Strangers Coming Together

            Jhumpa Lahiri writes a stirring story in “The Third and Final Continent” with simple yet emotional prose. An important relationship in the narrator’s life is with Mrs. Croft, who provided his first real home in America—which he develops a lasting emotional bond with—and his wife Mala.

            When the narrator first moves into Mrs. Croft’s home, he is introduced to the American lifestyle of someone who is one hundred years old. Although the narrator is a stranger in this society, so is Mrs. Croft. And they develop a relationship that is not very close, but unbelievably sentimental for the narrator. One exchange that is repeated is Mrs. Croft’s amazement at the astronaut’s landing on the moon. The conversation on page 182-183 goes:

“There is an American flag on the moon, boy!”

“Yes, madame.”

“A flag on the moon! Isn’t that splendid?”

…

I felt like an idiot. But it was a small enough thing to ask. “Splendid!” I cried out.

This exchange, in which Mrs. Croft constantly expresses her pleasure and amazement of the landing on the moon, and then forces the narrator to say splendid with her is a sort of humorous engagement, yet brings some form of consistency to the narrator’s life that really helps him settle down in this new country, and his past journeys. And as annoying is it may have been, Mrs. Croft never judged the narrator for who he was or where he came from, but simply expected a few small things from him: checking the lock, saying “Splendid!” and cleaning up after himself. Although it is not written, this relationship, especially with the narrator’s shock at discovering the age of Mrs. Croft, allowed him to look at the big picture, see how regular life will eventually be, and take comfort in the presence of someone so old.

Contrarily, the narrator’s relationship with his wife is completely the opposite. They are from the same place, but are more strangers than the narrator with Mrs. Croft ever was. The narrator has to lived with Mrs. Croft, but never really felt uncomfortable in her presence. However, with his wife, he is uncomfortable and annoyed at times. The scene where he sees a women wearing a sari dragging on the ground, and she is assaulted by a dog. This scene at once showed the incongruence of Indian society with American life, as well as made the narrator realize that he will have to take care of Mala when she gets here. He refers to the women as “a mishap” (190) and felt irritated at how Mala cried when separated a mere five miles from her parents. The narrator has gotten used to American life and takes up the unfamiliar role of helping someone else adjust to this new country, instead of being the one adjusting.

Again, it is Mrs. Croft who helps bring them together, unwillingly. To a woman who is even further from what she is used to than the narrator himself, she declares, “She is a perfect lady!” (196). The narrator laughs. He looks at Mala and smiles. While the relationship between the narrator and the two women in the story are at once simple, they signify an emotional bond that can only exist between the lonely and kind. They are all lonely in life. Mrs. Croft has probably outlasted her peers. The narrator and his wife are new to the country. But, they bring each other closer, again unwillingly, yet beautiful all the same.

Works Cited

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies: Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.

Bridging the Gap: Lahiri's Closure

The close of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Final Continent” encompasses many themes including travel, the feeling of foreignness and discovery, even culture. However, the themes and conclusions that are pulled together by the final section of the piece prove most powerful and resonating, and through Lahiri’s diction and syntax, we’re left to contemplate three final themes: the passage of time, assimilation into a new culture, and the development of people and their relationships to one another. Through placing such a long gap between the previous section and the very last one, these themes are emphasized and thus we are almost forced to focus on them, centralizing them in our minds.

What’s most clear in this final section is that much time has passed. Lahiri does this syntactically by utilizing a style called “catalogue rhetoric”, that is, listing all the things that the protagonist and Mala have done, from “explor[ing] the city” to “walk[ing] to the Charles River” (213). This style of writing takes more time for us to read, and draws out each sentence longer and longer, making us as readers feel the time passing and taking moments to visualize each event listed by Lahiri. Plot-wise, we can locate the amount of time that has passed by the addition of a son into the scene and the fact that he is in college gives us a time frame as well. Additionally, the death of Mrs. Croft signifies an emotional event that places us on a solid timeline. 

Secondly, the protagonist and his wife Mala (and even their son) have made great strides in assimilating themselves into a society that, at first, seems frightening and foreign. As mentioned, one way Lahiri does this is by listing all of the ways in which the protagonist and Mala explore the city, while still maintaining relationships with “other Bengalis” (213). The purchasing of a camera in order to “document [their] lives together” shows the development made and the effort made by these characters to make record their new life (213). They’ve assimilated so well, in fact, that they worry that their son has grown so accustomed to America that he will never speak Bengali once his parents are gone. While they still hold onto their roots overseas, they’ve acknowledged that they’ve placed new roots in the Boston area, and are even familiar enough at this point to point Massachusetts Avenue and now-familiar buildings out as they drive. This portion of the text is more solidly concerned about the past, the memories that have already formed; it’s a reflection on the rest of the text. 

What I most loved about the very ending is the way it seems that the family grew closer due to their shared need to assimilate with the passing of time. Lahiri effectively displays this through the narrator/protagonist’s discussion of his relationship with Mala. While it is true, the narrator states, that they “were not yet fully in love”, it is immediately acknowledged that Mrs. Croft sparked the lessoning of distance for the two (213). After so long of not embracing or being physical, the protagonist explains that they kissed, “shy at first but quickly bold…discover[ing] pleasure and solace in each other’s arms” (213). 

I think that Lahiri’s closing section of this piece proves most powerful because of these three features, and I think I would definitely utilize her techniques in “The Third and Final Continent” in order to provide a moving end to my piece. I would allow that gap of time to occur between the last section and the one prior to emphasize the level of growth my characters have made in their new environment. What makes this piece so powerful is the way readers are relieved and feel closure because this family that they’ve followed through their lives has finally settled down.

CITATIONS:

Lahiri, Jhumpa. "The Third and Final Continent." The New Yorker (June 1999) Print.

Jhumpa Lahiri and Style in "Interpreter of Maladies"

Jhumpa Lahiri’s book, Interpreter of Maladies, is a compilation of short stories handling a myriad of topics ranging from the tragedy of loss to unrequited love. Her stories are universal in humanity but deal specifically with the experiences of Indians and the unique perspective they hold in dealing with such issues and political events undergone in their country and culture. In fairness, though, there are moments in the collection where I feel the ethnic characterization is often ambiguous aside from the physicality. This may be the justice of her work and description, though. Her style is heralded, though, as an authentic voice of modernism and is consistent throughout her works as something unique, even though at times it feels a bit heavy-handed.

               The writing style developed throughout the stories is minimalist, working to move along the plot and exposing the character psyche through outright examination. Lahiri seems to compromise any sort of aesthetic quality to her work in lieu of a more direct style that ultimately robs her stories of the emotional pay outs that the potency of each story have the potential to deliver. And, in all honesty, each story withholds a strong and surging humane quality to them that touch on inner desires and true issues of the psyche and social issues. “A Temporary Matter” touches on the inner most secrets held in a relationship and explores human intimacy and the secrets withheld to maintain that illusion. Albeit during the first reading it is engaging, the second reading proves uneventful where such phrases such as “it felt good to remember her as she was then” and “it made him shy” and it is in the revelation of a second reading that such language becomes a hindrance to appreciating it.

               Another story that has a fascinating subject matter is “The Interpreter of Maladies”, the namesake of the collection, where an Indian tour guide who has given up on his aspirations has his heart stolen by an American (American-Indian?) married woman who seeks him out to appease her sense of guilt in a breaking relationship. What Lahiri has as strength in her characters and their motivations and symbolic nuances, she loses in her writing the richness of the environment to simple language that is colloquial to a fault. She introduces tropes of figurative language, “[The monkey’s] long gray tails dangled like a series of ropes among the leaves”, that are colorful but seem otherwise devoid because the writing is so straight-forward that it offers little richness in the style. It tells, leaving nothing for the reader to imagine or guess. There is little to gain from second read-throughs.

               Ultimately, the writing underscores poignancy with such straight-forward writing. In “The Third and Final Continent”, we are given the story of an Indian student who takes a job and housing in Boston taking care of an elderly Mrs. Croft. Throughout the story the interaction of the two characters is very endearing, their respective stories and characters intermingling excellently in a way that illuminates a deeper humanity. But it’s seldom the writing itself that develops this intimacy, rather the inherent strength of the story itself. The story spends pages establishing the character and the admirable nature of Mrs. Croft, crafting a character worthy of adoration, and then, finally, her death, “Mrs. Croft’s death was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return”, is almost anti-climactic. If one were to argue that is the genius of the effect, then it would be a debatable stance, for what is more poignant is the ineffectual emptiness of usurping poignancy for the quotidian. The style is almost too minimalistic, jumping from observation to observation, action to action, like a film without the visual prowess of imagery and symbolism.

               Overall, the stylistic format is usually something reserved for taste, as her collections of stories certainly tell meaningful lives and have interesting characters, yet the writing, so blunt and devoid of whimsy does not feel as though it is something deserving of a Pulitzer Prize. It charms and seduces on the first read-through, being a very easy read certainly, but does not entice with language enough to merit anything gained from a second read through.

Movement

There is something to be said for the ability to communicate so much with so little text—though Jhumpa Lahiri’s 1999 collection, The Interpreter of Maladies, expertly weaves together tales and manages to get across a very human sense of displacement, discovery, and eventually, settlement, the final story, “The Third and Final Continent” is a strong piece in and of itself. It details the immigration of an unnamed Indian narrator to America, and his experiences adjusting to a new, distinctly different way of life. Despite the simplistic prose, Lahiri manages to use a narrative tone so effectively that it feels descriptive without ever losing the pace or the voice of the story.

“The Third and Final Continent” is good at what it does; that is, it tells a story as well as feels like a story, but it doesn’t sacrifice realism. One of the piece’s favorite techniques to employ seems to be repetition—with the “splendid!” exchange between the narrator and Mrs. Croft, the reference to cornflakes, egg curry, and other seemingly insignificant concepts, Lahiri crafts, for us, a sense of movement and evolution in the story. These items don’t change, but the narrator does, expressing growth and an expanded worldview that makes the ending all the more meaningful. The most obvious example of this movement comes on page 196, when the narrator discovers that Mrs. Croft had died.

 

It was Mala who consoled me when, reading the Globe one evening, I came across Mrs. Croft’s obituary. I had not thought of her in several months – by then those six weeks of the summer were already a remote interlude in my past – but when I learned of her death I was stricken, so much so that when Mala looked up from her knitting she found me staring at the wall, the newspaper neglected in my lap, unable to speak. Mrs. Croft’s was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.

 

He makes a note that he had not thought of Mrs. Croft in a while—he had moved on from her, and his feelings had evolved from the first time he met her. Mrs. Croft, in fact, is the source of many evolutions for the narrator; she is a sort of induction into the world of America, once he is out of the community of Bengalis, and it is through Mrs. Croft’s treatment of Mala that he learns to return to that world without absorbing himself into it again.

 

Overall, “The Third and Final Continent” works well as a self-contained story of both movement and conclusion. The narrator’s feelings and perceptions shift and move with the text, even as the text portrays everyone else as sort of objects or representations—even so, they still feel alive, and I would like to be able to work that kind of symbolism and construction into my own stories. I enjoy crafting characters, and I think it would be a good exercise to work with the significance of side characters and how to make them seem alive even through the lens of a character caught up in his or her own personal growth.

The Third and Final Continent

In his short story “The Third and Final Continent,” Jhumpa Lahiri barrows the perspective of a 36-year-old Indian man to tell the story of immigrants’ assimilation to the United States, a new home with new opportunities. In the unfamiliar surrounding of Cambridge, Massachusett , the narrator interacts with two women who become quintessential to his life; his landlord Mrs. Croft and his wife Mala.

Mrs. Croft, a 103-year-old and old-fashioned woman, slowly becomes a mother figure to the narrator. Although she is physically very weak (understandably so, given her advanced age), not being able to properly walk without canes nor open cans, she still remains strong, independent, and mentally able. In her first encounter with the narrator, she demands him to “Say ‘Splendid’” and agree with her sentiments about the moon landing. The narrator becomes more attached to Mrs. Croft during his stay at her house. He regularly spends time with her, sitting on the piano bench together and chatting. When the narrator hands her the envelop of rent money, Mrs. Croft seems to be impressed with his manners and kindness. The narrator feels compassionate towards Mrs. Croft after he learns from Helen, Mrs. Croft’s daughter, that she had been widowed a long time ago, yet remained a strong figure who provided for the family as best as she could; a complete opposite to the narrator’s mother who becomes irreparable after being widowed. He constantly worries about the Mrs. Croft's fading health.

The narrator’s relationship with Mrs. Croft does not end even after he moves out of her house in order to find a new home to accommodate Mala. After an awkward beginning to their marriage, Mala and the narrator visits Mrs. Croft who has broken her hip and is bedridden. Mrs. Croft is pleased by the way Mala dresses and approves her; “a perfect lady.” It is through Mrs. Croft’s approval and presence that Mala and the narrator shares a meaningful moment that bonds them together as a couple.

The dynamic between Mala and the narrator is slightly different from that between Mrs. Croft and the narrator. Mala and the narrator gets married through an arranged marriage in India, right after which the narrator leaves to take a job in America, leaving Mala separated from her husband for the first weeks of their marriage. Therefore, Mala and the narrator are a married couple, yet complete strangers. 

Despite her angst over marriage (she cries because she misses her family), Mala tries extremely hard to please the narrator. Although they barely talk, she still attempts to make the narrator feel at home at their new house as she furnishes it. After sharing a moment at Mrs. Croft’s house, the couple finally connect, and lead a happy life together in the beautiful suburb of Boston.

Although the way the characters interact is a bit different, both Mrs. Croft and Mala are invaluable to the narrator’s journey to find a new life in America, the third and final continent where he searches for his happiness.

The Third and Final Continent

“The Third and Final Continent,” the final chapter in Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. The story is set in 1964 and follows the journey of an Indian man who immigrates to Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to his emigration from India, the narrators’ marriage had been arranged and he flew from London, where he had been studying economics, for his wedding. Because it was an arranged marriage he had not known the woman who was to be his wife, and after their marriage he had left for Boston because he had been offered a job at MIT. He finds living at the YMCA to be too noisy and distracting for him, so he moves into a new home, owned by an elderly woman named Mrs. Croft. The narrator forms a close relationship with Mrs. Croft; is the first person he is able to form a close relationship with in America. The narrator, however, must rent a new, furnished apartment and leave Mrs. Croft when his wife, Mala, finally comes to live with him. They are complete strangers and the narrator finds it difficult to form a connection with her until he brings her to meet Mrs. Croft, who give her approval of Mala and refers to her as “a lady.” It is the style of the relationships between characters and the setting of this story that are the most important aspects of what makes this story as powerful as it is.

In India, it was traditional and normal for a husband and wife to have never known one another before they were married. It is one of the many cultural differences one might experience when traveling from India to America in the nineteen sixties, and that alone had a profound impact on the narrators life. Mala was a complete stranger to the narrator, as was he to her, and all of a sudden she had to move away from her family, which deeply upset her, to live with a man she did not know. Living together was awkward and uncomfortable for them, in the beginning, though they behaved in manners with one another and did things for one another that were typical for a husband and wife. He gave her money and she bought things to make their home their own. The first time the narrator truly has a chance to open up and allow his wife into his life is when he introduces her to Mrs. Croft.

When the narrator suggests that he and Mala go for a walk, they end up going to Mrs. Crofts house, where Mrs. Croft finds that she approves of Mala, and the narrator and his wife exchange a smile for the first time. This encounter between Mrs. Croft, her daughter Helen, Mala, and the narrator, triggered an increase in the time the narrator and his wife spent together and was the catalyst for positive change in their relationship. They were truly able to connect and begin forming their relationship because of their time with Mrs. Croft. Later on, Mala is the one who consoles the narrator when he learns of Mrs. Croft’s death, and the two eventually decide to stay in America and have a son, who later went on to study at Harvard University. Had the narrator never moved to Boston and found solace in the home of Mrs. Croft, his relationship with his wife could have gone along a different path, one which may have taken much longer for the two to grow closer together or never have formed at all. They used their time in Boston as a sort of honeymoon and explored the city together; they shared the experience of moving to a new country as a couple, and that, and the death of the narrators’ first American friend, brought them closer together.