A Temporary Matter By Jhumpa Lahiri

When emotion overwhelms you, you have two choices; let it eat away at you slowly, each and every day, or attempt to purge it from your memory. Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer’s way of preventing himself from going insane and parting with his overwhelming emotions. Although I have not first-handedly experienced traumatizing events in the same way Krakauer has, I relate to the want, or need, to dispose of extreme thoughts through art. Contrastingly, I often part with my emotions through vague paintings only I can accurately decipher, while Krakauer parts with his emotions through a twenty one chapter novel in which he gives the readers nearly excessive details about not only his emotions, but also the emotions and hardships of others. While reading

“I’m Nikhil” (Jhumpa Lahiri 96) these are the words that Gogol uttered for the first

Nothing brings relief from the existential torture.” (Depression, 1997). Everyone is subject to sadness or melancholy moods especially after tragic events such as death, dissolution of a personal relationship, or economic hardship; these feelings are normal. It is a prolonged sense of these feeling and being unable to process past them that a more serious form of depression has taken hold. The damage caused by the emotional and mental effects of depression can be far reaching from hurting and pushing away friends and family, destroying careers, and can even result in death by suicide.(Depression, 1997).

According to New York Times, in the twentieth century over 108 million people have died because of war. Knowing this, it is easy to say that people affected by these numbers have developed depression, or a similar disease relating to the trauma they have endured. Characters in the book A Thousand Splendid Suns and the movie Life is Beautiful have done just the opposite. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam and Laila make sacrifices for Laila’s daughter Aziza, in order for Aziza to get the most out of the life they are living. In Life is Beautiful, while in a concentration camp, Guido, the father of Joshua creates a game to comfort Joshua and distract him from the torture of the camp. Through the sacrifices they made, the lies they told to loved

For a long period of time, every day that I woke up, I would cry. Weep at the mere fact that I had not died. I did not want to be awake. I did not want to be alive. I hated feeling “numb”, I did not want to feel at all. It is problematic to accurately explain how and why I became depression’s slave. I never openly invited grief into my life. It invited itself and it provoked a large amount of torment. I hate admitting to the fact

Suffering is part of the human condition in which one undergoes pain, distress or hardships. When most people suffer from any sort of distress, they experience terrible agony. Depression, at times, is their end result. However, others attempt to escape suffering and become stronger individuals. They begin discovering inner strengths, which allows them to get past suffering rather than becoming weaker. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano and A Narrative of the Captivity by Mary Rowlandson are both narratives written by two individuals in which they are faced with the challenge of overcoming obstacles that refrain them from growing stronger and detaining from the affliction they are met with. These obstacles include of distress, struggles and difficulties.

For some people finding out who they are is not exactly the hardest thing to do in the world, some know it from the moment they are born. There are, however, also other people who have to struggle and search for their identities. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is the story of a boy who does just that. It focuses on the Ganguli’s, a Bengali family, who, after moving homes from India to the United States, struggle to uphold a delicate balance between honoring the traditions of their heritage and assimilating into the American culture. Although Ashoke and Ashima’s parents are proud of the sacrifices they have made to provide their children with as many opportunities as they could, their son, Gogol, strives to create his own identity without leaving his heritage behind. In the novel Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Gogol faces many struggles while searching for his identity.

I have had a plethora of unique life experiences, many of which have happened in the last couple years of my life. In the past three years I have traveled to Guatemala, all over Germany, and Hawaii. During the summer of my freshman year of High School, I went on a missions trip to Guatemala. My church took 10 boys, and 10 girls; we spent a total of a week in a small impoverished town called . I believe that this trip allowed me, for the first time, to see, and be enveloped in a new culture. During the trip I ate new foods, played new games, and learned about the Guatemalan culture. I was able to spend time with all of the local kids, and learn how to respect a new culture. Then, this last summer, I was able to take a part in a German Exchange program with my school. After taking 3 years of German in High School, I was one of twenty people selected to go on a three-week long exchange program in Germany. The trip consisted of a week traveling with the 20 people chosen to go. The other two weeks were spent living with my host family and German partner. During my stay there I visited Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and traveled to the Netherlands. This was another chance for me to experience a new culture, and to further my German speaking skills. However, more importantly, it allowed me to make lifelong friends in another part of the world. About a month after I got back from Germany, my family went on a 12 day vacation to Hawaii. During my time there I had the opportunity to do a

However, not everyone has the same way of handling difficult things, some can be hit harder than others. For example, Mark Fossie felt the strong effects of losing someone after the metaphorical death of his girlfriend Mary Ann. That happened because he flew her down to Vietnam, thinking that she wouldn’t be affected because she wasn’t killing anyone. However, she still turns into something that is very different to her past self. As her story progressed, you would see that she was getting more and more interested in Vietnam to the point where she would sneak out with the more dangerous soldiers for ambushes.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake” examines an immigrant bengali family that has moved from India to America, and tries to hold their bengali culture while trying to accept American lifestyles. Ashima and Gogol each struggle with their cultural identity throughout Lahiri’s novel. The pressure of western society and the crisis of losing one’s culture and identity is demonstrated through the characterization and Gogol and Ashima’s relationships while living in America.

When a person suffers or endures an extremely tragic event in their life, they can end up suffering from Post Traumatic Stress ( Disorder), or PTS(D . PTS(D) is “ an anxiety disorder that may develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which severe physical harm occurred or was threatened” (Psychology Today). When coming back from war, Many people suffer from Survivor's guilt, a mental condition where someone thinks they have done something wrong by surviving a tragic event that someone else did not.(The evolution of mental disturbances in the concentration camp syndrome). As well as Survivor’s guilt, people also can suffer from extreme depression. When people become depressed, one of the

A traumatic event engenders mental trauma when it inundates the person's capacity to cope, and leaves that person dreading death, extirpation or mutilation. The conditions of the event generally include manipulation of potency, apostasy of trust, frame, pain, and confusion. After the event, shock and denial are typical, Longer-term reactions include capricious emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. “Trauma is not locatable in the simple violent or original event in an individual’s past, but rather in the way that its very unassimilated nature – the way it was precisely not known in the first instance – returns to haunt the survivor later on.” (Escobar 54) Death of a doted one, divorce of medical illness can trigger dejection. Recuperation from dejection may be affected by traumatic events. The more stress and arduousness a person experience, the longer a recuperation from melancholy will take. Some researchers believe “a problematic childhood may trigger an early-onset of depression (first episode occurs before age 20).” The difficulties of experiencing depression during childhood may include: sexual or physical abuse, a turbulent upbringing, separation from a parent, or mental illness in a parent. Childhood may result in adult depression, one theory suggest that children that experience sadness growing up have a harder time adapting to

Many people define depression as being heartsick and sad all the time when in reality there is much more to that interpretation. Because little is known about this illness, Sahrish Ahmad goes into great detail about the true meaning of depression and states that “it is a debilitating disease that sucks pleasure out of the lives of its sufferers and shrinks their self-esteem to almost nothing.”(Ahmad). In other words, it is a constant and overwhelming feeling of helplessness. Some question if this disorder is capable of actually killing a victim who suffers from it. Indeed it can. Ahmad expresses his point of view by asserting that “high depression can go as far as a killer disease.”(Ahmad). With this being said, the personal, social and occupational lives suffering from depression have the possibility of becoming defective. Victims of this illness can go beyond imagined thoughts and actually take their own life because they would much rather be dead instead of having to go through what they

Firstly, this approach is crucial for understanding depression and anxiety, and the case of Neha’s depression is an example. Socially, she suffered a divorce and her parents’ death (Toates, 2010, p18).

Read each statement. Write a 100-word summary explaining how that media piece supports that statement and include reference citations.