Mrs Sen's Sparknotes

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

In the “Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich the theme is evident. Throughout the story he shows that situations in can have life altering effects. Erdrich takes the reader on a journey of two brothers whose names were Lyman and Henry. He covers us from the time they buy their first car, to the time of the death of Henry, the older brother. He uses a myriad of literary devices to bring the story across. Erdrich used the reservation as the setting because it foreshadows the loneliness that each character experiences. In addition, he uses the reservation to symbolize the hardship and loneliness of life in the Lyman and Henry. He uses the red convertible to symbolize the journey that each brother went through. In addition,

The story “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich is a story with symbolic importance. Often you find that a lifeless object can be more important than the actual characters of the story. In this story that object is the red Oldsmobile convertible. This is a story of two Native American brothers of the Chippewa descent, Lyman and Henry Lamartine, who through their car that they purchased together form an unbreakable bond. Although the car itself represents the most symbolic item in the story, the color red also seems to come up in other forms than the car and plays a very symbolic part in the story. The red convertible is the main symbolism of the story and source of communication between the two brothers and the color red illustrates further the symbolism in the story. In America, the color red has positive and negative symbolic representations. The positive being passion, strength, love and energy. The negative being blood aggression, danger and war. Through the Native American culture, the color red represents a color of faith while also symbolizing communication. Throughout the story we read of both positive and

“The Red Convertible” is a story of Henry, the American Indian man, about how he was suffering from the experiences at the Vietnam War. The story begins when he and his brother purchased a red convertible car. This story indicates that how cultural ties and the brother’s precious memories helped recover Henry. Actually it is more about the importance of family. By

“Stability in Motion” is written by a Marina Keegan about her car. While reading this short story, readers get an insight of what her car means to her. This short story lets readers into the happy and sad times in the life of Marina Keegan, with the many personal elements and stories that she includes. In “Stability in Motion”, Marina Keegan shows her audience that her car is not only her transportation, but her place of happiness and her best friend.

Automobiles are such a significant part of our culture today and have been for the past century as a whole. From the big screen to the pages of a book they can play seemingly important roles that cannot be ignored. Often times these vehicles can assume almost human like characteristics which can cause you, the viewer/reader, to develop a relationship with these inanimate objects whether they are the new, beautiful and sleek sports car or the old, ratty and beat-up truck. In Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” there are many occurrences in which the state of repair that the Olds is in gives you the sense that it closely represents Lyman’s current feelings towards his brother and how these feelings change and evolve throughout the length of the story.

An analogy has been drawn about how she was in the past and how is she now. She was a carefree person, demanding love in her life, wanting to take care of her children and become a house wife and now she works as a schoolteacher, has become a responsible person concerned about her husband and child, struggling for her son’s life, bearing tantrums of her sister-in-law and living in a small house in a small city. On the other hand, Komal, sister-in-law of Anjali is a character shown who seems to be frustrated from her life from the time she has lost her husband. The book has depicted another face of an Indian woman, who lives her entire life following the customs that the society has decided for a widow. Anjali tried to make her first marriage successful by taking care of small things like making her husband, his favorite cardamom chai and best of meals while Prakash’s second wife Indu was never concerned about any of his likings and gave priority to her own personal

In addition, disappointment is another reason Jayanti choses to let assimilation take over her self-identity. When she finally realizes that America is not as glamorous as she imagined, read about or saw in pictures, she feels disheartened. When she arrives, she looks forward in seeing, “neat red brick house with matching flowery drapes, the huge, perfectly mowed lawn green like it had been painted, the shiny concrete driveway on which sat two shiny motorcars”(73). However, she is greeted by a, “crowded [apartment] with faded, over stuffed sofas and rickety end tables that look like they’ve come from a larger place...the tiny room I am to occupy - it is the same size as my bathroom at home” (73,74).

An explicit motif that was introduced was Norma’s 1929 Isotta-Fraschini car. Which is a widely desired car that even the studios wanted to use it in a movie. The car represents how as time goes by nonliving items gain value and people like Norma loose value to others like how the directors don’t want to have old actors in new movies but want old cars in new movies. A symbol in the movie is the implicit and explicit pictures of Gloria Swanson in her younger days as an actress in real life. The symbol is that Norma can not get over her past accomplishments to live in the present day.

In this lifetime, we all have a family. We all have someone in our lives that we love and care. We admire people for the way they act around us and we respect who they are for what they are. A great writer once said, “Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.” Louise Endrich. The Red Convertible written by the same writer talks about how love, brotherhood and change in social cultures can affect who we are and what we see in people. Change can be positive or negative, in both ways it can assimilate us into someone we aren’t and the person we once were is lost and forgotten. In this text, we shall follow the facts on how the car is important to this brotherhood with the social aspect of

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

She did not like the idea because she sees driving as fun, freedom, and being independent. Her son insists, he hire her a driver named Mr. Hoke. At first, Miss. Daisy refuse the driver to take her anywhere but because Mr. Hoke was patience, he convince her to let him driver her, she later accept to give it a try. The driver Mr. Hoke serve Miss. Daisy for twenty years and they get to understand and

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

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ Mr. Kapasi , the main character, seems to be a person with mixed feelings. He does not seem to have fixed stand neither in his job nor on his thoughts. His thoughts and experience are structured by the strict cultural society of India. His hidden wants and desires suppressed by the community rules are looking for way to come out. The consequence is his changing thoughts and desires which at different parts of the story appear differently and brings

The line, “Someone carries off the road an arm and a sopping red sari. Christ, if they want the other arm, they’ll have to look under that car. That crunched-up concertina car wearing a traffic light for a hat” paints a vivid image inside the reader’s mind on the severity of the car crash. We can infer from these lines that very few people cared about the car crash except for the people who helped. Negative connotations and metaphors help paint a picture in the reader’s mind of the scene. The words ‘crunched-up concertina’ and the metaphor ‘wearing a traffic light for a hat’ both show evidently how the car had been damaged in the accident. Overall, the use of vivid imagery to portray the severity of the car crash scene helps me to understand the theme of cultural differences, with the citizens of New Delhi caring minimally for such an