Penn State Deluge - Vol. 2 No. 1 - Spring 2004

Food, as we have come to discover, nourishes Jhumpa Lahiri's characters both literally and figuratively. Food sustains the characters through difficult times, allows characters to adjust to new places, and provides a bridge to happier memories. When characters have succeeded in establishing and maintaining healthy relationships with their dual Indian and American identities, their food reflects this balance. Likewise, the meals that are not prepared and consumed mark an equally important lack of cultural connection to either Indian or American heritages. Lahiri emphasizes the differences between Indians and Indian-Americans who achieve this balance with varying degrees of success. However, the suggestion that unhappy relationships are solely reflections of an imbalance between American and Indian cultures (symbolized through food) is misleading. For example, Shoba's unhappiness in her marriage reveals itself after her miscarriage; however, the underlying issues are not necessarily culturally related, either directly or indirectly. While meal preparation of Indian food parallels Shoba's increasing detachment from Shukumar and her home, Lahiri does not judge Shoba's separation from Shukumar as a failure on her part to successfully integrate Indian and American halves cultures, nor does she imply that separation is an indication of failure at all.

Food then is merely one aspect of the cathartic journey of the characters and, too, of Lahiri. Food may reflect positive or negative cultural accommodation; it does not, however, provide solutions nor does it suggest judgment. Additionally, the characters in the nine short stories may all be Indian; however, Lahiri makes it a point to avoid creating characters that are merely extensions of their ethnicity. Her characters are not just "Indian." They are individuals first, with unique flaws and experiences. Lahiri is one of her own characters as she, too, struggles with her own sense of cultural identity. She relates with the difficulty of retaining one's heritage while living in another culture; she confesses, "I didn't grow up there [in India], I wasn't a part of things. We visited often but we didn't have a home. We were clutching at a world that was never fully with us" (Patel 17). Lahiri does not resolve her inextricable connection with the issues of identity in Interpreter of Maladies. In fact, her follow-up work, The Namesake, continues her ideas in a full length novel. Nevertheless, Lahiri successfully illuminates the multi-faceted issues surrounding cultural identity through her characters in Interpreter of Maladies who are in the various stages of cultural accommodation.

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[ Contents | Absract | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | Works Cited | Appendix ]

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