Theme Of V. S Naipaul

“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and

What does the word home mean? In the essay “On Going Home” by Didion she recreates her feelings and thoughts about her meaning of home. Family is a big part of one’s life and important one at that and Didion uses it as the center of her work. The work itself is about re- defining what home truly is.

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”.

I think the term “home” means a place where family members lived together. Everyone in the family supports each other, care about each other, respect each other and everyone gone through hard times together. The home may not be big, but it is cozy, it may not be very fancy, but it is happy to live there. This idea of home applies to the text “Fire From the Rock” By Sharon M. Draper very well. Sylvia and her family lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, during segregation. Sylvia’s neighbor, Mr. Crandall, treated black people badly. Once, Sylvia’s little sister, Donna Jean was bitten by one of Mr. Crandall’s dogs purposely. The other time when Sylvia’s brother, Gary was beaten by Mr. Crandall’s kids because Gary wanted fairness for the black people. Also when everyone in the town knew that Sylvia was one of the black students to attend Central High School, Sylvia faced more pressure and troubles from the white people. But no matter what happen to Sylvia and her family, they always supports each other and care about each other, everyone in the family stood together and gone through hard times together.

Scott Russell Sanders writes in the passage, Making a Home in a Restless World, “Stand still, we are warned, and you will die”, demonstrating the stereotypical mindset of many Americans (Sanders 17). The passage written by Scott Russell Sanders is a response to Rushdie about the ongoing debate on whether moving or migration is beneficial or damaging towards America. Rushdie who left his Native India for England believes that it is extremely valuable for migrants to make a “new imaginative relationship with the world because of the loss of familiar habits”, insinuating that moving is valued (Sanders 47). While Scott Russell Sanders believes the contrary. He believes that when we finally decide to settle in we will make a more durable home for ourselves. In the passage, Making a Home in a Restless World, the author Scott Russell Sanders utilizes the rhetorical appeal of emotional pathos as well as the rhetorical device of hasty generalization so that he can stress his perspective on migration.

Home is a complex term that can be thought of in many different ways. Hamid breaks down the definition of home and broadens it significantly in his novel, Exit West. Throughout the beginning of the last chapter of Hamid’s Exit West, the third person narrative voice makes it clear that Nadia no longer has a connection to her birthplace. A certain distance is present as she walks through the town; a town that is “familiar but also unfamiliar,” and has lost many of its recognizable characteristics to war and fire (Hamid 229). This theme of the last chapter connects to the overall lack of place in the novel. Hamid refuses to name the place of Nadia and Saeed’s birth and he rejects the notion of home for the whole of the novel. The

“Home” is something that people desire to have; one often looks to other people and places in an attempt to fulfill this desire. Most people characterize themselves based upon their home and therefore transform their identity, whether it be because they are trying to conceal their home or trying to flaunt it. In both The Glass Castle, by Julia Walls, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, the protagonists’ identities are affected by their own perception of home. Through these two novels, the authors emphasize the importance of a stable home, as well as the internal struggle of following your desires to shape your identity.

He views home as a material object. Iyer believes that a home has no real meaning and does not necessarily need to be a single place or recollection. This is evident as in his writing he expresses how “all the world is home” (Iyer 310). He says that his type of people do not need to be situated in a single place with the same art, music, literature, and atmosphere. They can travel the world and feel as if they are at home no matter what culture they meet. I do not agree with Iyers view on home. Although you can travel and move within homes, there should still always be that one place where you can

There has been a common theme in several pieces of literature read and analyzed this semester; some of the authors convey the struggle of home in their works. It should be noted that the authors this essay will analyze are people of color, adding another complex layer to the idea of a home. The short stories and poems of authors such as: Langston Hughes, Zitkala Sa, and Sandra Cisneros each express the uncertainty, longing, and issues for what a home means.

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

The fiction “Recitatif” was written by Toni Morrison, which is a profound narrative and meant to invite and let the readers wondering to search for the buried connotation of the encountered experiences of the main characters, Twyla and Roberta faced as children and their reunion as an adults again. Some of the story’s meanings and values involving around friendship, race and abandonment began to emerge as the plot thickens, and also more additional messages got concealed and remain unrecognized until even the most last sentence of the story about Recitatif. From the very first paragraph of the story, there were few details that were not mentioned which required further deeper possibility and that produced the story extremely engaging for me.

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 the novel Brooklyn the definition of home is challenged, Toibin compares a home where there is familial simplicity and ease (Ireland), one with daring heights and chances (Brooklyn, New York) and Irishness. Eve Walsh Stoddard defines Irishness as “Irish by ancestry, a member of the diaspora”(167). Toibin exemplifies how those two representations of home conflict with Eilis’ “Irishness” of that time period. Personally, I would define home as a place where you are wanted. Eilis was put into diaspora initially because of the lack of career opportunities in Ireland. She had to immigrate to Brooklyn, New York, in search of greener pastures. Eilis was moved to this with the

Through her tasteful selection of contemporary Indian influenced prose pieces, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the unique journey of Indian families established in America. Focusing on the intergenerational aspect of traditional households, Lahiri conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a person who is branded as a foreigner. In America, there exists a common misconception that immigrants who arrive in this country fully assimilate or seek to assimilate as time progresses. The category I chose was "The Dot of true Happiness." The dot which signifies the bindi, a traditional red mark worn by Indian people, is the source of true happiness among these immigrants.