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
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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
Everyone faced with lots of different challenges such as divorce, death, and financial issues in their lives and stories are a way of coping with certain issues. Scott Russell Sanders’ tackled this issue in this essay “The Most Human Art”, and in Macbeth, by Shakespeare, the characters prove how this theory is inflicted in day to day life. In Scott Russell Sanders’ essay, he proves that the grieving can find safety and support through reading stories. He says that in most stories, there's a happy ending, like in the fairy tale formula which is “Once upon a time”, and “Happily ever after”.
The play, Romeo and Juliet has many deaths, which are usually suicides because they have lost someone they love. The novel, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham also has people risking their lives or even suicide because they will or are not able to live without the person they love. However, the short story, “No Renewal” shows that Douglas doesn’t appreciate his new lifestyle because he already made his old lifestyle part of his identity. All these texts suggest that when one loses someone or something that is part of one’s identity, one may willingly welcome death.
When someone goes through a time of grief, it is only natural to find a way to deal with the hardships and until it eventually goes away, but people may come to realize that the loss can never be forgotten. This process of grieving and fighting through hard times to finally come to peace and accept reality is also reflected in literature such as “Hold Tight”. The short story ¨Hold Tight¨ by Amy Bloom shows that when people deal with grief, people may try to find ways to cope with the pain by letting out their anger on others or becoming self-destructive, even though it may not be possible to completely forget the woe.
After we lose someone close to us, everything takes a heavy toll on ourselves. Doing the most basic task exhausts us, "we become so weak that we
Life is full of loss and you cannot avoid experiencing it and well as sorrow. As people grow up they come to realize that the world is not as it seemed to be when they were younger. They get more independent and their perspective of life changes. They will have to realize that they are not going to live forever. In the short story The Hurt Man, written by Wendell Berry and published in 2003, we meet Mat who learns all of this.
He exemplifies the ideal way to trudge through painful moments, understanding that it may be difficult to live life without self-pity but also doable. One of the other hardest parts of death and facing it is the fear of relationships ending. Once we die, we lose our connections with people because we aren’t physically able to maintain them, but “death ends a life, not a relationship” (Albom 174). The worst feeling possible is knowing that you’ve lost a relationship. It’s even worse when you know that there’s no way it can be repaired.
Facing death at any age is difficult, but for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and John Sullivan, it came early, resulting in two essays retelling their experience. In their accounts of these situations, the author can see they both want to emphasise that death can come in very unexpected situations. To My One Love, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, begins on page 17 of 50 Essays by Samuel Cohen. In her essay, set in present day, she has flashbacks to her relationship with a boy “from the wrong side of town” named Nnamdi. They were in a loving relationship against their peers’ wishes. When it came time for them to separate due to education in separate locations, they had ended the relationship, but not before Nnamdi had promised that them
Can be very devastating a lot of mother’s like to grieve silently with the fear of looking weak to others. “When Deepa started crying again, “What’s the matter ,Deepa?” Thought-out their marriage, he had marveled at how little she cried, how she never used tears to blackmail him, and in the past few weeks, there had been something particularly awful about watching this lovely, tough woman reduced to shivering mess. But now, strange as it was, he was getting tired of it. He only had enough space for his own grief.” (Mahajan 75) That’s why some mothers don’t show their grief with fear that no really cares about them being hurt; they feel like they supposed to be so strong at all times. When you act that way some people
Also, as mentioned, Hindus believe in the caste system, moksha and Brahman. It is believed that one must work their way up in the caste system to reach the ultimate goal of Moksha, to be one with the energy of Brahman. Since Hindus believe in the caste system they believe that after death they will be incarnated and they will live another life as a different person and they will have a different Dharma to achieve. Everyone starts off at the bottom of the caste and depending on the Dharma, Karma and Yoga one has completed it will determine if the individual will move up in the caste system, if they will stay in the same caste or even if they will drop down to a lower caste. Since Hindus believe that they will have another life they do not care for their bodies, they only care about reaching the goal to be one with the Brahman after achieving Moksha. “For sure is the death of all that comes to birth, sure is the birth of all that dies. So, in a matter that no one can prevent thou hast no cause to grieve” (Bhagavad Gita 2:27) Also, families do not care to grieve and believe it is not necessary to grieve over the loss of a loved one since their death means that they are moving on to a better life, and one day will accomplish the goal of returning to Moksha. Once all the levels of the caste are completed the individual exits the castes also known as the process of samsara
It is inevitable that we will all die it is a fact that everyone must come to terms with. There comes a time in everyone’s life that they must face death; a friend’s tragic accident, a family member’s passing or their own battles with diseases. When faced with the idea of death people will act in different ways some may find it therapeutic to apologize for the negative they have done, some may want to spend time with loved ones to ease the future pain, and others may decide that their life was not what they believed. The story Death Constant Beyond Love tells us about a man named Senator Sanchez who is living a happy life with his wife and five kids. That is until he is told by doctors that he only has a short time to live. Death is
Many people define their lives by the relationships within their family. They are someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, or someone’s mother or father. The loss of a family member, especially due to death, creates a radical readjustment to people’s day to day lives and how they see and feel about themselves. Sometimes the process of grief can last over several years and how it is mentally processed and dealt with is different for everyone. “Mud” by Geoffrey Forsyth, shows an insightful view of a grieving man who had already lost his father and grandmother and is now just coming to terms with the loss of his wife two years prior. The entire story is written in first person point of view which allows for the reader to fully engage themselves in the grief and strife of the narrator’s life. Geoffrey’s story “Mud” begins in the home of the narrator where he encounters these dead family members and has to decide if he is ready to move on from his grief and say goodbye or stay behind and be consumed by it.
Unfortunately, many situations we must face in life are like this. People are not always around to help us through hard times, and most tragedies, such as death, are obstacles that we must overcome individually. As described in the poem though, death is an inevitability that we cannot change, and therefore should not deter us from our path. We must learn to deal with tragedies such as death, as they are unavoidable. These events do have an everlasting effect on us, but they should
Receiving the news of death is very strong especially to someone 's emotions. If told the wrong way it can be very harmful. Especially when finding out that they are still alive and be as
To learn from those memories and using those events to help transform oneself into a better person. The second author, Noah Levine, a Buddhist convert, discusses in his article, “Death Is Not the End My Dear Friend” that coping with a loss one and the feeling of guilt, fear, anger and grief has impacted his life through the his experiences in discovering his spiritual self along with overcoming those emotions. Levine uses his experience as a way to benefit others on his sufferings. In addition, his story may help others who faces similar situations.
Following the loss of a loved person, a person usually begins a period where they grieve over the loss of that person. While grieving, a person usually has a hard time accepting that a beloved person is truly gone. A personal activity is usually apparent during this time, and while this activity is usually connected to the person that they have lose, it helps a person deal with the tragedy that has fallen upon them. This idea is apparent in the stories Kitchen and “Moonlight Shadow”, both of which written by Banana Yoshimoto. Throughout both Kitchen and “Moonlight Shadow”, it is clear that grief is the stage when an individual is in denial over a beloved persons, and while there are a number of different ways in order to cope with the grief, the only way to overcome grief for good is by accepting the fact that the individual who passed away is gone.