Ess.ay 3 with Outline

Reading Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" as a Short Story Cycle

Author(s): Noelle Brada-Williams

Source: MELUS , Autumn - Winter, 2004, Vol. 29, No. 3/4, Pedagody, Canon, Context: Toward a Redefinition of Ethnic American Literary Studies (Autumn - Winter, 2004), pp. 451-464

Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi- Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/4141867

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Reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies as a Short Story Cycle

Noelle Brada-Williams

San Jose State University

It may at first seem strange to describe Jhumpa Lahiri's Inter- preter of Maladies as a short story cycle rather than simply as a collection of separate and independent stories. After all, from Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio to Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street, readers of the modem short story cycle are often cued to the unity of a collection by a single location and/or a small ensemble of recurring characters that serve to unite the various components into a whole, while Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning work features diverse and unrelated characters, a variety of narra- tive styles, and no common locale. Indeed, the text even transcends national boundaries, being set in both India and the United States. However, a deeper look reveals the intricate use of pattern and mo- tif to bind the stories together, including the recurring themes of the barriers to and opportunities for human communication; com- munity, including marital, extra-marital, and parent-child relation- ships; and the dichotomy of care and neglect. The short story cycle is a notoriously difficult genre to define.

Forrest L. Ingram points out this difficulty by describing the cy- cle's method of making meaning:

Like the moving parts of a mobile, the interconnected parts of some short story cycles seem to shift their positions with relation to the other parts, as the cycle moves forward in its typical pattern of recur- rent development. Shifting internal relationships, of course, continu- ally alter the originally perceived pattern of the whole cycle. A cy- cle's form is elusive. (13)

MEL US, Volume 29, Number 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2004)

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452 NOELLE BRADA-WILLIAMS

Susan Garland Mann asserts that the essential characteristic of the

short story cycle is the "simultaneous self-sufficiency and interde- pendence" of the stories which make up the whole (17). Mann comments on Ingram's conception of the tension which short story cycles create between the individuality of its components and the unity of the whole by noting that the "tension is revealed in the way people read cycles" (18).

An analogous tension can be found in the way people read eth- nic literature. The unique vision of an individual artist and the unique representation he or she provides of a community are often challenged by readers from both within and outside the community being represented as various readers lobby for the value of one rep- resentation over another. Such claims on writers include the de-

mand for more sanitized, more stereotype-affirming, or simply more diverse, representations.1 Examples range from controversies over the use of dialect in early twentieth-century African American literature to the depictions of sexuality and gender roles in virtually all ethnic American literatures up to the present time, including, most recently, Lois-Ann Yamanaka's depiction of a Filipino American sexual predator in Blu's Hanging. Although most ra- tional readers are aware of the diversity and individuality of any given ethnic group (especially the vast population Lahiri engages of South Asia and its diaspora), the logic of representation implies, especially with regards to groups under-represented within a na- tional literature, that a work depicting a part of a community "represents" the whole.

We see the logic of representation at work in the naive2 reader who naturally bases his or her understanding of a particular demo- graphic unit on the few representations he or she has come across, as well as the experienced literature professor who attempts to cre- ate a syllabus that is "representative" of diverse populations through what can be read in a single term. Readers both new to ethnic literature and those who are experts in the field thus face the common dilemma of obscuring part and whole due to the inevita- bly finite nature of both available representations and one's own reading. Not only does this problem of obscuring part and whole work to the advantage of the short story cycle as a genre but the genre can, as we see in Interpreter of Maladies, work towards

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LAHIRI'S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES 453

solving the problem of representing an entire community within the necessarily limited confines of a single work by balancing a variety of representations rather than offering the single representa- tion provided by the novel or the individual short story. The popularity and critical success of Lahiri's Interpreter of

Maladies in both the United States and India could in part be due to the delicate balancing of representations she provides through the cycle as a whole. For example, the cheating husbands of "Sexy" are balanced by the depiction of the unfaithful Mrs. Das of "Interpreter of Maladies." The relative ease with which Lilia of "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" participates in an American childhood is contrasted with the separation and stigmatization that the Dixit children experience in the story "Sexy." Mrs. Sen's se- vere homesickness and separation from US culture is contrasted with the adaptability of Lilia's mother and Mala in "The Third and Final Continent." The balancing of the generally negative depic- tion of an Indian community in "A Real Durwan" with the gener- ally positive portrayal in "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" is yet another example not only of the resulting balanced representations that the genre affords Lahiri but is itself one of many ways through which Lahiri constructs a conversation among her pieces.

The first and last stories in the cycle most clearly evoke a bal- ancing dialogue through a careful mirroring of their basic plots. "The Third and Final Continent" both reflects and reverses the plot of the first story, "A Temporary Matter." While the first story of the cycle relates the tale of the death of a son and the possible de- struction of a marriage, the concluding story provides a tale of the survival and resilience of both the parents' marriage and their son. The plot of the final story emphasizes the "ordinary" heroism of the narrator and his wife through the trials of migrating across con- tinents and coming to care for a stranger by contrasting the pair to the narrator's fragile mother and their life in the United States to the short stay of the astronauts on the moon. They are also con- nected to the elderly Mrs. Croft and her near-miraculous ability to survive; she seems to have traveled as far in time as the main char- acters have in space. By placing Shoba and Shukumar's story in her readers' minds first, Lahiri is able to inform readers of the final story of the ways Mala and her husband could have failed as a

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454 NOELLE BRADA-WILLIAMS

couple and as parents, thus emphasizing their experiences as achievements rather than mere norms. The placement of these two stories at the beginning and end of the collection also helps to sig- nal readers of the cyclical nature of the collection.3 Susan Mann notes that titles are key "generic signals" and that

"collections that are not cycles have traditionally been named after a single story to which the phrase 'and other stories' is appended.... Generally placed first or last in the volume, the title story repre- sents what the author feels is the best work or, in some cases, the best-known work" (14). Mann cites Faulkner's insistence on hav- ing "and Other Stories" removed from Go Down, Moses as support for the absence of the phrase as a conscious signaling device, as can be seen in Lahiri's text. Other critics have described the title of

Lahiri's cycle as descriptive of her talents and her subject matter in all of the stories, rather than just a naming of the third story in the collection.

Scholars have noted many common themes among the stories, often focusing on the sense of displacement attached to the immi- grant experience. In their analysis of "A Temporary Matter," Basudeb and Angana Chakrabarti make several claims regarding common themes in Lahiri's stories, for example, that "this sense of belonging to a particular place and culture and yet at the same time being an outsider to another creates a tension in individuals which happens to be a distinguishing feature of Lahiri's characters" and that Lahiri deals "with broken marriages" (24-25). Ashutosh Dubey looks at the immigrant experience in three of the nine sto- ries and notes that three more stories dealing with second genera- tion Indian immigrants focus on the "themes of emotional strug- gles of love, relationships, communication against the backdrop of immigrant experience" (25). In "Food Metaphor in Jhumpa La- hiri's Interpreter of Maladies," Asha Choubey traces her theme through five of the nine stories, analyzing their representation of Indian food and the use of food as metaphors for home and the connection between people. She also asserts that Lahiri's "pro- tagonists-all Indians-settled abroad are afflicted with a 'sense of exile"' (par. 4). A sense of exile and the potential for and fre- quent denial of- human communication can be found in all of Lahiri's short stories and indeed are the defining, structuring ele-

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LAHIRI' S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES 455

ments of her short story cycle.4 Yet despite their insights, many of the critics cited above ignore the two stories set wholly in India and without any American characters, "A Real Durwan" and "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar." Choubey's statement also ignores the non-Indian protagonists of Miranda ("Sexy") and Eliot ("Mrs. Sen's"). Common themes are important to defining a story cycle; but to distinguish between a collection containing stories merely characteristic of a writer's dominant interests and a true short story cycle, a single theme tying every story together is needed.

Many critics have suggested marriage as the unifying theme for the collection, and marriage is indeed a key element of most of the stories. Even "A Real Durwan" has the subplot of Mr. and Mrs. Dalal's bickering and reconciliation. Mrs. Sen's marriage to Mr. Sen may not be the main focus of her story, but it does create an important backdrop for her homesickness and several of her more pertinent observations to Eliot. The one story that breaks with the theme of marriage or marital problems is "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine." Although it depicts a married couple and their friend Mr. Pirzada, who is himself a married man, the relationships at the focus of the text are those between Lilia and Mr. Pirzada and

the trio that Mr. Pirzada and Lilia's parents temporarily create dur- ing East Pakistan's war of independence. As Lilia notes, "Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear" (41). Ironically they achieve this unity as their nations enter into the war that will eventually allow East Pakistan to become the independent nation of Bangladesh. Not only human connection but human communication is yet an- other important theme for the cycle which runs through this story as Mr. Pirzada learns to interpret the American "thank you" just as Miranda in "Sexy" gradually comes to interpret the title of her story.

What has not been sufficiently noticed is that carefully executed rituals mark the relationships in Interpreter of Maladies. For in- stance, "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine": Lilia takes care to save up the candy Mr. Pirzada gives her, treating it like an offering in her prayers for Mr. Pirzada's family. Each evening at dinner Mr. Pirzada carefully winds and sets out the pocket watch he keeps set

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456 NOELLE BRADA-WILLIAMS

to the time of his homeland, which is one of the things Lilia notices after she begins "to study him with extra care" (30, emphasis mine). These details evoke the most important theme running throughout the cycle: all nine stories are woven together with the frequent representations of extreme care and neglect. Repetitions of this dichotomy occur in a variety of communities including whole neighborhoods, marital and extramarital relationships, and relationships between children and adults. Sometimes carelessness as a trait in Interpreter of Maladies defines a period of significant tension or even mourning as Lilia's parents shift from carefully prepared meals to simple boiled eggs and rice as the crisis in East Pakistan deepens. At other moments in the collection, a lack of care signifies fundamental differences between peoples or is repre- sented as a permanent flaw, a human failing central to an individ- ual character or even a whole community. The needs for "care" are linked to love, duty or responsibility, and homesickness. Images of neglect range from a dress that has slipped off its hanger to a car accident. Such images serve as augurs of the characters' emotional states and processes. "A Temporary Matter" opens with a description of a woman ar-

riving home: Shoba "let the strap of her leather satchel. .. slip from her shoulders, and left it in the hallway" (1). We are then told that she looks "like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble," namely, one who came home in gym clothes and with her makeup either rubbed off or smeared (1). Readers quickly come to realize that a dramatic change has come over the woman once marked not only by her physical beauty but her careful and meticulous manner in all things. We learn these details indirectly through a third-person narration that is filtered through Shoba's husband's point of view, the husband who will later put her things away but who is himself marked by personal neglect. He has not yet brushed his teeth by the evening of the day on which the story begins and has taken to lying in bed and avoiding work on his dis- sertation or even leaving his home. Lahiri uses a variety of such small details to evoke not only the

vast change that has come over the couple since the stillbirth of their son, but to reveal the great neglect in which their own rela- tionship as a couple has fallen since that tragedy. One small image

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LAHIRI' S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES 457

of neglect and decay is particularly resonant with the state of their marriage: When Shukumar, the husband, picks up a potted ivy in order to use it as a makeshift candle holder while the electricity will be turned off, he finds that "Even though the plant was inches from the tap, the soil was so dry that he had to water it first before the candles would stand straight" (10). Thus, Lahiri subtly evokes the couple's common state of shock and lack of interest in their shared environment as both have failed to water a plant even when doing so would have taken almost no effort at all. Taken together, the sheer number of these small failures to provide care helps to define the depths of Shoba and Shukumar's common yet isolated experience of grief for their lost child as well as their waning care and love for each other.

"Interpreter of Maladies" similarly focuses on a young couple with severe marital problems, but their carelessness is most often evoked in their treatment of their three children. "Interpreter of Maladies" is a third-person narrative filtered through the point of view of Mr. Kapasi, the family's driver while sight-seeing in India. The story opens with the parents bickering over who will take their daughter to the restroom. Mr. Kapasi will later think that the fam- ily is "all like siblings. .. it was hard to believe [Mr. and Mrs. Das] were regularly responsible for anything other than themselves" (49). The first paragraph of the story notes that the mother "did not hold the little girl's hand as they walked to the restroom" (43). As in "A Temporary Matter," small signs of negligence add up to re- veal deeper emotional difficulties and detachments. This otherwise unremarkable scene acts as foreshadowing for what may be called the twin climaxes of the story: the attack on one of the boys by monkeys and the revelation of his illegitimate birth. Notably it is the popcorn that his mother has carelessly dropped that draws the monkeys to her son as well as the fact that he is left unsupervised that leads to the attack.

Mr. and Mrs. Das's lack of carefulness in raising their children extends to their carelessness in maintaining their marriage vows, at least on Mrs. Das's part. Although their driver, Mr. Kapasi, recog- nizes similarities between the Das's marriage and his own, he him- self functions as a stark contrast to Mr. and Mrs. Das's lack of

care. Not unlike Mr. Pirzada, Mr. Kapasi is characterized by his

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458 NOELLE BRADA-WILLIAMS

carefully tailored clothing and meticulous manners. Simon Lewis has read this story as a rewriting and updating of the trip to the Marabar Caves in E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, this time from the perspective of an Indian national, Mr. Kapasi in the role formerly held by Dr. Aziz (219). Lewis's argument can be sup- ported by Mr. Kapasi's dream "of serving as an interpreter be- tween nations" (Lahiri 59) which he fantasizes fulfilling through a future correspondence with Mrs. Das. The way in which Mr. Ka- pasi gives Mrs. Das his contact information is illustrative of their essential differences as characters: she hands "him a scrap of paper which she had hastily ripped from a page of her film magazine" upon which he writes "his address in clear, careful letters" (55). She then tosses "it into the jumble of her bag" (56). The clear dif- ferences in these two characters in their relationship to care or lack of care, specifically in relation to responsibility, makes their final disconnect inevitable. While they both can be seen longing for communication with others, Mrs. Das is a woman with a life of relative comfort and ease who yearns to be freed of the responsi- bilities of marriage and children, and Mr. Karpasi is a man who has given up his dreams to support his family and who only yearns for some recognition and interest in his life. By the time his address falls out of Mrs. Das's bag and is borne off by the wind, Mr. Ka- pasi has already let go of his fantasy of communicating across con- tinents and between individuals.

In "Mrs. Sen's" the title character takes excellent care of the

eleven-year old Eliot, the filter of the third-person narrative, for most of the story. One period when she acts differently is when she learns of her grandfather's death. As in "A Temporary Matter," images of carelessness and the cessation of past routines are used to evoke characters in mourning. Mrs. Sen's care-giving activities include not only feeding Eliot as well as his mother when she ar- rives to pick him up but in preparing elaborate meals for her and Mr. Sen's evening meal. During her hour-long daily ritual of chop- ping up ingredients, Mrs. Sen has Eliot stay on the couch, far from her chopping blade: "She would have roped off the area if she could. Once, though, she broke her own rule; in need of additional

supplies.., she asked Eliot to fetch something from the kitchen... 'Careful, oh dear, be careful,' she cautioned as he approached"

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LAHIRI'S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES 459

(115). This same daily ritual or routine connects Mrs. Sen with In- dia. Describing the scene before a wedding when the neighborhood women would gather to prepare food with blades such as hers, she states, "It is impossible to fall asleep those nights, listening to their chatter. [...] Here in this place where Mr. Sen has brought me, I cannot sometimes sleep in so much silence" (115). She also asks Eliot, "if I began to scream right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come?" (116). Drawing on his own experience, Eliot can only answer, "Maybe. ... They might call you,... But they might complain that you were making too much noise" (116-17). Mrs. Sen is homesick for the kind of community she had in In-

dia, a community defined by a responsibility to participate in the lives of others rather than a responsibility not to interfere or be in any way intrusive in the lives of others. Mrs. Sen's statement when she is contemplating the fearful task of driving is ironically appli- cable to both the other drivers and herself: "'Everyone, this people, too much in their world"' (121). The American model of polite be- havior depicted in Lahiri's work is to be wholly in one's own world and to maintain the smells, sounds, and emotions of that world so that they do not encroach upon another individual's life. Mrs. Sen's notion of community is the opposite. Yet her ability to become distracted while driving marks her as someone lost in her own world and oblivious to the needs and safety of other drivers.5 While Eliot's mom views the other cars as mere scenery, as inani- mate objects, and is able to negotiate the road to the beach with ease, Mrs. Sen is hyper-conscious of the existence of other beings on the street but unable to perform in such a way as not to intrude in the lives of other drivers. This otherwise careful person becomes an extremely careless driver, and an accident results. Although the accident causes very little physical damage to Eliot or Mrs. Sen, it puts an end even to the limited form of community that the two had come to share with each other.

Lahiri represents examples of Indian community in two stories that are set off from the other seven stories not only by being set wholly in India and with all Indian nationals as characters but in their distinctive narrative style. "A Real Durwan" and "The Treat- ment of Bibi Haldar" continue to focus on a central dichotomy of carelessness and carefulness. Both stories shift from Lahiri's usual

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460 NOELLE BRADA-WILLIAMS

practice of using a filtered third-person or first-person narrative. While elsewhere this technique provides a detailed look into the interior life of most of Lahiri's characters, the lives and unspoken thoughts of Boori Ma and Bibi Haldar are left unknown to the reader. Each story resembles a legend as it depicts characters who manage to suffer through and survive extreme adversity. The lack of representation of their individual thoughts, memories, and moti- vations also lends the title characters a mythic or allegorical qual- ity. In these two stories the community surrounding the character referred to in the title is as much the focus of the tale as any single character.

Boori Ma is a refugee who, although a woman, performs the du- ties of "A Real Durwan" or doorman in a Calcutta apartment build- ing. We are told that she "maintained a vigil no less punctilious than if she were the gatekeeper of a house on Lower Circular Road, or Jodphur Park, or any other fancy neighborhood" (73). When we first meet her, she is inspecting her tattered bedding for insects. A sympathetic resident of the building asks, "Do you think it's beyond us to provide you with clean quilts?" (75). As this statement reveals, the neighbor's good intentions are mixed with her sensitivity to her own limited social status. The same day will bring a change in the neighbor's status and will propel the entire building into a fury of building renovations aimed at increasing each resident's relative status in the world. Boori Ma, who had previously swept the stairs twice a day and kept suspicious charac- ters away from the building, is pushed out of her routine and even her post by the renovation efforts. The residents seem to forget to be hospitable in the rush to be genteel. Boori Ma begins wandering the neighborhood and spending her life savings on snacks. Eventu- ally the keys and savings that she had so carefully saved despite partition, dislocation, and the loss of her family, are stolen from her. In the meantime, the sink that began the renovation craze is stolen and Boori Ma is blamed for carelessness and literally thrown out onto the street. In the focus on and care for material status and

the material repair of the building that physically defines the com- munity, the apartment community has failed to care for its mem- bers, including Boori Ma who for years had been the primary care- taker of the building.

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LAHIRI'S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES 461

"The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" provides a depiction of com- munity in opposition to that described in "A Real Durwan." La- hiri's technique in this story is similar to Faulkner's method in "A Rose For Emily," even down to the use of a first person plural nar- rator, a communal "we." Lahiri acknowledges her debt to Faulkner in an interview with PifMagazine, where she states it "was an ex- periment for" herself to replicate the nonspecific collective narra- tive voice of Faulkner's tale. She describes the narrator of her story as "a group of women [with] no particular identity." The first per- son plural inevitably emphasizes the role of the community in the story. In contrast to the neighbors in "A Real Durwan," the com- munity represented in "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" take their responsibility to a fellow community member very seriously.

In "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar," set in an unnamed small town outside Calcutta, the narrative "we" take turns feeding, cloth- ing, teaching, chaperoning, and generally looking out for Bibi. The care given to Bibi, first by her father and then by an army of "fam- ily, friends, priests, palmists, spinsters, gem therapists, prophets, and fools"-as well as other "concerned members of our town," at least in treating her epilepsy-like illness, is so great that it is bur- densome (158). But after she loses her father and is left in the ne- glectful care of her only remaining family, her cousin Haldar and his wife, she begins to yearn for marriage. As much as they do for her, the neighbors admit "she was not our responsibility, and in our private moments we were thankful for it" (167). Incensed by her family's ill treatment of Bibi, the neighbors boycott the cousin's cosmetics shop and succeed in driving him out of business and out of town. The neighbors "At every opportunity [...] reminded her that we surrounded her, that she could come to us if she ever needed advice or aid of any kind" (171). But they leave her to her- self at night and eventually Bibi is found to be pregnant. This pregnancy leads to an amazing transformation in which she is al- most miraculously healed and becomes a capable, self-supporting businesswoman who now takes great care not only of her business but, as newly trained by the community of women around her, of her son as well. Bibi's desire for marriage and seemingly magical cure by motherhood balances and contrasts the depiction of Mrs. Das, who is seeking a remedy for the responsibility of marriage

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462 NOELLE BRADA-WILLIAMS

and motherhood. The mystery of Bibi's pregnancy is never solved. Although several possibilities are suggested, it is ultimately un- clear not only who the father of her child is but even whether the birth arose out of an unreported crime or through Bibi's own choice and willing consent. Lahiri leaves it up to the reader to de- cide.

We see Lahiri's characteristic refusal of definite closure in

many other stories as well, including "This Blessed House" which is similar to "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" in that both stories

offer a more nuanced depiction of the collection's general valuing of carefulness. Bibi flourishes only once she is without the contin- ual care of others and yet is herself given the responsibility for car- ing for another. The carefulness of Sanjeev in "This Blessed House" seems more related to his own worries about what other

people think and the rituals he had established as a bachelor than anything positive for his marriage. His wife Twinkle's carelessness is ultimately connected with creativity and joie de vivre as much as it is with selfishness. While ever-practical Sanjeev can recognize, via the opinions of his friends, his wife's objective value, he seems unable to appreciate it. The silver bust of Jesus that they find in the attic becomes symbolic of Twinkle herself:

He hated its immensity, and its flawless, polished surface, and its un- deniable value. He hated that it was in his house, and that he owned it. Unlike the other things they'd found, this contained dignity, solem- nity, beauty even. But to his surprise these qualities made him hate it all the more. Most of all he hated it because he knew that Twinkle

loved it. (157)

The story closes with Sanjeev carrying the silver bust to the living room where Twinkle has asked it to be placed on the mantel, against Sanjeev's wishes. Our last image is of Sanjeev in a balanc- ing act, being "careful not to let the feather hat slip" from the statue and following his wife. Readers can interpret this as one of Sanjeev's last acts to please his wife or, in stark contrast, as indica- tive of an eventual balancing of their character differences and Sanjeev's following of Twinkle into a more spontaneous and play- ful approach to life.

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LAHIRI' S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES 463

We are given the freedom to create our own closure, and in many cases our own judgments as to the outcomes suggested by Lahiri's narratives. But with this freedom comes our responsibility to read with care. Reading the text as a short story cycle and not just a collection reveals Lahiri's careful balancing of a range of representations and her intricate use of pattern and motif. By read- ing the stories as a cycle, readers not only receive the additional layers of meaning produced by the dialogue between stories but a more diverse and nuanced interpretation of members of the South Asian diaspora.

Notes

1. Such controversies over representation are not new. In 1926, W.E.B. Du Bois, in "Criteria of Negro Art," described what artists face more eloquently than I can here.

2. I use the term "nai've" to describe a variety of readers, including students who may be new to reading ethnic literature as well as individuals of any age or level of education who may be ignorant of the communities depicted in ethnic litera- ture. This lack of knowledge, willful or not, may stem from the varied regional demographics of the US or from the still segregated nature of American society. 3. The truly cyclical nature of the structure of this collection, in addition to the fact that Interpreter of Maladies is much closer to a selection of short stories than a novel on the spectrum that Ingram defines, leads me to use the term "short story cycle" rather than Dunn and Morris's "composite novel." For more discussion specifically on ethnic short-story cycles, see Nagel and Davis. I am grateful to Dr. Cheng Lok Chua for suggesting these sources as well as for the advice and encouragement I received on this essay from both Drs. Chua and Amritjit Singh. 4. Mann notes that "Because cycles consist of discrete, self-sufficient stories, they are especially well suited to handle certain subjects, including the sense of isolation or fragmentation or indeterminacy that many twentieth-century charac- ters experience" (11). Ingram's study of Kafka's Hunger Artist cycle focuses on the barriers in communication depicted. Lahiri has said that "characters [that she is] drawn to all face some barrier of communication" and she links this to grow- ing up in two countries ("Maladies of Belonging"). 5. Dubey asserts that her "stubborn refusal to learn [to drive] can be seen as a subconscious... resistance to the dictated terms of this new world" (24).

Works Cited

Chakrabarti, Basudeb and Angana Chakrabarti. "Context: A Comparative Study of Jhumpa Lahiri's 'A Temporary Matter' and Shubodh Ghosh's 'Jatugriha.'" The Journal ofl Indian Writing in English 30.1 (2002): 23-29.

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464 NOELLE BRADA-WILLIAMS

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All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms