Dedicated to the study of literature.
1. What seems to be the author’s intention or purpose for writing the narrative? Try to think of several purposes and consider varying audiences in your response.
2. Describe the role of faith in the author’s ordeal or in the narrative as a whole.
2a. In general, what would a Puritan say about God and his providence in their everyday lives?
3. Describe the relationship between Mary and her captors.
4. Based on the reading, what do you think the characteristics of a “good” Puritan are?
5. How do you think Mary feels about her captivity by the end of it?
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The first story “A Temporary Matter” follows a young couple who were eagerly awaiting their future together when tragedy struck in form of their still born child. Both Shoba and Shukumar feel it is their fault that their child did not make it. This guilt that they feel begins to drive a wedge between their happy marriage. They begin to grow farther and farther apart. At one point Shukumar moves his office to the babies room because as he says “it was a place Shoba avoided” (Lahiri 8). Their marriage continues to fall apart until one week when the power was out every night. During this time the couple would play a game in which they told each other some thing they had never told them before. Each night the secrets would become deeper and more sinister. On the last night of the game Shoba turns on the lights and tells Shukumar that she is leaving him. Shukumar is crushed by this and decides to tell Shoba that he had held their son, which he promised not to tell Shoba because “he still loved her then” (Lahiri 22). The lose of their child was too much for the young couple. They were never able to look their problems in the eye. That is why they played the game in the dark and why Shoba gets up to turn off the lights in the end. The couples inability to communicate and face their problems leads to the down fall of their marriage and Shukumar passively declaring that he no longer loves Shoba.
The second story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” follows a foreign man who is visiting America in order to further his studies. While in America he becomes close friends with a Indian family. Mr. Pirzada comes over to their house every night and has dinner with the family. Everything is going well until war breaks out in Mr. Pirzada’s home country. Mr. Pirzada fears for his wife and seven daughters which he has back at home. Every night after dinner the family would watch the news with Mr. Pirzada and would hear of terrible things happening back in his own country. Mr. Pirzada tries to cope with these feelings of fear and guilt for leaving his family in this danger by trying to protect the little girl narrating the story, as if she were his own daughter. Mr. Pirzada becomes protective of the narrator and gives her little gifts every night. Finally Halloween roles around and Mr. Pirzada offers to chaperone the narrator. The narrator only answers him by saying “Don’t worry” (Lahiri 38). These are the words that the narrator had wanted to tell Mr. Pirzada throughout the whole story and now that she finally had on accident. These words lifted Mr. Pirzada of all his troubles and gave him faith that his family was okay. The story then ends with us learning that Mr. Pirzada’s family was safe and everything was well.
The third story “Interpreter of Maladies” tells the tale of an interpreter in a doctors office who is a tour guide during the weekends. In the story Mr. Kapasi the tour guide is taking the Das family to the ancient sun temple. On the trip we learn much about each character. We learn that Mrs. Das cares about nothing but herself. This is apparent in her selfishness of not sharing her food. We also learn that Mr. Das is very ignorant and has not realized that his wife no longer love him and he pays no attention to his children. Finally we learn that Mr. Kapasi works at a hospital translating between the patient and doctor. This is of course why he is considered the interpreter of maladies. Mrs. Das is very impressed with this which makes Mr. Kapasi so happy that he starts to fall in love with her. This false love continues to build until Mrs. Das reveals to him that one of her children are not Mr. Das’ son. She says that she told him this so he could be the bridge between her and Mr. Das. In this sense Mr. Kapasi becomes an emotional interpreter. Mr. Kapasi being honest like Mrs. Das told him to tells Mrs. Das “Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?” (Lahiri 66). With this she just glares at him and walks away. Her glare crushes Mr. Kapasi after how attached he had become to her. This shows how being the interpreter is an important job because only the interpreter can tell the person what they truly need to hear even if it hurts. Maybe the author Jhumpa Lahiri feels that she is an interpreter of maladies and that could explain the title of the book.
The fourth story “A Real Durwan” follows the average day of Boori Ma. Boori Ma is a very old woman who lives in a apartment like building. Boori Ma spends her day cleaning the stairs and trying to keep the building as nice as possible. At night Boori Ma stands watch at the front of the apartment. The tenants all appreciate Boori Ma’s work even though she tells the tenants what they believe to be lies about a life of riches she used to live. One day a tenant at the apartment gets a promotion and come home with two sinks with running water. They decide to put one of the sinks in the lobby. Everyone enjoys the sink and decide to make their own improvements. As work goes on in the Apartment it becomes impossible to clean so Boori Ma spent her days walking around and her night on the roof in her scraps of newspaper. At this point in the story the author has made it impossible for you to not sympathies with Boori Ma. Finally one day when she is out walking around the town someone breaks in a steals the sink from the lobby. The tenants are furious and blame it on Boori Ma. The tenants complain and Boori Ma is thrown out of the building. Boori Ma was a good person but it is just like the tenants would say “…she is a victim of changing times” (Lahiri 72). What ever a real Durwan was im sure Boori Ma would qualify as one because there was nothing fake about Boori Ma except maybe her stories.
The Main character of “sexy”, Miranda, is a young woman who for some reason is extremely desperate. Miranda is so desperate that she knowing tries to destroy a happy family. Miranda is able to see what the results of her actions through her friends sisters who is going through a similar event but is on the wife side of it opposed to the mistress side. Eventually Miranda friend has her sister visit after her family is destroyed by her unfaithful husband. Somehow Miranda ends up watching the woman’s son who has not taken his parents divorce very well. Miranda is touched by the little boys innocence which makes her feel more and more guilty. This guilt culminates when the boy calls her sexy. Sexy is the word that Devin, the man she is involved with, used to describe her when they were at the museum. Now Miranda realizes the truth and tells Devin “that it wasn’t fair to her, or his wife, they both deserved better” (Lahiri 110). The story ends with Miranda returning to the museum and feeling nothing which tells us she is able to move on with her life and will no longer be so desperate. With the completion of this story we can conclude that there is a pattern between all of the stories from this book. Although they do not have the cliché happy ending they still end with the main character learning some key piece of information that transforms their lives. In Miranda’s case she was desperate and it was her friend’s sister and her son that showed Miranda that she was desperate and made it possible for her to turn her life around.
The Main character of “sexy”, Miranda, is a young woman who for some reason is extremely desperate. Miranda is so desperate that she knowing tries to destroy a happy family. Miranda is able to see what the results of her actions through her friends sisters who is going through a similar event but is on the wife side of it opposed to the mistress side. Eventually Miranda friend has her sister visit after her family is destroyed by her unfaithful husband. Somehow Miranda ends up watching the woman’s son who has not taken his parents divorce very well. Miranda is touched by the little boys innocence which makes her feel more and more guilty. This guilt culminates when the boy calls her sexy. Sexy is the word that Devin, the man she is involved with, used to describe her when they were at the museum. Now Miranda realizes the truth and tells Devin “that it wasn’t fair to her, or his wife, they both deserved better” (Lahiri 110). The story ends with Miranda returning to the museum and feeling nothing which tells us she is able to move on with her life and will no longer be so desperate. With the completion of this story we can conclude that there is a pattern between all of the stories from this book. Although they do not have the cliché happy ending they still end with the main character learning some key piece of information that transforms their lives. In Miranda’s case she was desperate and it was her friend’s sister and her son that showed Miranda that she was desperate and made it possible for her to turn her life around.
The Seveth story “The Blessed Home” follows the story of a newly married couple. This story seemed more like a low budget sitcom than an actual story. For example one of the characters is very strict and uptight while they other character is more go with the flow and spur of the moment. This is like the stereotypical sitcom married couple. Well anyway as the story goes the newly married couple has just moved into their new house and are trying to get it ready for their house warming party. While cleaning the house they find several religious items hidden all over the house. Of course the uptight husband thinks this is creepy and refuses to keep them while the go with the flow wife think of this as an adventure and thinks it would be a crime to throw something like this out. The two continue to argue over the items while continuing to find more and more of them. The pattern begins to appear that the wife always gets her way. So the party finally rolls around and they have all of these Christian items laying around which makes the guests think they are Christian until the wife explains everything to them. Once everyone hears that there are hidden items all over the house it become and all out hunt looking for them. The husband is in the basement and hears all of his guests rushing to the attic to search for more hidden treasures. The husband is finally found by his wife who shows him a bust of Jesus which they had discovered and convinces him to put it on the mantel for just tonight. At this time the husband thinks to himself “She would never put it in her study, he knew. For the rest of their days together she would keep it on the center of the mantel” (Lahiri 157). Once again the husband has lost and now he does not even care that he is losing. In the last scene he just follows his wife back to the party having lost the remainder of his fighting spirit and willing to do whatever his wife tells him to.
The eighth story in this book “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar” could best be described as a series of unfortunate events. Bibi Haldar was born with a mysterious disease, which was most likely epilepsy. Because of this disease Bibi was never treated normal as a child. She could not watch television for fear it might set her off and she also lost her education by not going to school. Most of Bibi’s childhood and life was trying different cures for her disease but none of them seemed to work. One day they learn that the only way to cure Bibi is to have her married. Everyone believes this to be impossible because she has no talents to offer. Her family forgets though that it was there fault that Bibi did not go to school and get a proper education. Bibi continues her search for a husband when her cousin’s wife becomes pregnant. At this point the family becomes paranoid and banishes Bibi until the baby is born. Once the baby is born she its let back in but then the baby becomes sick and Bibi is banished again. After some time goes by they realize that Bibi is pregnant. Once Bibi has her child all of her diseases are cured and they live happily ever after even though they were never sure who the father was. After reading this story you may notice that the title has two meanings. The first is meaning is just talking about the treatments Bibi went through in an attempt to cure her disease. The second meaning is how Bibi was actually treated by her family. We can tell how the family treated her with phrases like this. “What wont be cured must be endured. Bibi has caused enough worry, added enough expenses, sullied enough of the family name” (Lahiri 163). This times into the series of unfortunate events I mentioned at the beginning. Because of the family treatment of Bibi she only became worse and worse with each event playing off the other. Because of this it could be said that Bibi’s disease may have been somewhat in her head because it stopped so suddenly for no apparent reason besides the birth of child.
The Final story is none other than “The Third and Final Continent.” This story is about a man who has come to America for his new job working at the MIT library. The main character begins to lives in some sort of apartment house run by a lady known as Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Croft is a very old woman who is very strict. Here is a nice quote for you to grasp how old she really was. “Several minutes later the door was opened by a tiny, extremely old woman. Mass of snowy hair was arranged like a small sack on top of her head” (Lahiri 177). Despite her being very strict the main character begins to respect her and learns manners from her. One day the main characters wife comes live in America. The husband feels closer to his wife because of the things that Mrs. Croft had taught him. Mrs. Croft not meaning too had brought this couple together. With all the husband learned from living from Mrs. Croft he will be able to whether all the trials in which there marriage will go through in the future. Mrs. Croft taught the main character more than just manners though he also taught him things that were necessary to know while living in America. At the same time the main character has to take care of Mrs. Croft because she is becoming older and is having a hard time taking care of herself. In a way I believe this story is about the passing on from one generation to another. With everything Mrs. Croft teaches this new couple she is passing on the torch to this new generation.
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