could potentially bring her closer to a new aspect of life never explored before. Through it all, Leah turns her experiences with exile into bittersweet memories sprinkled across the time span of her life for each rift allowed her to obtain a sense of self identity during periods of time free of human contact or, in Leah’s case,
Families are very important to live a life full of happiness. They give love and support whenever it is needed. People everywhere have different ideas of how their family should be or what they want. One person may want five kids, while another wants only two. Little kids think about the families they are going to have and one little girl’s wish is “I want a husband, one girl, and to live in the country” (Stachler). Someday this little girls dream may come true with hard work but for now it is just a dream. Be it kids or grown nobody wants to live a life by themselves because loneliness is not happiness. Not having friends or family to celebrate with during happy moments is not a dream. Families and friends by themselves is a wonderful American ...
The narrator continues with describing his resentment towards his home life, 'Coming home was not easy anymore. It was never a cinch, but it had become a torture (2).'; This excerpt provides the reader with an understanding of the sorrow that the protagonist feels at the beginning of the novel and throughout the first half. Further narration includes the protagonists feelings of distance from the land and blame that he places upon himself, 'But the distance I felt came not from country or people; it came from within me (2).'; Thus, as the reader, we understand that the narrator has removed himself from the land and his culture.
Isolation often creates dismay resulting in an individual facing internal conflicts with themselves. Ann experiences and endures unbearable loneliness to the point where she needs to do almost anything to
Throughout this powerful novel, we observe the injustice in societal rejection and the pain caused by this. However, another extremely dominating theme involving the need for friendship surfaces again and again in all of the prominent characters. The Creature's isolation reveals the effects that loneliness can have when it is the strongest feeling in one's life. Taken as a whole, while the ability to care for oneself is important, people will always need someone to be there when the road gets rough.
The Book of Common Prayer offers an intercession for “our families, friends and neighbors, and for those who are alone.” We tend to put the alone in this separate category, but for Olivia Laing, “the essential unknowability of others” means that to be human is to be lonesome, at least sometimes. So why don’t we talk about it more openly? “What’s so shameful,” she asks, about “having failed to achieve satisfaction, about experiencing unhappiness?” This daring and seductive book — ostensibly about four artists, but actually about the universal struggle to be known — raises sophisticated questions about the experience of loneliness, a state that in a crowded city provides an “uneasy combination of separation and exposure.”
These lines portray that loneliness is merely a state of mind rather than a physical circumstance. Not only, but the line “I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another,” proves that while two individuals can physically be close, it does not mean that they are close intellectually (109). In other words, Thoreau not only believes that genuine loneliness derives from meaningless, mindless interaction, but also that solitude enables self-discovery and true
Stephen Marche Lets us know that loneliness is “not a state of being alone”, which he describes as external conditions rather than a psychological state. He states that “Solitude can be lovely. Crowded parties can be agony.”
At home in Nepal, Ama was Lakshmi’s role model, and even though she wasn’t able to provide Lakshmi with the luxuries that their neighbors had, “her slender back, which bears all troubles- and all hope- was still the most beautiful” to Lakshmi (McCormick 7). Even though she was not dynamic, I fell in love with how she inspired Lakshmi through her trials and her representation of the strong, hard-working women in Nepali culture. There were also a few other static characters, most of which I did not like at all. Her stepfather, Auntie Bimla, Uncle Husband and Auntie Mumtaz were the figures of authority that Lakshmi associated with her tortured existence in India, but in the midst of the hardship, there were characters that provided just as much light to Lakshmi’s life as there was darkness. For example, the young tea vendor lifted Lakshmi’s spirits with his polite gestures of free tea when she couldn’t afford it, as well as keeping her on the right path when Lakshmi was tempted to buy alcohol to soothe her misery (McCormick 224). Along with Lakshmi’s friend Shahanna, he too was taken away and I was convinced of Lakshmi’s impending doom even more than she herself probably was. All seemed dark until the second American came with his “digital magic”. By using his camera to show her pictures of rescued girls, this brave man was able to convince Lakshmi
16.6 million people are estimated in the United States to be in families in which at least one member is an undocumented immigrant and of those 16.6 million people, approximately 9 million live in mixed-status families, which means that their family is composed of at least one US-born child and one undocumented immigrant parent (Roblyer et al. 475-476). In the mixed-status families, many of them live in fear from being separated from their families due to immigration laws in the U.S. that call for the deportation of those that are of undocumented status. In the unfortunate event that a family does get ripped apart from each other, it often has the greatest impact on those that get left behind, as well as, on the American people. More often
Shire’s imagery and literary devices such as repetition serve to establish a distressing tone in her poem, which is juxtaposed with the warm, and nurturing connotations associated with home. Across all cultures, home is a desirable place; home is an anchor of existence. Home is associated with universal feelings of positivity, which is why when people like immigrants leave to different countries, they are in search of a new, supporting environment that will provide what their previous home did
Finally, her anguish moves her to set out in sorrow on a friendless exile to find her beloved. As she travels, she begins to reflect and complain about how her “lord commanded me to live in a country” where “I had no love ones or loyal friends which causes me grief” (15-17). Then, she “found that my fitting man was unfortunate” and “filled with grief” (19). The voice continually uses grief-stricken words to evoke a sense of melancholy.
Since, the husband left her, the community exiled her away to live forsaken in a “hovel” (28) beneath an oak tree. The isolation the wife endures only longs on her emotional agony in wanting back her lord. The woman finds that her hours “alone”(35) before daybreak are torturous to her since she knows that there are other couples that have the love she wants to obtain to ease her “hearts
The setting of the novel is located in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, under the harsh Taliban rule. The Taliban governs most of the country and impose stringent restrictions on the Afghan people, especially women (P.7 “She wasn't really meant to be outside at all. The Taliban had ordered all girls and women in Afghanistan to stay inside their homes. They even forbade girls to get to school.”) The location of the novel influences the emotions and moods of the characters to be depressed and stressed because the location is set in a violent situation where houses continually being bombed and land mines are anchored everywhere in the city (P.16 “There were bombed-out buildings all over Kabul. Neighbourhoods had turned from homes and businesses into bricks and dust. Kabul had once been beautiful.”) Parvana and her family lives in a one-room house after moving for safety several times which cause everything to be congested in one place. This is difficult for anyone in Parvana's family to be alone which triggers tension amongst one another. The setting of the story is set in a nation under a turmoil of war and chaos which portrays the main character, Parvana, to be depressed and deeply emotional.
Living with Strangers is a non-fictional essay which discusses the many ways of behaving in different societies. Siri Hustvedt, the author of the short story, discusses the different rules and behaviors in the society of both a simple countryside and the big city of New York. Furthermore she confesses her opinions and use examples from her life to explain and substantiate the opinions.