Interpreter of Maladies: Chs 5-6 Blog Posts

9/17/2015

In her collection, Lahiri is very much concerned with ideas of love and loss. Comment on the development of these ideas in "Sexy" and "Mrs. Sen's" by looking at Lahiri's development of character, tone, diction, POV, etc.

Last Name Ab -Le: Your Primary Blog Entry should be about "Sexy" (Chapter 5) and your Secondary Bog Responses should be in response to Primary Blog Posts regarding"Mrs. Sen's" (Chapter 6).

Last Name Ma - Vu:
Your Primary Blog Entry should be about "Mrs. Sen's" (Chapter 6) and your Secondary Bog Responses should be in response to Primary Blog Posts regarding "Sexy" (Chapter 5).

Part One Expectations (respond to the prompt above): 200-250 words, minimal errors in grammar and usage, thoughtful and thorough writing. Please use the assigned "number" given to you in class as your "pen name." Due by Friday night (if you can).

Part Two Expectations (read everyone's first responses, select two that interest you, and respond to their ideas): 100-150 words EACH, minimal errors in grammar and usage, thoughtful and thorough writing. Please use the assigned "pen name" given to you in class. Due by Sunday night.

9/19/2015 03:06:24 pm

As Eliot spends more time at Mrs. Sen's house, he learns about her culture and also gets to know more about her life. In the beginning, she seemed to be content with her life but as time went on, Eliot realized that she was not as happy as he thought she was. She used to keep to a routine and made sure everything got done in a timely manner. Overtime, she did not care as much and confessed that she missed being in India. "'They think I live like a queen, Eliot...They think I live in a palace.'" (Lahiri 125) Her family and friends back in India think that the life she is living in America is better than theirs. They don’t realize that she is unhappy with this new life. Eliot is also aware of the space between Mr. and Mrs. Sen. "They didn't hold hands or put their arms around each other's waists." (Lahiri 130) The tone of this quote was very distant. The two were with each other physically but not mentally. "'You will miss one day, and another, and then she will have to drag herself onto a bus just to get herself a bag of lozenges.'" (Lahiri 132) Mrs. Sen had a resentful tone. You can tell she is referring to herself and her husband when creating this scenario. She felt like it was a burden for him to help her do things and wanted her to be less dependent on him.

9/20/2015 09:05:16 pm

I liked how you mentioned Mrs. Sen and her happiness as an idea of love and loss in the chapter. At first when she seemed to be content in Eliot’s point of view, that was equivalent to the love part. Then, when Eliot found out how much she missed India, that was the shift. This changed the “love” for her life in America, to a “loss”. In this chapter the concept of love and loss is really evident for the relationship Mrs. Sen has for India. Like you had mentioned, Mrs. Sen had told Eliot about how the people back in India thinks she’s lucky for being able to live in America, but they do not know how she actually feels.

9/20/2015 11:00:28 pm

I also like how you used Mr. and Mrs. Sen’s relationship as an idea of love and loss, because it really was. In Eliot’s eyes he sees all the different changes in Mrs. Sen’s behavior and mood before the big accident. Her mood changed from having such a content marriage and life and sad and a bit depressing, so you can say she lost her happiness. I wasn’t the Mr. and Mrs. Sen were in a horrible relationship they didn’t have that love connection. She felt like she lost her independence when asking Mr. Sen to go and get fish, so she was trying to get it back.

9/21/2015 01:00:07 am

As you mention at the end of your response you talked about how Mrs. Sen felt like it was a burden for her husband to help her do things. I do believe that Mr. Sen wants his wife to be less dependent on him and more able to go wherever she chooses without relying on him for assistance. He wants his wife to get use to driving instead of being driven everywhere she goes. In the beginning of the chapter Mrs. Sen had mention that when she was back in Indian that she was use to having a chauffeur. But it seems that Mr. Sen wanted his wife to experience the independence and enjoy of being able to drive herself places but as the story continues Mrs. Sen becomes less and less eager to drive as she faces difficulties while on the road.

9/21/2015 08:05:38 pm

I agree with you that she wasn't as happy as he thought but I think it was also do to the fact that her grandfather had died that really seemed to hit home with her of how far away sure actually was from her family she was. Which was emphasized by her and her husband being so separated that she didn't have much of a confidant who actually could understand her feeling of separation. Especially with her feeling of being a burden to her husband as well due to her being unable to drive. But instead she resided within a child because that was the closest person she had.

9/27/2015 11:03:59 am

I completely agree with you. What I noticed while reading this chapter and especially after your analysis that these characters and those feelings were very similar to those of "a temporary matter". There is a very similar tone to me but for different reasons. This chapter really helped to build the love and loss. When we read the first chapter its a very direct connection of love and loss in a very literal sense. In this chapter we see that the love and loss can stem from something deeper that just love for another person but a love for your home and losing that which created a loss in the relationship.

9/19/2015 09:21:03 pm

In Lahiri’s short story “Sexy”, he is able to show how an individual, in this case Miranda, can lose herself in order to avoid loneliness, while communicating this, he provides a confused tone, since she’s uncertain of many things. Miranda is a very young and decent woman, she is someone who has never felt true love and is captivated by the idea of it. Miranda’s experiences with “love” in high school and college have been disastrous, so she hasn’t really had the experience or courage to determinate a relationship that is not good for her well being, so she begins a forbidden relationship with Dev, a married man. Miranda would constantly be exposed to her friend and co-worker Laxmi stories about her cousin and the whole cheating/ abandoning situation. I feel as though the evolution of Laxmi’s cousin situation, help her feel as though what she is doing wasn’t out of the ordinary at times, and slowly also helped to bring her to her senses, take their pain and have no wish to replicate it among anyone. “Then she would tell him the things she had known all along that it wasn’t fair to her, or to his wife, that they both deserved better, that there was no point in it dragging on” (Lahiri 110). This is the moment that Miranda finally came to realize that the whole thing wasn’t fair or good, that all it was creating was a fictitious love, which was only lust. The moment is very important, since it shows an evolution on recognition of self love, Miranda was treated badly by guys, and now, she’s finally beginning to realized that she’s shouldn’t be second in line, but that she’s good enough to be first to someone.

9/20/2015 11:27:58 pm

I agree that Miranda loses herself in order to find love. We see this through her journey with Dev, a married man. In fact, Miranda defends this relationship by saying “ I know what it’s like to be lonely” (Lahiri 89). I do also see a change in Miranda. She finally realized that the relationship was not real and like you said just a “fictitious love”. This scene most definitely shows Miranda’s recognition of self-love. So in other words, Miranda gets rid of her “Mr. Big” and finds out she’s okay being single. She will find someone who puts her first.

9/21/2015 12:28:53 am

I also agree that Miranda loses herself to find love. She is someone who has never really experienced it for herself. So even then is she not herself. She basically loses herself to try and do something that she is totally unfamiliar with. But after, she is able to realize that what was going on was not the right thing to do. But after, even though she tried falling in love, she also realizes that she is okay without being in love. There was a shift from the beginning of the book to the end when she thought that love was the way to go, but it was clearly not.

9/21/2015 08:50:37 am

I agree that Lahiri sets a confusing tone throughout her short story, “Sexy”. Because Miranda had a difficult time with relationships in the past, she felt no regrets when she first started dating Dev. She jumped from her needs for love with Dev to Laxmi’s not-so-compelling stories of her cousin’s husband’s affair with another woman. I think that is was set this confusing tone; Miranda wasn’t sure if what she was doing was right or wrong because she only knew that she need love. The quote you chose was great, as it really does mark Miranda’s realization of her flawed relationship with Dev, and demonstrates the “evolution on recognition of self love”.

10/4/2015 12:14:53 pm

I agree with you when you say that Miranda has to lose herself in order to find love. I think that she is almost scarred from her past experiences to go out there and find new love. She feels as if her college experience will happen again. She is very young when comparing her to the real world to be worrying about love. The old love that she did have was nothing to worry about and there is so much left out there for her. I feel like Miranda is forcing love upon herself too fast and too much because she feels like she’s lonely and doesn’t have anyone. She needs to know that she doesn’t need love to be happy.

9/19/2015 10:08:18 pm

In the chapter named Mrs. Sen’s, Jhampa Lahiri had incorporated the concepts of love and loss. Lahiri had done this through Mrs. Sen’s elaborated lifestyle and methods of life. Through the chapter Eliot’s interpretations of his time with Mrs. Sen, had revealed Mrs. Sen’s love and passion for her culture. Mrs. Sen was a very proud women from India who refused to let her values be faltered in her time, in America. She was a very rooted women to her cultural identity and as Eliot’s caretaker/babysitter, he was present to intake her traditions and customs and compare them to his own. Mrs. Sen’s love for her born-home seeped through her routines, evidently showing her remorse for the loss. She reminisces about her home as she talks about how, “she had grown up eating fish twice a day…in Calcutta people ate fish first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, as a snack after school if they were lucky” (Lahiri, 123). Down to her new home’s Indian essence, appreciation for the child innocence and care for keeping tradition, Mrs. Sen had displayed love and pride for her culture. The immense sadness that Mrs. Sen showed when coming to the conclusion that she had lost the effects of her home (Lahiri, 126). She showed this further gone depression as Eliot describe how,” Mrs. Sen refused to practice driving…grow cold on the coffee table” (Lahiri, 127).

9/20/2015 10:08:57 pm

I agree that the theme of love and loss was shown through Mrs. Sen's connection with her culture and her home. Whenever she received a letter from home, her whole personality would change for a while. Eliot noticed that she would become warm and happy but when this feeling faded, she would return to her closed off personality. Also, when she mentions that her family believes she lives like royalty, readers can feel the true sadness she feels- readers know that she would give up all her possessions for the life she once had back home. This proves that her home is her true source of happiness- the thing she regrets giving up for her life with her husband.

9/20/2015 11:22:55 pm

I agree that Mrs. Sen was deeply in love with her tradition and culture and also instilled things from her culture in her everyday life. She was very content with how her life was going but it think while she was showing Eliot her culture and she began to miss India. She missed the people and her over all culture that came with “home”. Eating fresh fish was a part of her culture, that’s what she grew up eating, and when Mr. Sen didn’t want to go and get the fish, she broke down crying. Not because she couldn’t get her way but because he was trying to neglect her from a part of herself, and that’s why she tried in every way to go and get the fish.

10/7/2015 09:23:06 pm

It's interesting how you combined the idea of culture and identity with the idea of love and loss for this chapter. Obviously Mrs. Sen has a very strong love towards her culture such as when she prepares her fish and has it twice a day because that is something she does for it is a part of who she is. The love for this habit runs so deep that when she is almost unable to obtain the fish for her to prepare she gets very upset. This loss she almost has breaks her down a bit and even causes her to go out of character.

9/19/2015 11:16:25 pm

In the chapter “Sexy”, you can see how Lahiri is concerned with the ideas of love and loss through the relationship between Miranda and Dev. At the beginning of the chapter, Miranda was head over heels for Dev and did not mind the idea of being his mistress. By the time the chapter ended, the two had drifted apart and Miranda did not feel the same way about Dev. You can see the biggest shift in Miranda’s feelings for Dev when Rohin defines the word “sexy” to Miranda. “It means loving someone you don’t know” (Lahiri 107). The way that Miranda reacted to his definition, was like realization had hit her that Dev did not know her and fell in love with her just like that. Miranda had even imagined a conversation between Rohin’s parents, yelling at each other about Rohin’s dad leaving his family for a young women in London, all because he found her “sexy”. When Dev had called her sexy in the beginning of the chapter, it had meant so much to her and made her so confident and flattered. However, after she heard Rohin’s definition, the word had lost it’s original value to her. The word sexy had then on changed from a compliment, to a word that made her feel suffocated.

9/20/2015 03:01:36 pm

I agree with you that there was a shift in how Miranda felt towards Dev after learning the definition of "sexy". To Miranda, she thought Dev found her sexy because he was truly interested in who she was as a person. In her mind it felt like a much more intimate affair. Her attitude towards the relationship changed because she realized that "sexy" meant not knowing the person you love. It bothered Miranda to think that Dev was not taking to time to get to know her. It seemed like he was more interested in what he was doing, not necessarily who he was doing it with. I agree that this would make the value of the word "sexy" go down in Miranda's mind. In a way, I also think this changed how Miranda saw herself.

9/20/2015 06:17:31 pm

I agree that the word sexy had changed dramatically to Miranda from the first time she heard Dev whispered it to her to the point that Rohin defined the word. At first Miranda was so amazed by the word that she felt a deeper connection to Dev. But as the story continued to mention more about Laxmi's cousin and her husband difficult situation they are facing. The shift in the mood begun to change slowly as the story came close to the end. Miranda started to think more and more about the secret relationship she and Dev are having behind his wife's back while knowing that her friend's cousin is dealing with a similar situation of her husband fallen in love with a woman he doesn't even know which he decided to leave his wife for. Over the period of time listening to her friend's story, Miranda started to feel guilt as she imagine Dev wife being at home expecting her husband to be jogging outside instead inside the apartment making love to Miranda. That same guilt pushed Miranda to end things between Dev.

9/20/2015 08:36:14 pm

I think that you are completely right with the concept of Miranda’s shift while being visited by Rohin. I think that Rohin’s interpretation of the word sexy made Miranda come to the conclusion that the relationship that she and developed was not meant to be. “Loving someone you don’t know” is the actual part that I think stood out to Miranda, she and Dev had not known each other for very long but they had both caught feelings (Lahiri, 107). Even in the time of their affair, Miranda had not learned much about Dev’s character and even if his interpretation of the word sexy was different from Rohin’s she wouldn’t have known so her mind would have wondered to the same conclusion either way.

9/20/2015 09:21:18 pm

Miranda’s idea of “sexy” is much more intimate than everyone else. She wants to be “sexy” for Dev at first. But after hearing that “sexy” means falling in love with someone you don't really know. She no longer wants to be “sexy” for Dev. She craves intimacy. Earlier in the short story she claims Dev is extremely romantic, like old school romantic, with the flowers and things like that. She also explains that he knows what it’s like to be lonely. Miranda wants a more personal and emotional connection with. And Dev really just wants an affair, he doesn't really care who that affair is with.

9/20/2015 11:38:34 pm

I agree that love and loss is exhibited exceptionally through the relationship of Dev and Miranda. Miranda defends her decisions to have an affair with a married man because she believes that being lonely can be tough. I think everyone all of a sudden notices a distance between these two characters by the end of the chapter. I think Miranda definitely became uncomfortable when Dev called her sexy. I myself felt awkward when Dev went into her closet to have her put this skimpy outfit on. I think as readers we all saw that this “love” was destined for doom.

9/22/2015 12:07:14 pm

I agree that she not only lost herself, but she definitely found herself again. She fantasized about a life that could never be a reality because she was so determined to feel loved from someone. I agree that the shift was quite evident when Rohin called her sexy. When she heard that his father left his mother for someone "sexy" the word loses its meaning to her. She realizes that what they had was only superficial, and didn't go much farther than that.

9/20/2015 12:12:56 am

The author Lahiri, relates the ideas of love and loss in the short story “Sexy” as she has done in other pieces. It is not a coincidence that Lahiri chose to have Laxmi rant on and on about her cousin’s husband who is cheating to Miranda, when Miranda herself is having an affair with a married man. Miranda half listens to Laxmi, while she thinks more about Dev; the guy she is having an affair with, but who she is also falling in love with. Miranda ends up seeing Dev while his wife was gone, but as time came closer for his wife to come back she felt like she may lose Dev, and decided to start dressing more like a mistress to get more attention. Miranda becomes confused with what she wants and loses herself. Changing her appearance was the start of Miranda losing herself to gain a sort of love that would make her not feel as lonely as she was before. Lahiri made Miranda finally realize that her losing herself wasn’t needed, and that being lonely is okay. Lahiri wants the readers to know how easy it is to lose one’s self when in search of love or something else. Laxmi who was also in Miranda’s ear about her cousin’s cheating husband was apart a Miranda’s awakening.

9/20/2015 08:13:27 pm

I agree with you that Miranda had lost herself while trying to please Dev. Though I agree with that, I feel that she lost herself in his culture in order to relate to him better. As Miranda began to change her appearance she also began to accustom to aspects of India. She starts going to Indian stores, restaurants and relating herself more to the culture as the chapter goes along. I also realized that as Dev because more distant she incorporates these habits into her routines. The more that she developed a ‘love’ for Dev, the more she began to lose her identity into his culture.

9/20/2015 09:12:07 pm

I agree that Miranda losses herself from giving to Dev. She losses herself in order for Dev to fall in love with her. She thinks changing her culture will attract more attention from Dev. She is at first accepting of the fact that she will be a mistress, but I believe she realizes she wants more at one point. Miranda realizes she wants more than that type of relationship with Dev and to get this she wants to relate more with him. I also think Miranda losses herself to this relationship because she's never been with a guy who was extremely romantic like Dev, and so she falls deeply for him. It’s easy to fall for something you've never experienced before.

9/22/2015 12:14:12 pm

I also agree that Miranda loses herself. She began to change herself in order to resemble his wife more, in hopes that he would feel more strongly toward her. Everything was so new and exciting to her that it was easy for her to lose herself in it all. She lost herself trying to get to him, so when she finally takes a step back and reevaluates her situation she realizes she doesn't need that false love that she was chasing.

9/21/2015 12:08:16 am

I agree with what you said, I also felt like Miranda did end up finding herself in way at the end. I felt like Jhumpa Lahiri didn't just write the story just to write it, but to get a overall point across to the readers. That it is ok to be lonely and to live life without having anyone by your side. To basically be independent.

9/20/2015 03:06:37 pm

Throughout the short story Mrs.Sen’s , Lahiri shows love and loss through Mrs. Sen’s character. Mrs. Sen is a women, about 30 years old, who is a professors wife. She doesn't work outside of her home because she cannot drive. She begins to babysit a boy named Elliot. Elliot is 11 years old and is very interested in Mrs. Sen and her actions. Love is shown through Mrs.Sen’s love of her culture. When Elliot is with her she is constantly telling stories about “home” and telling Elliot how things are very different here. She loves India so much, it is what makes her happy. She is passionate about her culture. This is shown through her using the blade everyday. Loss is shown through her passion about India as well. “ Two things, Elliot learned, made Mrs. Sen happy. One was the arrival of a letter from her family…the other thing that made Mrs. Sen happy was fish from the seaside..” (Lahiri 123). These things made Mrs. Sen happy because they are the last pieces of connection she has to her “home”. This shows loss because America is supposed to be a place people come to find happiness. Mrs.Sen comes to America and finds the opposite. She isn't happy here. She was much happier in India with her family. She has lost a piece of her here.

9/20/2015 09:25:13 pm

I agree that the lost is shown to her passion about India and the culture, since that's basically what she seems to think of and miss the most. She lost herself in coming to America because she doesn't have her family nor everything that makes her culture. She is fighting herself every day to almost try to keep herself going while dealing with this culture difference that she faces everyday. She in some way regrets ever coming to America because she gave up too much in order to be in America and try to fight for a better future and a better version of herself.

9/20/2015 09:51:00 pm

I agree that Lahiri showed love and loss through Mrs. Sen and her culture. I found that she both loves her home country and feels a loss because of it. I agree with what you said about America and how it’s doing the opposite to Mrs. Sen, as opposed to what people back in India think. While the people in India believe that America is like a “promise land” full of opportunities and easy living, Mrs. Sen wants nothing more than to return to her home country she misses so much. I could not agree more when you said that she had lost a piece of her in America, because to Mrs. Sen, America will never truly be her “home” as like India was.

9/20/2015 09:58:28 pm

I think it is really interesting that you perceived love in the short story through the love of her culture. I never really thought of it that way. When I read the story, I thought of it as the loss of love Mrs. Sen had towards her husband because she blamed him for her unhappiness. She made it clear that she was very happy back home and because of Mr. Sen's work, she had to be torn away from all that she had known. I really like your interpretation however because there was clearly a connection between her and the knife and that she felt it was something she needed to do for herself to remind her of how happy she once was.

9/20/2015 03:11:54 pm

I agree that Miranda lost herself while searching for love. She was changing her own image in order to gain the affection of someone else. She was not being the person she wanted to be, but instead she was being who she thought someone else would want. After discovering someone's definition of the word sexy, Miranda realizes that maybe it is not in her best interest to try to be "sexy" for Dev. As you said, Miranda was awakened in a way. This was an example of the development of a character using the themes of loss and love. Miranda was so willing to please someone else that she would modify who she was but later understood that she didn't have to do those things.

9/20/2015 09:17:33 pm

In Mrs. Sen’s, the author demonstrates love and loss in many ways. Mrs. Sen had always been very connected to her culture. But recently in the story, she feels as if she is homesick. This becomes very clear throughout the short story because of the way Mrs. Sen talks about India. The way she talks about it shows that she is unhappy being in America. She says things about home to Elliot such as "'You will miss one day, and another…” (Lahiri 132). It shows that she certainly does love her culture and misses being there. After Mrs. Sen gets into a car crash, Elliot’s mother takes him home to give Mr. Sen a break. In a sense, this is also a loss for Elliot. At the end of the short story while Elliot is home, his mother asks him, “‘You okay?’ Elliot looked out the kitchen window, at gray waves receding from the shore, and said that he was fine.” (Lahiri 135). Even though that Elliot is telling his mother that he is fine, in a way makes it seem like he is not fine. Throughout the story of Elliot being there for many months, he wouldn't tell his mother the weird things that Mrs. Sen did. He did this because he didn't want his mother to think of her any less. He wanted to stay there and when he is taken away from there, he loses connection he felt to her.

9/20/2015 09:38:30 pm

I agree with what you’re saying, but I think that him looking at the grey waves is more than showing he wasn’t okay. He was separated from his babysitter who he had a very deep connection to was injured and he couldn’t really be there for her. So since she had this connection to the fish and the sea, he looked at the sea to try and still feel his connection to her through looking at the sea. But I do think that he kept her stories secret from his mother to protect her and protect her stories so that she was safe from any judgement his mother could’ve given towards her and downgraded her.

9/20/2015 09:57:27 pm

I totally agree how she is homesick and that makes of her someone who doesn't even feel like she belongs, or feel as she is home. Her definition of home is India, and surviving without the help of her family or people, who manifest their culture through their pores is the hardest thing for her. She is almost showing that since she does things like driving without a license. Not only that, but she carries Elliot with her. I almost feel as their accident is a sign that she cannot do this anymore. She needs to first figure out how to move past this cultural conflict in order to have a better life.

10/7/2015 10:30:15 am

I agree that the whole short story isn't just about the loss of love in relationships but it is also about Mrs. Sen's love for her culture and how she has been removed from it. There are many examples in this short story where Mrs. Sen refers back to India and how she shows she is very homesick. In a way this missing of her culture brings Elliot and her closer because this interests Elliot but it also separates them because its what Mrs. Sen does to get the fish she wanted that ends up getting them in an accident.

10/7/2015 09:22:26 pm

I agree that Elliot should be looked at as a point of love and lost in the story Mrs. Sen. Sure it is a loss for Elliot that Mrs. Sen is no longer her babysitter but imagine the loss Mrs. Sen is feeling. As is seen throughout the story she is not a character who can take loss very well. Mrs. Sen feels great pain for the smallest of changes and the pain that comes with the loss of Elliot will damage her for a very long time. She has already stopped asking her husband for fish and stopped taking the bus. After the incident she will most definitely not be driving anymore.

9/20/2015 09:18:49 pm

In Lahiri's "Sexy", it shows a character development with the main character Miranda. Miranda shows her development in gradual tones; such as the eye cream when she first meets Dev, with the saleswoman saying that at 22 she needs to use it now before the 25 year wrinkles set in. But later, Rhoni tests it out and saying it stings rather than soothes. There's also a triple layered development with her interest in her Indian heritage interest, starting first with Dev's mention of his wife being obsessed with India and it's culture. It then follows up with Miranda looking up more and more foreign films and books and such from India to try and seemingly be more like his wife, with her even saying that she felt her name meant something more in Bengali. But in the end, when the falling out with Dev happened, she didn’t feel much towards it anymore. Seeming to symbolize her infatuation with him rising and falling with the connection she felt to the culture she didn’t understand. It also is seen when she started to anticipate and hope for Sundays when she could see him and trying to impress him, to not trying, to finally giving excuses for her not to see him again.

9/21/2015 11:21:06 pm

This is a very well written response to Lahiri’s “Sexy”. I like how Miranda’s development is mentioned. In the short story I noticed that it seemed as she was getting rid of her innocence. For example, it was almost as she was trying to be an adult when she was fantasizing about the restaurant that they would go to and the way she would dress up. Since she would talk about high school and the boys that she dated, the reader can assume that she is young and has not experienced anything other than a high school relationship. Dev is the transition from being an aimless teenager, to a mature adult who sees things differently. Ultimately, realizing that her falling for just his ‘surface’ and not whats on the inside, shows how much she's grown from just being a teenager coming out of high school relationships.

9/20/2015 09:44:35 pm

In the short story "Sexy", Lahiri expresses love and loss through the development of character and her use of diction. In the beginning, we learned that the protagonist Miranda was having an affair with a married man. She knew that he was married and it did not bother her because she felt such an intimate connection with him. However it was when they were on the bridge and her lover whispered that she "sexy" when the mood changed (91). The word "sexy" lacks depth and meaning; it implies purely physical attraction vs. a real intimate relationship. it does not seem to bother Miranda at all but when the boy she is babysitting says the exact same thing to her ("you're sexy"), Miranda realizes that something must be wrong with what she's doing with this married man. How could this man that she's been seeing for a long time say the same thing as this little boy she just met? She realizes that there was no reason for her to continue the affair because there was nothing real about their relationship. She was no longer blinded by the way he made her feel. Lahiri's use of the word sexy is a reflection of Miranda's shallow, meaningless, and superficial love life.

9/21/2015 08:59:13 am

This is a really well-written comment on Lahiri’s development of the ideas of love and loss through the development of diction. The word “sexy” did have such a strong meaning to Miranda, as it made her feel as if she was worth something; she never felt worthy because of her past relationships. When Dev said this, she felt as if she compared to his beautiful and lavish wife. However, the tone of the short story changed dramatically when Rohin uses the word “sexy” to describe her. She became confused and questioned the definition of the word “sexy”, which at one point made her feel beautiful and worthy. I like how you said that “the word sexy is a reflection of Miranda's shallow, meaningless, and superficial love life.”

9/20/2015 10:39:07 pm

In, Mrs. Sen’s, the author demonstrates love and loss in many ways. Mrs. Sen has this connection to her home and feels homesick a lot of the times. You can see her love for her culture through one simple phrase “Everything is there” ( Lahiri 113). This simple lines exposes both her dissatisfaction with her situation and her unwillingness to try to improve it. Mrs. Sen places emphasis on items that remind her of home. They both delight her and make her sad, as they can never compare. Fresh fish, aerograms, her knife and recordings of her family life alternating console and depress her. Mrs. Sen refuses to learn how to drive because she stubbornly clings to the hope that she won’t have to make a life in America. The way Mrs. Sen talks about India shows this love she has towards it and how much she misses it. Not only does Mrs. Sen feel that she lost her country, she also feels as though she lost her culture. Both loss and love creates mixed emotions for Mrs. Sen who is having a hard time grasping the loss. All in all, Mrs. Sen still holds onto the love she has for India through her outgrown actions.

9/21/2015 12:03:19 am

In the chapter "Mrs. Sen" Jhumpa Lahiri set a tone of passion and loss. The why that passion is showed is because Mrs. Sen shows how much she loves India and how proud she is of her country. She is very passionate about her country and makes it a topic to talk about all the time to the little boy she babysits which is Elliot. And example of Mrs. Sen showing passion is when Mrs.Sen was cutting potatoes with a blade that she had brought from India, (115 Lahiri). I felt like this was significant and showed passion because in America you can buy a blade almost in any store, but she uses one from India that every household would have but only one of them. Another example is when when Mrs. Sen had a conversation with Elliot about how India didn't have telephones, but she didn't refer to India as India, she would say, "... when Mrs. Sen said home, she meant India, not the apartment where she's at chopping vegetables," (116 Lahiri). This shows how much Mrs. Sen cared about India, how she would call India home before she would call the place that she lives home. Although this showed a lot of passion it also showed loss. It shows how much she really needs/ misses India. It also shows loss because it's like she lost India in a way. Her family thinks that since she lives in America, that India means nothing to her, "'They think I live the life of a queen... They think I press buttons and the house is clean. They think I live in a palace,'" (125 Lahiri). Although she shows so much pride and passion in India she also loss India because she lives in America.

9/21/2015 12:42:28 am

In chapter 6 “Mrs. Sen” talks about a woman that was thirty years old and was living with her husband that was a math professor at a university. They lived in an apartment on campus not far from where her husband worked. Mrs. Sen looked for a babysitting job where she ended up meeting Eliot and his mother, who was in search of an adult to look after the boy when he comes home from school until the time his mother gets off from work. As Eliot begun to stay with Mrs. Sen they started to share a strong bond between each other. He learned many things about her culture and life style back in India. He is aware of her likes and dislike about being away from her family and in America. Eliot had also faced difficult times with Mrs. Sen when she was practicing how to drive. Later on in the story, Mrs. Sen started to express her feelings about missing out on everything that is happening at home which Eliot notice that she call India home. She expresses the thought of her own niece not being able to recognize her when she first gets the chance to meet her and how she only heard of her grandfather passing away. The author expresses the good and bad about Mrs. Sen being away from home and living in America compared to her lifestyle she was used to back in India.

9/21/2015 09:09:57 am

In Lahiri’s short story “Mrs. Sens”, she comments on the development of love and loss through the development of character. In the beginning, Mrs. Sens is introduced as an Indian woman who is married to Mr. Sens, a mathematics professor at a nearby university. Mrs. Sens development as a character is dependent on the characterization and involvement of her husband. She wasn’t presented as her own being; she was married to a man with status. She stays at home babysitting Elliot while her husband is out working. Not only is she reliant on him for characterization in the short story, she is also reliant on him for the resources she needs to survive in America. Mr. Sens tries to teach Mrs. Sens how to drive despite her constant refusals. One day when Mr. Sens was at work teaching a class, she decided to drive with Elliot in her car all alone. When they got into an accident, the only words that Mrs. Sens said to the cops were that her husband works as a teacher at the university, which reveals her dependence on her husband. This shows how shallow and dependent the love between Mrs. Sens and Mr. Sen is. Also, Lahiri’s characterization of Elliot’s mom as a concerned, working mother who questions Mrs. Sens capability of babysitting her son defines the shift between her American culture and Mrs. Sens Indian culture.

9/21/2015 12:13:39 pm

In the short story, Mrs. Sens, readers definitely get the idea that Mrs. Sens’ was living in America, but her home was still back in India. She was very passionate about her customs and culture so living in America was not easy to get used to. Getting mail from India made her exceptionally happy, as well as traditionally eating fish everyday. Back in India, she was so used to things coming easily to her because she was a part of the upper class. But now, in America, she has no chauffeur. She is scared of driving, and one day without being prepared, she gets herself and Eliot into a car accident. This is when the development of her character comes around full circle. She was trying to keep her own traditions alive (Eating fish everyday) by adopting new ones from America (driving herself). This accident ultimately leaves Eliot without a babysitter and with a key instead. This short story ends with a very elegiac tone. A sense of loss overwhelms the story line. Eliot thrived off of the time he spent with Mr. Sens and Eliot also appreciated her traditions. So when they no longer spend time with each other, they both experience a certain loss of friendship.

9/27/2015 10:48:03 am

love and loss are strong recurring ideas In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. In the short story "sexy" these ideas come up again and are developed through several literary tactics. Looking at Miranda's character in the short story and her development and how her relationship with Dev develops, a more defined idea of love and loss and their difference becomes more developed. In the beginning Miranda is excited by her romance and doesn’t really care that Dev is a married man even with the knowledge of Laxmi’s cousin's husband and how distraught it left her. The title of this short story is a single word, “sexy”, so, you can assume that there is some importance there, which we later learn there is. Dev calls Miranda sexy and this is exciting to her, she has never been called sexy before and now she can’t stop thinking about it. To her, sexy was an even powerful word than beautiful. But then, much later, Rohin called her sexy. This time she didn't think much of it because she assumed he calls many women sexy, that he had seen it somewhere or heard it on TV. This made her question its meaning, which she thought she knew prior, he explains it to her its to ”love someone you don't know”107). This completely changed miranda, this helped her understand what love really was and that her relationship with Dev was not that. THis shows us when it comes to love and loss, its a learning experience.

10/4/2015 12:10:48 pm

In “Mrs. Sen”s” the main theme that Lahari tries to incorporate was love. We learn about how Mr. and Mrs. Sen’s relationship and how they used to be in such love and having a stable married life to something more sad and depressing which is where the loss theme is also tied in because she did eventually lose the love that she used to have. I also think that her family and being separated from them and being so distance effected the loss of love she had or maybe not the loss of love but loss of some happiness. Elliot understands how much Mrs. Sen loves and values her Indian culture. So once he feels distance from her family she feels distance from her culture as well. “no matter how kind they are, one day they will complain about visiting your mother, and you will get tired of it too Eliot. You will miss one day, and another, and then she will have to drag herself onto a bus just to get herself a bag of lozenges” (Lahari 131-132). This just shows how much culture and background really effected Mrs. Sen. It affected her so much that she soon becomes very depressed because of it which is why she soon distances herself from her own marriage.

10/7/2015 10:26:22 am

I agree that Lahiri really focuses on the loss of love in this story on what Mr. and Mrs. Sen use to have. But she not only focuses on that but on the relationship between Elliot and his mother which obviously is very distant. They don't spend much time together and at the end when Mrs. Sen gets into an accident Elliot's mother ends up deciding to leave him alone at home which is probably only going to worsen their relationship.

10/7/2015 10:15:35 am

In "Sexy," Lahiri starts off by describing Miranda in a very simplistic tone. She's like any other office worker, who sits there in a somber office and doesn't have much of an exciting life. As the short story goes on we slowly begin to see character development, Lahiri fills us in on Miranda's love life and what her life is like. We start going from a shy woman to a sort of extrovert in her personal love life, since she's with a married man. We also start seeing a shift in tone as well when Miranda talks about her life. We start off sort of lugubrious and then shift to somewhat exciting when we see the situation Miranda puts herself in, her secret life with Dev and how their relationship is developing. Lahiri puts a lot of concern on their relationship and how Miranda is his little secret, we can see this through diction and how Miranda describes her days without Dev as very gloomy, basically her whole world revolves around him. We can also see the point of view of Miranda and how at first she's very happy with her relationship with Dev but slowly as she starts hearing more and more about Laxmi's cousins problems and when she really sees what her "relationship" with Dev is her whole aspect on what they really are changes into not really wanting anything to do with a married man who will always treat her as a secret.

10/7/2015 09:23:50 pm

In Lahiri's short story Sexy the emotions that brought on by love and the lack thereof are strongly emphasized. In the story we see it happen right in the beginning between Laxmi's cousin and her husband. Laxmi's cousin's husband has fallen out of love with her and has fallen in love with some woman that he met on a plane. In the short story we are shown what it is like to be in that situation from the two sides of women in an affair. We see the side of Laxmi, the one who is being cheated on, and we see the side of Miranda who is involved in a completely different affair. Through Laxmi's cousin's side we can see the pain caused by loss so great that it is physically visible on a person as shown by how "she was thin like her son, with a long face and the same dark circles under her eyes" (Lahiri 100). Through Miranda we can see what it's like to be the woman in on the affair. Through her we see how a feeling can be mistaken for love when it really isn't. When she realizes this is when she begins to suffer almost as badly as Laxi's cousin those.

Comments are closed.

Interpreter of Maladies: Chs 5-6 Blog Posts

Blog Post Rubric

Archives

Categories