America and India in Interpreter of Maladies

Throughout Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri shows life for her characters in two very different settings: America and India. She seems to portray India as a much more communal environment, people often live together in tightly packed apartment buildings and are always conversing. On the other hand, her depictions of America seem to show (at least as it relates to these immigrants) a more lonely setting that makes them feel homesick.

The first example of this can be seen in the story, "When Mr. Pirzada came to Dine." The story opens with Lilia giving an account on how she came to know Mr. Pirzada. She talks about how her family would find Indian last names in the phone book and call up these people, hoping to find some company to join them for dinner. "The supermarket did not carry mustard oil, doctors did not make house calls, neighbors never dropped by without an invitation, and of these things, every so often, my parents complained. In search of compatriots, they used to trail their fingers, at the start of each new semester, through the columns of the university directory, circling surnames familiar to their part of the world." This passage shows how Lilia's parents are a bit lonely without neighbors and friends to talk to, and they can't find the things that they are accustomed to here in America. 

In "A Real Durwan" we get to see a picture of India, and of a tight-knit group of families all living in the same apartment building. Though Lahiri depicts an environment that is full of people who are very close, but this isn't necessarily a positive or negative environment. For example: everyone in the building takes care of Boori Ma, giving her new quilts to sleep on and things to make her a little more comfortable. Also the Dalals buy a sink for themselves, but also buy a second one for the other residents. These seem to be truly genuine, charitable, acts of kindness and compassion. But at the same time, the atmosphere in the apartment is that of rumor and gossip. Many families become jealous that the Dalals get their own sink, while they have to share one with everyone else, and when the sinks get stolen everyone (even the Dalals) are quick to blame Boori Ma, lamenting that they should have hired a "real Durwan."

Another example of Lahiri's depictions of America is in the story, "Mrs. Sen's." Mrs. Sen and her husband have lived in America for a while and although it seems that Mr. Sen has adjusted fairly well by immersing himself in his work and making friends with some of his academic colleagues, Mrs. Sen is constantly feeling lonely and homesick. When Eliot first comes to Mrs. Sen's he is amazed to see her cooking for hours each day just to create a dinner for Mr. Sen and herself. But after a week or so, he realizes that she does this to busy herself because she is very lonely and bored. She can't drive herself places and has to rely on Mr. Sen even to do the most basic tasks, like take her to the fish store. She laments that "at home" all she had to do was raise her voice and "a neighborhood and a half" would come by to talk to her and help her arrange whatever she was doing.

One last depiction of the more negative side of this tight knit community aspect of Lahiri's India comes in the story, "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar." Bibi is an outcast in her own building due to her seemingly incurable sickness and as a result many people resent her and tend to stay away from her. She is forced out of her home when it comes into question that she might have infected her cousin's baby with her sickness, and even when the wives of the building are "helping" her to find a husband, they only do it because it is like a fun game for them, they soon grow bored and leave her on her own. 

Overall, Lahiri seems to make no judgment as to whether the environment in India is a positive or negative one. But based on her depictions of America and of many of the families' sentiments about living in America, it seems that most of the characters in Interpreter of Maladies preferred the Indian culture and often miss it. There are other examples of this littered throughout the collection in other stories such as "A Temporary Matter" and "The Third and Final Continent," but I selected the ones that seemed to most enunciate these dynamics. What do you think? Does Lahiri present India in a more positive or negative light? And do you think that she shows America as a change for the better or for the worse?

Relationships in Drown

Throughout Drown, each character's relationships (more specifically narrator's relationships) play a considerable role in how we, as readers, view them and how much we like them/can relate to them. This is apparent both in the character's relationships with their friends/family and in their relationships with their girlfriends/boyfriends.

The first story, "Ysrael," gives us Yunior as the narrator. Yunior has a good relationship with his family; he loves his mother and looks up to his brother. This makes Yunior a likeable character for the readers. He is even nice to Ysrael, who is basically a social pariah, and tries to make friends with him and have a conversation. In contrast, the characterization of Rafa that we get makes him a less likeable character: he chases Ysrael and hits him with a glass bottle and he is pretty mean to Yunior even though Yunior just wants to be like him.

In "Fiesta 1980," we meet the character of Yunior and Rafa's father. For most of the story all we see him doing in his interactions with Yunior, our narrator, is yelling at Yunior because of his carsickness, and for various other reasons. Despite the last scene in the story where the father and mother seem to be having a tender moment together, Yunior's father is still not a vary likeable character and we are left with bad taste in out mouth from his previous actions.

This trend continues in "Aurora," where Lucero, our new narrator, seems to start out as a fairly neutral character, he deals drugs, but he doesn't seem like too bad of a person at first. Then we learn about his relationship with his on again, off again girlfriend, Aurora. Their relationship is full of violence and more often than not, Lucero's stories of her end with him regretting some violent act that he committed "...and after a while I hit her and made the blood come out of her ear like a worm...(65)" This makes him really unlikeable, unrelatable character and paints "Aurora" in a different light.

Later in "Edison, New Jersey," our narrator is introduced as a kind of average lower class person, who delivers pool tables and game tables to really rich people. As the story progresses he is shown to be a funny character and already seems likeable. We later learn that he has a habit of stealing from the rich people houses, which is just as illegal as Lucero selling drugs. But he goes on to talk about why he steals, that he does it for his girlfriend (or at least he did), to make sure she had anything she wanted. This paints him in a more sympathetic light and keeps him as a likeable character, in contrast to Lucero whose relationships made him unlikeable, despite the similarities between them.

In the end, it’s really up to the reader's to decide which narrators they like or dislike more. But it seems to me that the relationships of the narrators and of the people that they interact with in their stories play a major role in how they are viewed.

The Nuances of the Second Person

We've talked quite a bit about Lorrie Moore's use of the second person to narrate most of her stories. Recently we touched on the fact that there seems to be different types of the second person that she uses in different stories, I just wanted to elaborate on the wide variety of "flavors" of the second person that we get in Self-Help.

The first of these, in "How to be an Other Woman," is a mix of imperative commands that narrate the plot and descriptive sections that tell you what you are doing and help build the setting. For example the first line of the story is one of these imperative commands: "Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night." and later, "First stand in front of Florsheim's...Draw a peace sign..." (3). But the whole story isn't just commands. Later in the first section we are exposed to the more descriptive, "setting the scene" flavor of Moore's second person: "You are waiting for a bus...You climb on together, grab adjacent chrome posts, and when the bus hisses and rumbles forward, you take out a book" (3). This "flavor" is the basic foundation for the other varieties that Moore uses.

The next flavor of the second person, in "How," is similar to that of "How to be an Other Woman" with one major difference: the addition of uncertainty. "How’s” narrative voice presents the reader with a number of alternatives of how a situation could have come to be. For example, "Begin by meeting him in a class, in a bar, at a rummage sale. Maybe he teaches sixth grade. Manages a hardware store. Foreman at a carton factory" (55). One important thing about this flavor is that even if it seems like there is some choice or variability in how the situations described in "How" came to be, the outcome is always the same. 

The last example of a new variation is seen in "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)." This story is written almost entirely in the "imperative command" style. Short commanding phrases that are telling you to "do this" or "say that." There are examples of this throughout the story. "Learn to repeat things.... Make apple crisp for the first time" (89). "Eat Chinese food for the first time with a lawyer from California...Attack his profession. Ask him whether he feels..." (91). This flavor creates a more choppy, "scene by scene" kind of effect that works well in this story since "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" is written as a timeline of short events.

Of course there are probably other examples of many other subtle "flavors" of Lorrie Moore's second person but these were the ones that stuck out to me. Each flavor is unique, but not necessarily better or worse than the others, they each work well with their respective stories. Overall I was mostly surprised how Lorrie Moore was able to create so many different "flavors," especially considering that the second person is a narrative voice that isn't used very often at all. 

Two Different Environments

After reading "Sonny's Blues," I thought back to the first story of the book, "The Rockpile" and the lifestyle that Johnnie and Roy lived in comparison to that of Sonny and the narrator in "Sonny's Blues." Their thoughts and ideas on their lives seem to be polar opposites and I believe this to be a result of the environments of their upbringings.

The environment that the boys in, "The Rockpile" are brought up in is a very strict God-fearing household in a neighborhood full of "saints and sinners" Their whole life is characterized through the filter of the church, especially since they fear their father who is a deacon. This fear, although potent, offers clear guidance throughout their life and keeps them from straying off of the path set out for them by their parents. Their "shelteredness" goes so far as to make it a cardinal offense that Roy goes downstairs and plays on the rockpile with the other "sinner" kids. This fear is more apparent with John ("John said nothing: he was afraid of the rockpile and the boys who played there" (15)), but even Roy is afraid of his father as he is unable to tell Gabriel (his father) what had happened to him.

In stark contrast the environment that the boys in Sonny grow up in is one of suffering and hardship. As they grow up in an area of poverty, living in run down housing projects, they are offered a limited number of ways out of this lifestyle. While the narrator chooses the military, hoping to be able to make a better life for himself and his family once he gets out, Sonny seems to take an easier route by getting involved with the drug scene. Even though the narrator seems to have "made it out," and has created a decent living for his family by being a teacher, he is still living in the same area, in a similar run down housing project. Even the kids he is teaching remind him of younger versions of himself and Sonny, and after Sonny is caught he wonders if they are finding similar outlets for their pain and adversity ("Yet it happened and here I was, talking algebra to a lot of boys who might, every one of them, for all I knew, be popping off needles every time they went to the head" (104).)

Despite the seemingly similar economic standings (perhaps the Grimes family is a little better off, but not by much) between the two families in "the Rockpile" and "Sonny's Blues," it is really their environments that sets them apart and creates two completely different narratives for two sets of similarly aged boys. This dynamic really makes me wonder how the Grimes boys would have turned out if their father hadn't been a deacon and they hadn't had such a strong influence of the Church in their lives. And conversely, it makes me wonder how the brothers in "Sonny's Blues" might have turned out if they might have had some strong influence in their adolescent lives (such as the Church).

More Than Meets the Eye

As we read and discussed "Teddy" in class on Friday, and talked about how unexpected it was that Teddy was so intelligent and outspoken and spiritually knowledgeable, I thought back to the other children that we see in Salinger's stories and realized that there is more to them than meets the eye as well. They all seem more perceptive than the average child and seem to get progressively more observant and knowledgeable the deeper we get into Nine Stories. We discussed a bit in class how there seem to be a lot of children in Salinger's stories and going back through we find that more than half of his stories have main characters or important that are children.

From the very first story, Salinger presents us with an important child character in Sybil. While she may seem like a regular four year old that likes playing in the ocean and searching for fun, made-up creatures such as the bananafish, she is also much more perceptive than one might think. She picks up on small details that the average four-year old wouldn't think to notice, such as how Seymour allowed Sharon Lipschutz to sit with him on the piano bench.

The next child we meet, Ramona in Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, who's seemingly normal child behavior (having an imaginary boyfriend) becomes more than that when we find out that her "beau" died and she replaced him with another friend. This quick replacement seems very similar to her mother's own replacement of Walt (after he dies) with her new husband Lew.

Another good example of this can be found in the story Down at the Dinghy, where we learn that Lionel (the young boy in the story) has run away again. At first this is presented as fairly commonplace especially for this kid, but as we move deeper into the story we learn that he overheard the maids insulting his father when they thought he wasn't listening. This again shows how the children in Salinger are much more perceptive than they seem to be when we first meet them in each story.

As we progress through the collection we meet Esme, in For Esme:-- with Love and Squalor, who is overall a very intelligent and discerning girl, especially being only about thirteen. She immediately picks up on the fact that the narrator is an American soldier who is being trained on the secret base in preparation for the D-Day assault, and without reservation approaches him and asks him about it. As their conversation moves on, she is presented more and more as a very bright, if a little blunt, young girl. This is further confirmed with her offer to write him letters and her request that he write a story about her.

The image of astute/smart children that are more than meets the eye that Salinger presents us with is culminated in the final story of the collection: Teddy. As I said earlier Teddy is extremely intelligent and spiritually aware, despite being ten years old. In fact he is on his way back from the UK where he was being interviewed about his belief that he is the reincarnated spirit of an Indian holy man. As the story progresses he engages in a debate with a man aboard the ship, Bob Nicholson, where he dictates his ideas on how people should be taught and even goes so far as to predict his own death and its repercussions.

Throughout Salinger's Nine Stories we, as readers, are presented with a very interesting view of children. They appear in more than half of the stories as important (and sometimes main) characters and they are always shown to be more intelligent or perceptive than the average child their age or than how they first appear. This dynamic allows for Salinger to move the plot along in a new way, making the readers choose if they are willing to believe the ideas/thoughts of a young child or not. Overall I found this very refreshing, especially since Salinger has shown himself to be very good at writing the dialogue and interactions between adults and children. 

Fathers and Sons

In the last few days we discussed in class a few things that are characteristic of Hemingway's stories and seem to be continuous throughout In Our Time. Some of these themes inluded: Hemingway's portrayal of women and the single man going off on his own, demonstrating his comepetency (especially in "Big Two-Hearted River"). One of the things that I noticed, that we only briefly touched on was the dynamic between fathers and sons in Hemingways stories.

In both "Indian Camp" and "My Old Man," Hemingway depicts the sons viewing their fathers with great admiration. Both of these stories are show a "bring your kid to work" of sorts, and in each the son is glad to be able to tag along and is reverent of his father's work. 

For example in "My Old Man" we see Joe talking about his affection for his father:

"When I'd sit watching him work out I sure felt fond of him. He sure was fun and he done his work so hard." (Page 116)

and later on page 126:

"Gee I could listen to my old man talk by the hour, especially when he'd had a couple or so of drinks"

Hemingway's depiction of the interactions between fathers and sons makes me wonder what kind of relationship Hemingway had with his own father. Was it just as he writes the ones in his stories, a great admiration for his father? Or perhaps does Hemingway write his characters with the relationship he wished he had shared with his father. It would be interesting to know which one is the real relationship he had with his "old man."

Tim O'Brien's "Truths"

The further we progress into Tim O'Brien's collection, The Things They Carried, the more it seems that O'Brien is purposefully blurring the lines between the semi-fictional "truths" in the book and the reality of the events. Even though it appears that most (if not all) of the stories in the book are based on the actual experiences of O'Brien and Alpha Company, the reality he presents in the stories doesn't always reflect the facts of the their experiences. It seems to me that he does this as a way to get us (the readers) thinking about what actually matters in the stories, what we are supposed to pay attention to and what we are supposed to come away with.

In "How to Tell a True War Story," O'Brien says that a true war story has no moral, that there is no "lesson" that one shold take from a true war story. This really fits in with his presentation of the "truth" because in neing unusure whether or not the events O'Brien describes actually happened, the only thing that the reader can take from the stories are the feelings and emotions taht were conveyed rather than the actual facts. By keeping from us the reality of the stories, he is telling a "true war story." There are no morals or lessons to draw from the events themselves since there is always a possibility that O'Brien made them all up. However the factuality of the events doesn't change the experiences and sensory details that O'Brien is trying to convey.

One good example of this is in the story "The Ghost Soldiers," when O'Brien is describing the conditions in which the events of the story are taking place. He says "you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted or believed in. You know you're about to die" None of that is factual detail from the story, but it does just as good of a job conveying the feelings that O'Brien wants us to experience.

In the end I think Tim O'Brien just doesn't want us to get hung up on the details of his story, like he described in "How to Tell a True War Story," in the bit about the woman that always comes up to him afterwards to comment on a particular detail that really made the story for her. Even though those seens are there to evoke emotions, O'Brien doesn't want readers to take the facts of the scenes at face value, that would be missing the point, he simply wants us to understand the experiences and the feelings of the stories.