Memory and Relationships in Lahiri’s The Third and Final Continent
Each piece of diaspora literature is laced with several underlying themes that make themselves visible in unique ways. Memory and family are two of these themes that seem to take root in several pieces. These themes enable the author to add dynamics and depth to anything that they write. A prime example of these dynamics can be found in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Third and Final Continent. Lahiri flawlessly uses both of these themes to bring her writing to the next level. In fact, the relationships, both familial and otherwise, formed in The Third and Final Continent are based heavily on shared memory and routine. Lahiri proves that shared memories play a huge part in
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Luckily, he did not have to overcome his journey alone. Lahiri incorporates his family life in Calcutta with his family life in America. His life in Calcutta was not the best that it could have been, he quite literally watched his mother die. He had to take on a mature role in her passing as he explains that, “and then, because my brother could not bear it, I had assumed the role of the eldest son and had touched the flame to her temple, to release her tormented soul to heaven,” (Lahiri, 5). All of the familial memories associated with Calcutta seem to be very dark and deep in contrast with the familial memories the narrator makes in America. Lahiri most likely did this in an effort to show the bettering and renewal of a life. A very minute detail of this story that resonates deeply would be the narrator’s son. Though he is only mentioned on the last page and not even given a name, he seems to hold a lot of the weight of the story and underlying themes on his back. The son grows up fully in Massachusetts and lives life as a Bengali submerged in an American culture. The narrator grows afraid of his son losing his sense of Bengali pride after the passing of himself and his wife, Mala, and makes it a point to incorporate Bengali tradition into everyday life as much as possible, as shown on page 14: “So we drive to Cambridge to visit him, or bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak Bengali, things we worry he will no longer do
“They wept together, for the things they now knew.”(104) The last sentence of the first story in Interpreter of Maladies, reveals the cruelty of the elapsed romance in a marriage. In the two collections, A Temporary Matter and The Third and Final Continent, Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates that a marriage can be either uplifting or discouraging depends on the mindset held by the couple and the strength of human bonding. Lahiri emphasizes the significance of mindset and human bondings through the ending of the two stories. The endings of the two stories are polar opposite : In A Temporary Matter, Shukumar and Shobha weeps for the termination of their relationship; The Third and Final Continent, by contrast, the protagonist(MIT) enjoys a fairytale-like
The personal narrative “Born in Amrika” (2003) by Mona M. Maisami speculates that children of Iranian originated parents struggle between culturally identifying themselves as American or Iranian. Maisami develops her main idea by narrating through the point of view of a young girl born in America interacting with her Iranian born cousin Nina. Throughout the story, Nina and her cousin encounter various differing cultural phenomena such as dress and meal rituals before realizing they can adapt to both cultures at the same time. This short story highlights these two different lifestyles in order to emphasize the way American citizens with overseas connections question their character because of their newly adopted home. In hopes to reach out to
In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.
Diaspora is the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral home land or in this case a scattered population whose origin lies within a smaller geographic location. The poem “Diaspora” by Chelsea Dingman ventures through the journey of a Ukrainian girl leaving her country and the in the pride she receives from that journey and her heritage. The poem focuses around the hardships that are included in taking this journey and how she lose so much, the feelings of despair and weakness is all she has left.
While Smith and Anzaldua may define identity through a culture or a voice, Jhumpa Lahiri, herself, had a different experience. Rather for Lahiri, she helps the reader
No diasporic community manifests all of these characteristics or shares with the same intensity an identity with its scattered ancestral kin. In many respects, diasporas are not actual but imaginary and symbolic communities and political constructs; it is we who often call them into being.” (Palmer)
In Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, discovering and exploring, the obvious and hidden, traumas and their subsequent effects on each generation is one of the most compelling parts of her highly acclaimed first novel. Set on Ghana’s Gold Coast in the 1700s, two sisters, who have never met, create generations of descendants who experience traumas continuously. Some generations experience the first hand the effects of slavery and the African slave trade, while others deal with the repercussions of belonging to a tribe of Africans that sold humans into slavery. Because the experience of trauma is continuous, the descendants of both sister, Esi and Effia, are never fully able to heal. Instead, the consequences of war, rape, kidnapping, violence and death are explored in the three hundred years since birth of the sisters. Past and current traumas shape the identities of each generation. Gysai’s narrative tells and retells the violent histories of both families in an attempt to help heal trauma that still remains imbedded in many Africans, and African Americas.
Diaspora, is the spreading of people from where they originally came from. In many African American literacy texts, there are aspects of Diaspora throughout the story. Some of these Diasporic themes are power, trauma, and family. These themes help the reader to understand how these things can continue to be present after being separated or generations later. In the texts, The Color Purple, Breathe, Eyes, Memory, and Homegoing the authors tell the themes of power, trauma, and family through their characters stories, and shed light on culture and traditions.
To some degree, every artist creates his or her own artistic life preserver, and in doing so resequences and conserves their own artistic DNA so that it may be transferred onto another generation. Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir Speak, Memory, is not only that preserver, but the tug boat that it holds onto, heavy and cramped with the memories and history that Nabokov retells his readers against the currents of time. Speak, Memory operates thematically, not chronologically. Nabokov returns anew to his early childhood and pulls in, as it were, the memories associated with certain themes. Then he turns, changes directions, and sets off again. One such theme that resonates throughout the novel is that of exile and deteterritorialization, both
When adapting to a new culture, many find it hard to assimilate into their new world while still holding on to their past life. Finding yourself in a new place with a new language and unfamiliar faces is challenging for immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, an immigrant herself, sheds some light on the Indian culture in her book, Interpreter of Maladies. She conveys many challenges that immigrants face when moving away from their homeland in a myriad of short stories. These short stories introduce similar themes of immigration and adaptation through different experiences. Two of Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sens”, do a great job in showing similar challenges of cultural differences in two different ways. They introduce characters
In simple terms, the Diaspora as a concept, describes groups of people who currently live or reside outside the original homelands. We will approach the Diaspora from the lenses of migration; that the migration of people through out of the African continent has different points of origin, different patterns and results in different identity formations. Yet, all of these patterns of dispersion and germination/ assimilation represent formations of the Diaspora. My paper will focus on the complexities of the question of whether or not Africans in the Diaspora should return to Africa. This will be focused through the lenses of the different phases in the Diaspora.
Has anyone lived a life without misfortune? Doubtable; even the person with what could be described as the ideal life deals with some form of adversity. The novel, Speak, and the short story, The Third and Final Continent, both use plot as a way to convey themes of hardship. Moreover, these texts both use symbolism in order to develop their themes as well. The Art of Resilience and Speak utilize characterization as a method of developing their respective themes. Speak, The Third and Final Continent, and The Art of Resilience each deal with the theme that all people must learn to cope with adverse situations.
One way Lahiri shows difficulties that immigrants and refugees experience, is with the theme of displacement. To illustrate the idea of displacement, Lahiri uses Mrs. Sens to show the what immigrants have trouble adjusting to in a new environment. Mrs. Sens is a middle-aged, Indian woman, who is having difficulty adjusting to the differences between India and America. Lahiri emphasizes the awkward attitude that Mrs. Sens has towards driving. When asked about her driver’s licence, Mrs. Sens points out “Yes, I am learning, but I am a slow student. At home, you know we have a driver” (113). To put it differently, Mrs. Sens finds it odd and difficult that she has to learn driving because back in India, she had a chauffeur. Furthermore, when she says she is a slow
The immigrant experience affects families in a unique manner wherein ethnicity, and therefore, identity becomes something continuously negotiated. Jhumpa Lahiri’s contemporary novel, “The Namesake,” beautifully illustrates the complexities of generational culture clashes and the process of self-individualization over the course of this experience. Lahiri challenges the often-one-dimensional approach to ethnic identity by allowing readers an intimate and omnipresent look into the internal struggles of the Gangulis, a first-and-second-generation Bengali family, following their relocation to America. The novel incorporates a heavy presence of reading, and the abundant representation of books and documents throughout it are vital to its