Interpreter of Maladies and Marriage

Indian culture is largely devoid of talk about love in marriage and other marital issues. Divorce is often seen as a taboo and public shows of affection are frowned upon and illegal to some extent. As a result of this, I think that Interpreter of Maladies serves as a great discussion on the problems that can arise from unsuccessful marriages as well as how they may be able to be fixed. 

Many of the relationships in the book are dysfunctional in some way. In many of the relationships, love has been lost to some extent, or there is no communication between the man and woman. In addition, one of the major stressing factors on the relationships is the fact that many of the women came to America because their husbands found jobs in the States. It is almost as if they are dragged here by the prospect of a better life than in India, but without any real purpose to fulfill other than to take care of and help the guy that they have most likely only known briefly before getting married to and one who they have probably not lived with for more than a few days. They are expected to raise a family without any experience living with the man they are married to, as well as to assimilate to society without really any introduction. This sentiment exists very prominently in Mrs. Sen’s life, where she longs for India and everything that comes along with it. The ruckus that India has where you can call and all the neighbors will come running to gossip and the fresh fish whose quality you can’t beat. This uneasiness with the relationship caused by Mrs. Sen’s unwillingness to be in America would never be discussed in a public setting in a traditional Indian setting. Interpreter of Maladies in this serves as a discussion about what can happen when assimilation into another culture is forced through marriage presumably with less love than ideal in this situation.

Another instance of the book serving as a discussion on marriage in Indian culture happens in the story “Interpreter of Maladies”. The issue of cheating on one’s husband would probably never come up in any discussion in a traditional Indian household but this story serves as a look into how it is dealt with. Ms. Das clearly struggles with the issue of whether to tell anyone about the issue and eventually decides to confide in the tour guide and interpreter Mr. Kapasi. We find that he also doesn’t really know what to do with the information, but the story still deals with the issue of marital problems and how to deal with them. The story presents confiding in someone else as a viable solution for the problem of maintaining your sanity, and also provokes some thought as to why one would keep it a secret for so long especially when she has to raise the child who is a product of the infidelity.

Overall, Interpreter of Maladies serves a good venue for discussion about infidelity and other problems in marriage which is a topic rarely discussed in traditional Indian culture. The issue of unwillingness to fully assimilate to different cultures as a product of marriage is explored fairly thoroughly as well as the issue of how to deal with infidelity. The book sparks thought about topics that aren’t really ever brought up in Indian culture.  

Drown's Drug Dealing

Throughout Drown, the drug dealing lifestyle is represented as a fairly mundane and without any special glamour. Both representations in the book describe the dealers as fairly normal people with their own problems, which in both cases involve relationships. The people that are buying the drugs are also fairly normal people being described as no one special. None of the people that by the drugs are police or politicians, they are just normal people who want an escape from their day to day lives.

The contrast represented by this dynamic in how drug dealers are viewed is fairly surprizing. The 1990s when this book was published, and the previous years in the decade marked a large amount of hype around drug dealing through popular rap as well as the war on drugs which started about 15 years before the publishing of the book. Rappers such as Nas and Dr. Dre became stars in the early and mid 1990s and were famous for talking about drug use as well as how drugs were used as a means to become rich. Dr. Dre is often seen as a kingpin-like figure in the sense of his gang-like lifestyle and involvement with crime. Jay-z is famous for expressing his rags-to-riches lifestyle which introduced the idea of being able to sell drugs to start out a career that would catapult you to fame. However, none of these ambitions seems to be represented by the characters in Drown that are selling drugs.

The main distinction between drug dealers in Drown and some who are popularized is the lack of bravado or sense of entitlement because they think they should be making tremendous amounts of money. Those in Drown do not think that drug dealing is glamorous in any way, and the sense of maturity that we get from the characters is fairly surprizing. The characters view drug dealing as just another job that they can compete fairly easily and to make enough money to get by. The character also don’t mention drug dealing much in the narratives. In both cases the main problem that they have deal with relationships and how those progress and regress to affect their lives in various ways.

Drug dealing is also a profession that Diaz does well to address in the context of the poorer areas in New Jersey. That fact that the characters don’t really believe that drug dealing is a nice way to get rich quick shows the understanding of how it really works. The dealers are selling product in very small quantities and just sell to get by. In addition, each seller has his own circumstances underlying why they are selling. The lack of education is one major contributing factor that spans over the whole community, as well as the lack of emotional stability in one case.

Overall, drug culture in Drown is something that isn’t stressed as a mainstay of life but is surely present. The drugs are not over glorified, but are still present as a means, if not the most respected, to get by. Those who use the drugs and those who sell them are really judged by anyone in the perspectives we get, and drugs aren’t really the main focus of the stories. The drug culture in Drown present a direct contrast to the popular views of drug culture that spanned media in the years prior to the publishing of the book.

Arbitrariness in "How"

Moore's how-to style of narrative seems to change with every story. Some have more choices than others, in a more choose your own adventure style, while others just tell you what to do. "How" is the first story that we get where Moore employs a narrative that has many choices for the reader to choose from.

The story starts off with, "Begin by meeting him in a class, in a bar, at a rummage sale." (55) giving the illusion of a choice that would determine the type of relationship present in the story. However, this doesn't happen. Instead of giving the main character in the story a choice in her life, we find that it is rather arbitrary. It doesn't matter where the characters met, what their jobs or hobbies are, or the time frame of the relationship, the relationship seems predestined to failure. This story is an interesting twist on the common cliche of one person falling out of love with their partner and then the partner getting a disease. There is a struggle in the mind of the person as to whether they should stay with and support someone who they really don’t love any more or if they should just leave. Moore presents this with a sense that any choice is arbitrary. At one point, the main character has a choice to sleep with another man, which seems to be a very important decision that one could make in a failing relationship, but in the end the outcome doesn’t change. In both situations, the relationship continues for a long while until the main character cannot stand to struggle anymore.

Moore seems to be using the lack of real choice to show that you cannot control everything. At some point, any choice that the main character makes won’t have any effect on her relationship. Even a choice that is as important as cheating on your partner really doesn’t affect much, other than when she gets home. We understand that her partner got a disease, but there is no way that the disease can be traced back to the background of either of the characters because there were so many choices that could be made. Moore wants the reader to understand that you can only control a small subsection of what happens in the world around you, and that you cannot blame yourself for things that are outside of your control.

In addition, the story ends with, “The sadness will die like an old dog” (64), which shows how everything will pass. Moore throughout the story is trying to get the reader to understand that whatever happens to make this situation happen, and whatever happens afterwards, as long as it is outside of your control to a certain extent, you won't need to feel guilty for the rest of your life. Many things in life are arbitrary, so control what you can and don’t let what you cannot control affect you more than it needs to.

Wright's influence on Baldwin

In "This Morning, This evening, So Soon" we get a black character that represents how Richard Wright's Native Son influenced the Baldwin's depiction of how black characters deal with race problems as well as how Baldwin wanted his characters to differ from Wright's representation.

In Native Son, Bigger Thomas represents what Wright envisioned a white man thought a stereotypical black man was like. Bigger is aggressive, not only to outsiders, but to his family and friends, and he doesn't really express his emotions to other people. Bigger runs with a gang of other similarly aged black characters who, at the beginning of the book, plan to rob a store, another seemingly stereotypical situation that an uneducated adult black male would face. When Bigger gets interviewed for a job as a driver, his personality completely shifts. He immediately becomes very subservient towards the white man who is offering the job, and he doesn’t even seem to be aware that he is acting differently. Another telling moment about how Bigger acts is how he responds to the friendliness of his employer’s daughter and boyfriend. Both of the white people in this situation are genuinely trying to be amicable, and even put Bigger at ease because they know about the problem of race in America and they want to do something to change it. Bigger reacts mostly with fear. He thinks that he will get hurt or something bad will happen to him if he takes the friendliness at face value because he isn’t used to anything of the kind.

The narrator in "This Morning, This evening, So Soon" differs from Bigger’s character in many ways. The first difference we get is simply that the character is very successful in his career. The narrator is able to travel overseas and escape the clutches of racism in the US. The narrator also has very developed emotions which can be seen in the scene on the bridge where he realizes he is in love, as well as his fears and disgust when he is going back to America.

One similarity to Bigger that Baldwin shows happened during the end of the boat ride when he is talking to the customs officers. The narrator thinks that something is off with the officers being nice to him. He thinks that their smiles are hiding something and he is not confident in his ability to skirt around topics that may make any racist tendencies flare up. The narrator’s reaction is very interesting because he has lived without racism being a major part of his life for so many years and yet, as soon as he returns, his thoughts about racism return even though the country may have changed. The alludes to Wright’s depiction as it characterizes the reactions to racism as well as understanding how to get around it as something that society molds into you from birth.

One of Wright’s main points in Native Son is that society firmly molded who Bigger was; he had virtually no choice in how he turned out. We see Baldwin’s defense of the ability of black people to define their own lives through the narrator. He is successful in his career and he is able to make the choice to leave and go back to America. He marries a white woman and has a very nice family. He is able to express his emotions fully to other people and he doesn’t represent a stereotypical black man. Baldwin takes aspects from the characterization in Native Son and then adds more layers and molds the characters to fit his vision of black characters. 

On Teddy's Character

In class while discussing the story Teddy, some people brought up that they didn’t particularly like how Teddy talked about his views. The main complaint was that Teddy acted as if his world view, including things like reincarnation, was the only correct way to look at life. Especially, during his conversation with Nicholson, Teddy cuts him off while he is trying to talk. He seems to think that what he is saying is more important that what the others around him have to say because he has had these spiritual realizations.

One of the main factors that should be taken into account when looking at what Teddy is saying to Nicholson is that Teddy really is the expert on what Nicholson is asking about. Although it may seem like Teddy is being high strung, I think that in subjects other than philosophy he wouldn’t think of himself as that great. Because Nicholson is asking about philosophical questions, I think he should expect Teddy to answer him like he knows what he is talking about. If you think of Teddy as being a teacher in the subject, I don’t think you would really want a teacher that isn’t sure about what he is talking about. Teddy is respected in the community so much that he conducts interviews in Europe as well as releases tapes containing these interviews. If Teddy didn’t know what he was talking about he would not be respected as much as he is.

Another reason that Teddy can be viewed as high strung could have to do with how you can’t prove the things he is saying. The fact the he is talking about metaphysical things such as how you leave the body when you die and then get reincarnated makes people really doubt what he is saying. The story never mentions how much Teddy is respected in the overall scientific community, and I don’t think he would be very well respected just because there is no way to give his ideas any efficacy. The story does tell us that some major players in the field of philosophy respect his opinion so much that they trust him to provide them with accurate information about when and how they will die which again shows how much the philosophy community respects him.

Teddy’s age also plays a large role in how we view him. The fact that he is only ten years old somehow makes it seem off that he is able to lecture on a subject that very few adults fail have any sort of grasp on. In addition, it seems impossible for a four year old to have these complicated hallucination that apparently mean a great deal and that very few people have. Teddy says that when he was six he was able to see that God was all around him in everything, and that his sister drinking milk was really just God flowing into God. Most four and six year old children still base most of what they want off of their instincts, so this makes Teddy even more incredible and impossible.

Teddy’s age also allows us to respect him more. Because he is only ten years old it has to be viewed as extremely impressive that he is able to grasp these complicated philosophical ideas. His age may impart some sort of jealousy on the part of a lot of people, but he does seem very mature for his age. Although he is able to tell people when they will die, he knows he should keep it to himself because it would ruin the lives of the people he is telling. His maturity also allows him to thread the needle in his parents’ complicated marriage as well as take care of his sister who, from what we get in the story, his parents are neglecting.

Overall, Teddy can seem high strung, but I believe it to be somewhat warranted because he is one of the most respected people in the field of psychology in the story as well as being able to grasp all of the complicated ideas that his position entails. Do you think that Teddy’s character was warranted by his situation, or was he just another annoying kid?

Bitter Coffee

The one the most interesting parts of the Big Two-Hearted River is when Nick is talking about Hopkins and his story. I find this to be interesting not only because he has so much to say about Hopkins and how he makes coffee, but also because of how much we can get out of this little section on Hopkins.

Nick starts out talking about how he is honoring Hopkins through this coffee making. This gives me the immediate impression that Hopkins was a pretty great person and positively affected all of the people in their friend group. The fact that Nick and Hopkins had an argument over coffee also suggests that they were very good friends because they were having an argument about such a insignificant aspect of life. The next major statement we get about Hopkins is that he deserves the recognition from Nick. This gives me the impression that Hopkins died or something similar that he didn't deserve because he was such a great guy. Nick is again honor Hopkins with these statements reinforcing what he implied before.

Nick starts talking about how Hopkins was a very serious man. This came as a bit of a surprise to me as arguing about coffee would make one seem unconcerned with major things going on. Hopkins being serious still adds another layer to what we already know about him. He can be serious and as such he is depicted as an even better person.

After that Nick talks about Hopkins life. He says he was a rich man from playing polo and that he gave the people in their friend group something. The way Nick talks about Hopkins is very reminiscent and has a sort of sad feeling. This provides the reader with even more context about Hopkins as we understand the he was an invaluable part of the group and even when he gave the items to Nick and Bill to remember him by it seems like it was just enough to keep the memory alive.

The story ends with Hopkins disappearing. This concludes the picture that Nick is trying to create which presents Hopkins as a great person in terms of being both a friend and a nice person, how Hopkins can be serious but also laid back, and also leave a bit of mystery with the end of the story. Overall, just from what Nick recalls about Hopkins we can arrive at a pretty complete picture of what he was like.

The Juxtaposition of Linda's story with war stories

One of the most interesting stories in The Things They Carried is the last story. Not only does this story contain material that isn't really related to the war, but the story is interspersed with stories about the war. I think this juxtaposition affects both the stories about war and the story about Linda.

The story about Linda comes as a surprise after reading most of this book. O'Brien seems to write war stories where the plot doesn't really matter, as he says that much of it is not true, but what comes out of the situation does. In this story about young love and a child dying because of a tumor, I think the specifics do matter, as well as the fact that it supposedly happens to O’Brien himself.

The Story about Linda has many implications about how we read the war stories. One of the main characteristics of O’Brien throughout the book is that he doesn’t really play around with the dead, as some others do, and when the others do it he is sickened. I believe that his early experiences with death shape his views about how the dead should be treated. In the story about Linda, he is struck by how much the corpse of Linda is different from how she actually was. The bloating of the body as well as the stillness that he just wasn’t used to all provide a stark contrast to what she was like when she was alive. I believe this knowledge of the changes to the body after death makes him dislike the behavior because he thinks that the families may not be able to recognize the bodies, they might even decompose, and the soldiers basically playing with the bodies is not really a good way for the bodies to last be seen.

Reading all of the war stories prior to the story about Linda also changes how I view that story. The first way in which the story is influenced is how you can doubt how truthful the story is. The large amount of discussion in the book about how war stories don’t need to be factual to get the message across, and in some cases can’t be factual because what happens is way out there, leads us to question almost every story in the book including the one about Linda. I hope that the story is true as it would seem like betrayal to write this moving story about his childhood love, which was supposedly real, and then have it all be fiction. Even if the truth of the story doesn’t matter O’Brien also raises the point about how war stories don’t have morals but the story about Linda has a clear moral stated at the beginning. This raises the issue of whether the story about Linda is a war story or not.

The question of whether Linda’s story is a war story or not seems complicated in the sense that the story comes out of a war situation  but other than that it doesn’t really seem to have a large connection to war. I’ll leave you with this question: is the story about Linda a war story or not?