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Jhumpa Lahiri Death

Decent Essays

There will be times when life breaks people down, it may seem impossible to move on, but they become stronger when they do. In Jhumpa Lahiri's final three stories, "Once in a Lifetime," "Year's End," and "Going Ashore" in Unaccustomed Earth,… Kaushik is annoyed at the fact that his mother is dying. Then he goes into a form of depression while coping with her death. Finally, he shows signs where he has moved on, and showed signs of him growing into a fearless, independent man. In life, many bad things happen to us as we grow. One of those things being death of someone you love, and how we cope from it. Before most people die, they will know many people who will die before they do, as they have to move one without them. Like Kaushik, it would …show more content…

The message is, is that people must move on, as life would continue to go forward.
The set of roller coaster of events about coping with death is painful, but fresh wounds hurt the most. Sometimes the fresh wound happens, before someone even dies, it could happen when the people do not have much time left. Like when Kaushik told Hema why he is upset. He's upset because his mother is dying, and cannot do anything about it, "'It makes me [Kaushik] wish we weren't Hindu, so that my mother could be buried somewhere …' I looked at you, confused, and so you continued, explaining that there was cancer in her breast, spreading through the rest of her body. That was why you had left India. It was not so much for treatment as it was to be left alone" (Lahiri 249-250). When Kaushik took Hema to the woods to show a family of six buried, he said the following. Leaving Hema confused, that was when Kaushik told her his mother is dying of breast cancer. Kaushik currently has …show more content…

Kaushik never had the choice to keep his family the way he saw it. In fact, he feels like he never had enough time to mourn for his mother. This was because it was not long until his mother was replaced with Chitra. Despite everything, Kaushik still saw his family as his mother and father, and denied his new family, "I shook my head. I had left my camera … 'But you always have it with you.' That look of irritated disappointment, the one that had appeared the day my mother and was missing now that he'd married Chitra, passed briefly across my father's face. 'I forgot it,' I said" (Lahiri 280). This was when Kaushik and his father set up the Christmas tree with decorations and presents for the holidays. Kaushik's father wanted Kaushik to take a picture with his camera, but Kaushik said he forgot it. Kaushik feels like his mother should be honored. Not disrespected nor forgotten. Kaushik thinks his father is disrespecting his ex-wife for marrying someone else and forgetting about her. Kaushik felt safe behind his camera, and always took photos for memories of his old family. Here we see that he refuses to make new memories with his new family. He still visions his old family, and feels it should stay that way. Kaushik tries to remain as himself, while his new family is around. He doesn't feel they belong in his family, and

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