plagiat merupakan tindakan tidak terpujirepository.usd.ac.id/9579/1/051214047_full.pdf‘rumah’...

THE EXPERIENCE IN EXILE IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S

MRS. SEN’S, THIS BLESSED HOUSE AND THE THIRD AND FINAL

CONTINENT

A THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

By

Invani Lela Herliana

Student Number: 051214047

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA

2011

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJIPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

i

THE EXPERIENCE IN EXILE IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S

MRS. SEN’S, THIS BLESSED HOUSE AND THE THIRD AND FINAL

CONTINENT

A THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

By


Student Number: 051214047

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA

2011


ii


iii


iv

STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY

I honestly declare that this thesis, which I have written, does not contain the work

or parts of the work of other people, except those cited in the quotations and the

references, as a scientific paper should.

Yogyakarta, January 19, 2011

The Writer,


051214047


v

LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertandatangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswi Universitas Sanata Dharma:

Nama : Invani Lela Herliana Nomor mahasiswa : 051214047

Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul: The Experience in Exile in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent Beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan loyalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis. Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya. Dibuat di Yogyakarta Pada tanggal 19 Januari 2011 Yang menyatakan Invani Lela Herliana


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Teachers are those who build a bridge, students are invited to cross over.

When all of students are in the other side, teachers are pleased to back off,

then encourage students to build their own bridges. (Nikos Kazantzakis)

The thesis is dedicated to My Grandmother and My Mother

Two beautiful women who assist me for ‘being a woman’


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to the Supreme Being who enlightens

my way through these challenging years.

I also would thank my grandmother in Mojokerto, East Java who

tolerates my laziness despite the fact that I spent too much sitting and typing in

her living room for a week rather than helping her to clean the backyard. My

gratitude is also given to my mother and my father who always pray for me

every time they pray five times a day, as well as all my siblings who cherish me

up every day in our crowded house, Wisnu, Dea, Rizky and Bagus.

Next, I never forget to thank Drs. Antonius Herujiyanto, M. A., Ph.D.

for giving smart remarks and supportive guidance during writing this thesis.

I also thank Delfi Chinnappan, a beautiful friend from Mumbay, India for

sending me Jhumpa Lahiri’s book via air mail since I found it difficult to find a

piece here. My gratitude also pours to Virgil Sequiera, Samy AREDS, Sally

Rousset and all friends meeting in Karur, Tamil Nadu, South India for giving me

a slice of spiritual journey in India, the personal reason why I chose Indian author

to be the subject matter of my thesis.

Still, I owe big thanks to Yayasan Pondok Rakyat (People’s Shelter

Foundation) and all staff to allow me to take home some precious books from its

library shelves and let me write my thesis while I am at the office.

Yet, my adventure in Sanata Dharma University would not be happened

without a great help of my dear aunty, Riana Puspasari, whose kindness has


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opened thousand doors for me and now I begin to open other thousand doors for

those who are staying too long outside and left behind.

Other special thanks go to Mr. Edi and his family in Mojokerto, East

Java who allow me to spend overnight in their fancy bedroom to finish my chapter

2 and 3. Also, I thank so much for their kindness to pay my tuition for three years

so that I was not worried anymore about being unschooled girl.

I thank my best friends who always support me both in laughs and tears:

Arnovy Putty Febriani, Ifa Hadi Subardan, Anna Elfira Prabandari, Lusiana

Sari, Hananto Kusumo, Muhamad Nur Hidayat, Natan Arya, all friends in

Orong-Orong as well as those great people who support ketjil.bergerak.

I thank Zanny Begg and Keg de Souza for being my proofreader, and of

course, I owe big thanks to all lectures and secretary staff in PBI that I cannot

mention one by one. For sure, their names are beautifully carved in my heart.

Last, I thank Greg Sindana, who always lights my fire whenever my

furnace is getting cold and dry, and loves me without border.

Yogyakarta, January 19, 2011



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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ................................................................................................... i

PAGE OF APPROVAL .................................................................................... ii

STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY ............................................... iv

LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI ............................. v

PAGE OF DEDICATION ................................................................................ vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................. vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................. viii

ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... x

ABSTRAK ........................................................................................................... xiii

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study ............................................................... 1

B. Aim of the Study ............................................................................ 5

C. Problem Formulation ..................................................................... 5

D. Benefits of the Study ..................................................................... 5

E. Definition of Terms ........................................................................ 6

1. Exile ........................................................................................... 6

2. Postcolonial literature ................................................................ 7

3. Cultural Identity ......................................................................... 7

CHAPTER II. THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Review of Related Theories........................................................... 8

1. Postcolonial Literature ............................................................... 8

2. Theory of Place and Displacement ............................................ 10

3. Theory of Cultural Identity ....................................................... 12


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B. Critical Approach ........................................................................... 13

1. The Beginning of the Emerging of

Postcolonial Approach .............................................................. 13

2. The Characteristics of Postcolonial Criticism .......................... 14

3. The Stages in Seeing Postcolonial Criticism ............................ 15

a. Adopt ................................................................................... 15

b. Adapt ................................................................................... 16

c. Adept .................................................................................... 16

4. Key Points in Postcolonial Criticism ........................................ 16

C. Theoretical Framework .................................................................. 17

D. Criticism ........................................................................................ 17

CHAPTER III. METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study ........................................................................ 21

B. Approach of the Study ................................................................... 23

C. Procedure ....................................................................................... 24

CHAPTER IV. ANALYSIS

A. The Main Characters Portrayed in the Short Stories ..................... 26

1. Mrs. Sen’s ................................................................................ 26

2. This Blessed House ................................................................. 30

3. The Third and Final Continent ................................................ 34

B. The Experience in Exile ................................................................. 36

a. Mrs. Sen’s ....................................................................... 37

b. This Blessed House ........................................................ 38

c. The Third and Final Continent ....................................... 39


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CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION, SUGGESTION AND

RECOMMENDATION

A. Conclusion ..................................................................................... 42

B. Suggestion for Teaching Implementation ...................................... 42

C. Recommendation for Future Researchers ...................................... 43

REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 44

APPENDICES ................................................................................................... 46

A. Summary of the Short Stories ..................................................... 47

1. Mrs. Sen’s ............................................................................... 47

2. This Blessed House ................................................................. 48

3. The Third and Final Continent ............................................... 49

B. Biography of the Author .............................................................. 50

C. Lesson Plan for Teaching Intensive Reading I ............................ 51

D. Materials ....................................................................................... 53


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ABSTRACT

Herliana, Invani Lela. (2011). The Experience in Exile in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House, and The Third and Final Continent. Yogyakarta: English Education Study Program, Faculty of Teaching Training and Education, Sanata Dharma University.

This study analyses the experience in exile experienced by the main characters in three short stories written by Jhumpa Lahiri, namely Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent. The three short stories above mainly discuss about the lives of Indian immigrants in exile, when they are striving for better opportunities in the New World. It includes the experience of displacement, the different understanding in defining ‘home’ and the crisis of cultural identity.

The aim of the study is to see one’s life experiences in exile as in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent. There are two problems discussed in this study. First, it is “how the main characters are portrayed in the short stories” and second, it is “how the main characters’ experienced in exile is analyzed.” There are two kinds of sources used in this study, namely the primary source, which is the three short stories mentioned above, and secondary sources from references, books and internet sources which include explanation on Postcolonial Literatures, theory of Place and Displacement, theory of Cultural Identity and Postcolonial Criticism. Thus, this study employs Postcolonial Approach as a tool to analyze the subject matter. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the experiences in exile experienced by people who seek new life in the new continent are always faced into three stages of post colonialism which are adopt, adapt and adept. Thus, people who can survive with those three stages will physically and spiritually accept the place they live as a ‘home’.

It is recommended that the future researchers analyze deeper on the crisis of cultural identity faced by all characters in Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent. Thus, the topic on how the characters face the crisis of cultural identity and how they react toward the new cultures using socio-historical cultural approach and several theories in cultural identity and diaspora are interesting to be analyzed.

Moreover, this study is completed with the lesson plan and materials for English teachers to teach Intensive Reading II using some selected parts of those three short stories.


xiii

ABSTRAK

Herliana, Invani Lela. (2011). The Experience in Exile in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent. Yogyakarta: Program Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Kajian literatur ini menganalisa pengalaman hidup para imigran sebagai ‘orang yang terasing’ dalam tiga cerita pendek karya Jhumpa Lahiri yang berjudul Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House dan The Third and Final Continent yang bercerita tentang kehidupan para imigran India dalam ‘pengasingan’, saat mereka berjuang untuk kehidupan yang lebih baik di negara baru. Pengalaman akan ketidaknyamanan tempat, pemahaman yang berbeda dalam mendefinisikan ‘rumah’ dan krisis identitas budaya juga turut diceritakan dalam ketiga cerpen ini.

Tujuan studi ini adalah untuk melihat pengalaman hidup orang-orang di ‘pengasingan’. Ada dua permasalahan pokok dalam kajian ini. Pertama, “bagaimana para karakter utama digambarkan dalam dalam ketiga cerita pendek tersebut”. Kedua, “bagaimana pengalaman-pengalaman para imigran tersebut sebagai ‘orang yang terasing’ dianalisa.”

Ada dua data yang digunakan dalam kajian ini, yaitu data utama yang berupa tiga cerpen di atas dan data pendukung yang dikumpulkan dari buku-buku dan sumber internet, termasuk penjelasan tentang Sastra Poskolonial, teori tentang Lokasi dan Dislokasi, teori Identitas Budaya dan Pendekatan Poskolonial yang digunakan untuk menelaah ketiga cerita pendek di atas.

Dapat disimpulkan bahwa pengalaman-pengalaman manusia dalam ‘pengasingan’ yang mencari kehidupan baru di benua baru tak dapat lepas dari tiga tahap dalam teori poskolonial, yaitu mengambil budaya baru secara langsung tanpa disaring (adopt), beradaptasi dengan budaya baru (adapt) dan berhasil menyesuaikan budaya baru tersebut sesuai dengan budayanya sendiri tanpa menhilangkan budaya asli (adept). Oleh karena itu, yang bisa melampaui ketiga tahapan tersebut dapat menerima tempat baru sebagai ‘rumah’, baik secara fisik maupun spiritual.

Bagi para peneliti lain, kajian yang lebih mendalam tentang krisis identitas budaya yang dialami oleh seluruh karakter dalam Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House dan The Third and Final Continent, terutama tentang bagaimana mereka menghadapi krisis identitas budaya dan reaksi mereka atas budaya baru menggunakan pendekatan sosio-historis dan beberapa teori tentang identitas budaya dan diaspora sangat menarik untuk dianalisa dalam penelitian-penelitian selanjutnya. Materi ajar bagi guru Bahasa Inggris untuk mengajar Intensive Reading II juga disertakan dengan menggunakan satu cerita pendek dari ketiga cerpen tersebut.


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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter is structured in five parts, namely Background of the Study,

Aim of the Study, Problem Formulation, Benefits of the Study and Definition of

Terms. Background of the Study represents the description of the topic of the

study and explains the personal reasons in selecting the topic of this study. Aim of

the Study presents the aims of conducting this study. Problem Formulation states

the problems to limit the scope of study. Benefits of the Study elaborates the

advantages that the reader may gain from reading this study. Last, the Definition

of Terms presents definitions of key terms used in this study.

A. Background of the Study

Enjoying literature is sometimes not enough if we only catch the surface

meaning without trying to find the deeper meaning of the work. When probing for

this deeper meaning, literature can provide a tool for analyzing culture and society

or even learning about the meaning of life itself.

Literature has varied genres. One of them is called postcolonial literature.

According to Ashcroft, postcolonial literature is literature which covers all the

culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the

present day. Therefore, the literatures of African countries, Australia, Bangladesh,

Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan,


2

Singapore, South Pacific Island countries and Sri Lanka are all postcolonial

literatures (2). He also said,

More than three-quarters of the people living in the world today have had their lives shaped by the experience of colonialism…Literature offers one of the most important ways in which these new perceptions are expressed and it is in their writing, and through other arts such as painting, sculpture, music, and dance that the day-to-day realities experienced by colonized peoples have been most powerfully encoded and so profoundly influential (1; emphasis added). One of the books categorized as postcolonial literature is Interpreter of

Maladies written by Jhumpa Lahiri. This book is compilation of nine short stories

published in 1999 and was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2000.

Jhumpa Lahiri, born on July 11, 1967, is an Indian American author. She

was born in London, the daughter of Bengali Indian immigrants. She then moved

to US when she was three. Being Indian, born and raised in two different

continents and away from her motherland, has inspired her to write stories about

the first-generation Indian American immigrants and their struggle to raise a

family in a country very different from their own. She also wrote a novel, The

Namesake (2003) and a short story collection titled Unaccustomed Earth (2008).

This study particularly focuses mainly on three short stories, namely Mrs.

Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent. The writer has

chosen those three short stories because they portray the life of Indian American

immigrants living in New Land with all their emotional confusion of the outsider

and attempts to survive in the new continent. Yet, these immigrants living in exile

usually face problems in finding their own cultural identity as they live between

the cultural values of their origin and their adopted home.


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Mrs. Sen’s tells about an Indian woman who takes a job as a babysitter for

eleven-year old boy named Eliot since her husband is too busy working. She

defines herself as a ‘professor’s wife, responsible and kind, I will care for your

child in my home (111)’. She has a warm apartment and kindly serves Eliot when

he is at her place. Only one problem she has, she cannot drive. Mr. Sen, her

husband who teaches mathematics at the university, urges her to sit for her driving

license soon. In fact, Mrs. Sen hates driving. The ‘driving-matter’ then triggers

new problems.

As an Indian living in America, Mrs. Sen feels she lives in exile. Only two

things make her happy, when she receives a letter from India and finds fresh fish.

However, she is a bit depressed with his new life in the new land.

“’Send pictures,’ they write. ‘Send pictures of your new life.’ What picture can I send?” She sat, exhausted, on the edge of the bed, where there was now barely room for her. “They think I live the life of queen, Eliot.” She looked around the blank walls of the room. “They think I press buttons and the house is clean. They think I live in a palace.” (125) The matter of being a stranger in a new continent and failure to adapt to

the new surroundings is seen clearly through Eliot’s eyes.

This Blessed House depicts a story about the Indian couple named

Twinkle and Sanjeev who have just bought a new house in Connecticut, US.

When they begin arranging their house surprisingly they find ‘treasures’ hidden in

every corner of their house in a form of Christian effigies and its paraphernalia,

such as a white porcelain effigy of Christ, a 3-D postcard of Saint Francis done in

four colors, a wooden cross key chain, a plaster Virgin Mary and others.


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The ‘treasures’ findings somehow surprise them since they are good

Hindus and still hold the Indian tradition even though they live and work in US.

The problem arises when the two big religion meets in one house belong to Indian

immigrants.

Behind an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster of Virgin Mary as tall as their waists, with a blue painted hood draped over her head in the manner of an Indian bride… “No, silly Sanj. This is meant for outside. For the lawn.” “Oh God, no. Twinkle, no.” “But we must. It would be bad luck not to.” “All the neighbors will see. They’ll think we’re insane.” “Why, for having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn?”… “We’re not Christian.” (146) The suspicious feeling of being the part of religion-converting effort and

mix feeling of excitement, denial and rejection-and-acceptance the belief color

this young couple’s life.

The Third and Final Continent tells about an Indian man who leaves his

homeland and seeks for better life in Europe, then in America. He begins his life

in the New Land and tries to adapt with his new surroundings, even when he

decides to rent a room in a house belong to an old woman named Mrs. Croft. The

old woman always demands him, even in their first encounter, to commend about

the America’s greatest leap: the first moon landing by Apollo 11.

The women bellowed, “A flag on the moon, boy! I heard it on the radio! Isn’t that splendid?” “Yes, madame.” But she was not satisfied with my reply. Instead she commanded, “Say, ‘splendid’!”…I said nothing. “Say splendid!” the woman bellowed once again. “Splendid,” I murmured. I had to repeat the word a second time at the top of my lungs, so she could hear (179-180).


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The attempt to survive in three continents, while not forgetting the roots of

one’s cultural identity, becomes the central issue in this short story.

Regarding the fact that those three short stories have shared the same

problems faced by Indian immigrants in America, the writer intends to conduct a

study to identify their experience in exile using postcolonial approach.

The personal reason for selecting this topic is because the writer has

experienced living in India, precisely in Tamil Nadu, South India for about a

month. The passion in experiencing new cultures has blended with the feeling of

being a completely stranger in a new land. The precious experiences such as how

to adapt in the new surroundings, how to communicate with the natives without

knowing the language and how to learn new habits and customs have triggered the

writer to conduct a library study in literatures written by Indian authors.

B. Aim of the Study

The aim of the study is to see one’s life experiences in exile as seen in

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final

Continent. However, due to the limitation of problem, this study then has two

problems to analyze. The first is to describe the main characters as portrayed in

those three short stories, while the second is to examine the experience in exile,

experienced by the main characters using postcolonial approach.

C. Problem Formulation

Considering the explanation above, the problems are formulated as:


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1. How the main characters are portrayed in the short stories?

2. How the main characters’ experienced in exile is analyzed?

D. Benefits of the Study

The study of literary works has several advantages. For the writer, this

study is an attempt to look deeper in understanding life and its values. Related to

the world of literature, this study is also expected to enrich the literary exploration

on the works of Jhumpa Lahiri in particular, and other Indian American authors in

general. For English Education Study Program students, the writer designs a

lesson plan for Intensive Reading II that uses some selected parts from those three

short stories as the implementation of this study.

E. Definition of Terms

In analyzing those three short stories, it is necessary for the writer to

highlight certain terms to provide an accurate analysis and a clearer explanation in

answering the problems formulated. There are three terms to define, which are

exile, postcolonial literature and cultural identity.

1. Exile

According to Maxwell’s theory of place and displacement stated in The

Empire Writes Back, exile is the problem of findings and defining ‘home’,

physical and emotional confrontations with the ‘new’ land and its ancient

and established meanings (27).


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2. Postcolonial Literature

Postcolonial literature points the way toward a possible study of the effects

of colonialism in and between writing in English and writing in indigenous

languages in such contexts as Africa and India (24). It emerged in their

present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves

by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing

their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is this

which makes them distinctively postcolonial (2). Postcolonial literary

theory, then, has begun to deal with the problems of transmuting time into

space, with the present struggling out of the past, and like-much recent

postcolonial literature, it attempts to construct a future (36).

3. Cultural Identity

According to Hall, there are at least two different ways of thinking about

cultural identity. The first position defines ‘cultural identity’ in terms of

one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one-true self’. It reflects the

common historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide

us, as ‘one people’ (223). In the second sense, it is a matter of ‘becoming’

as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is

not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and

culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere; have histories (225),

since identity is a ‘production’, which is never complete, always in process

and always constituted within, not outside (222).


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CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL REVIEW

This chapter consists of four parts. They are: Review of Related Theories,

Critical Approach, Theoretical Framework and Criticism. Review of Related

Theories involves the explanation on Postcolonial Literature, theory of Place and

Displacement and theory of Cultural Identity. Critical Approach will describe

Postcolonial Approach. Theoretical Framework explains the contribution of

theories in analyzing the study. Criticism presents some criticism on the short

stories and the author.

A. Review of Related Theories

In this part, the writer discusses the Postcolonial Literature, theory of

Place and Displacement and theory of Cultural Identity.

1. Postcolonial Literatures

Theory on postcolonial literatures in this part is mainly derived from The

Empire Writes Back written by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin.

The term of postcolonial is used to cover all the culture affected by the

imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. This is

because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process

initiated by European imperial aggression. Therefore, the literatures of African

countries, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia,


9

Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South Pacific Island countries, and Sri

Lanka are all postcolonial literatures (2).

Literatures from those countries above share the same distinct spirit. They

emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted

themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by

emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is

this which makes them distinctively postcolonial (2).

In The Empire Writes Back, it is also stated that there are four major

critical models in postcolonial literatures. First, it is called ‘national’ or regional

models, which emphasize the distinctive features of the particular national or

regional culture. Second, it is called race-based models which identify certain

shared characteristics across various national literatures, such as the common

racial inheritance in literatures of the African diaspora addressed by the ‘Black

writing’ model. Third, it is called comparative models of varying complexity

which seek to account for particular linguistic, historical and cultural features

across two or more postcolonial literatures. Fourth, more comprehensive

comparative models which argue for feature such as hybridity and syncreticity

as constitutive elements of all post colonial literatures (15).

Postcolonial literatures points the way toward a possible study of the

effects of colonialism in and between writing in English and writing in indigenous

languages in such contexts as Africa and India (24). It emerged in their present

form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by

foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their


10

differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is this which makes

them distinctively postcolonial (2).

2. Theory of Place and Displacement

Theory of Place and Displacement can be found in several books talking

about Postcolonial Literatures and its Criticism. Here, the writer will explain on

theory of Place and Displacement according two main sources which are entitled

The Empire Writes Back and The Postcolonial Studies Reader. Those two books

are written and edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin.

According to The Empire Writes Back, the disjunction between place and

language is once proposed by D.E.S. Maxwell (1965). Place and displacement are

major concerns of all postcolonial peoples (24). Maxwell said,

There are two broad categories. In the first, the writer brings his own language – English – to an alien environment and a fresh set of experiences: Australia, Canada, New Zealand. In the other, the writer brings an alien language – English – to his own social and cultural inheritance: India, West Africa. Yet the categories have a fundamental kinship…The ‘intolerable wrestle with words and meanings’ has as its aim to subdue the experience to the language, the exotic life to the imported tongue (25; emphasis added). In this field, the term ‘exile’ appears. ‘Exile’ is defined as the problem of

findings and defining ‘home’, physical and emotional confrontations with the

‘new’ land and its ancient and established meanings (27). The theme of ‘exile’ is

one manifestation of the ubiquitous concern with place and displacement in these

societies, as well as with the complex material circumstances implicit in the


11

transportation of language from its place of origin and its imposed and imposing

relationship on and with the new environment (29).

Furthermore, in The Postcolonial Studies Reader, ‘Place’ has its own

section and is considered as one of four fundamental postcolonial issues besides

‘Language’, ‘History’ and ‘Ethnicity’.

Place and Displacement are crucial features of postcolonial discourse.

‘Place’ here does not simply mean ‘landscape’. The idea of ‘landscape’ is

predicated upon a particular philosophic tradition in which the objective world is

separated from the viewing subject, while ‘place’ in postcolonial societies is a

complex interaction of language, history and environment (391; emphasis added).

Moreover, the character of ‘place’ is firstly seen by what so-called as ‘a

sense of displacement’ and secondly by ‘a sense of the immense investment of

culture in the construction of place’.

A sense of displacement, of the lack of ‘fit’ between language and place, may be experienced by both those who possess English as a mother tongue and those who speak it as a second language. In both cases, the sense of dislocation from an historical ‘homeland’ and that created by the dissonance between languages, the experience of ‘displacement’ generates a creative tension within the language. Place is thus the concomitant of difference, the continual reminder of the separation, and yet of the hybrid interpenetration of the colonizer and colonized (391). The theory of place does not simply propose a binary separation between

the ‘place’ named and described in language, and some ‘real’ place inaccessible to

it, but rather indicates that in some sense place is language, something in constant

flux, a discourse in process (391).


12

Place therefore, the ‘place’ of the ‘subject’. Thus a major feature of

postcolonial literatures is the concern with either developing or recovering an

appropriate identifying relationship between self and place because it is precisely

within the parameters of place and its separateness that the process of subjectivity

can be conducted (392).

3. Theory of Cultural Identity

During their experience in exile, the immigrants are questioning about

their cultural identity. The condition then is mixed, trying to define what is

‘home’ while struggling to adapt to the new environment where sometimes they

feel that they are ‘lost’ in the crossroads of cultures.

Thus, in this part, the writer chooses two main sources which best

described the cultural identity. First, it is taken from Cultural Identity and Global

Process written by Jonathan Friedman, and another is called Cultural Identity and

Diaspora written by Stuart Hall.

In this part, Friedman focuses on the fragmentation of the world system

and the formation of cultural identity. He explains that the crisis of identity in the

center is expressive of a more general global crisis. This crisis consists in the

weakening of former national identities and the emergence of new identities (86).

While Hall emphasizes that ‘identity’ is seen as a ‘production’ which is never

complete, always in process and always constituted within, not outside (222).

In addition, Hall describes two different ways of thinking about ‘cultural

identity’. He formulates,


13

The first position defines cultural identity in terms of ‘one, shared culture, a sort of collective one true self’…It reflects the common historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as ‘one people’. The second sense, it is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories (223).

B. Critical Approaches

The writer employs postcolonial approach as a tool to analyze the three

short stories written by Jhumpa Lahiri. However, postcolonial approach is

relatively new approach and emerged as a distinct category in 1990s. Thus, it is

not mentioned in several contemporary literary theory books. This chapter

enlightens the beginning of the emerging postcolonial criticism, the characteristics

of postcolonial criticism as well as explains on three stages in seeing postcolonial

criticism. The source is mainly taken from Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory.

1. The Beginning of the Emerging of Postcolonial Criticism

Postcolonial criticism appears to criticize the universal standard of

literature claimed by the liberal humanist critics which stated that the great

literature has a timeless and universal significance. As a result, it disregards

cultural, social, regional and national differences.

This universalism is rejected by postcolonial criticism. Barry said that

whenever a universal signification is claimed for a work, then, white, Eurocentric

norms and practices are being promoted by a sleight of hand to this elevated

status, and all others correspondingly relegated to subsidiary, marginalized roles


14

(193). Barry also emphasizes on what Frantz Fanon remarked on what he called as

‘cultural resistance’ in his book, The Wretched of the Earth (published in France

in 1961). Fanon argued that the first step for 'colonialized' people in finding a

voice and an identity is to reclaim their own past, and continued to erode the

colonialist ideology by which that past had been devalued (193; emphasis added).

A major book which inaugurates postcolonial criticism is written by

Edward Said, entitled Orientalism (published in 1978), which is a specific expose

of the Eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both the superiority of

what is European or Western, and the inferiority of what is not (193).

Said identifies a European cultural tradition of 'Orientalism', which is a particular and long-standing way of identifying the East as 'Other' and inferior to the West. The Orient, he says, features in the Western mind 'as a sort of surrogate and even underground self’. This means that the East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness, and so on). At the same time, and paradoxically, the East is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical and the seductive. It also tends to be seen as homogenous, the people there being anonymous masses, rather than individuals, their actions determined by instinctive emotions (lust, terror, fury, etc.) rather than by conscious choices or decisions. Their emotions and reactions are always determined by racial considerations (they are like this because they are asiatics or blacks or orientals) rather than by aspects of individual status or circumstance (193-194; emphasis added).

2. The Characteristics of Postcolonial Criticism

The writer finds four characteristics of postcolonial criticism in Barry’s

book. The first characteristic of postcolonial criticism is an awareness of

representations of the non-European as exotic or immoral 'Other'. It evokes or


15

creates a pre-colonial version of their own nation, rejecting the modern and the

contemporary, which is tainted with the colonial status of their countries (194).

Language is a second area of concern in postcolonial criticism (195),

while the third characteristic is the emphasis on identity as doubled, or hybrid, or

unstable (196). The fourth characteristic is the stress on ‘cross-cultural’

interactions (196) characterized by the three stages in seeing postcolonial

criticism called Adopt, Adapt, and Adept.

3. The Stages in Seeing Postcolonial Criticism

There was a shifting attitude towards postcolonial writers in 1980s and

1990s which seeing themselves as using primarily African or Asian forms,

supplemented with European-derived influences, rather than as working primarily

within European genres like the novel and merely adding to them a degree of

exotic Africanisation. All postcolonial literatures seem to make this transition

(196). Therefore, there are three stages in seeing postcolonial criticism. They are

called Adopt, Adapt, and Adept.

a. Adopt

The postcolonial literatures begin with an unquestioning acceptance of the

authority of European models (especially in the novel) and with the ambition of

writing works that will be masterpieces entirely in this tradition. This can be

called the ‘Adopt’ phase of colonial literature, since the writer’s ambition is to

adopt the form as it stands, the assumption being that it has universal validity

(196).


16

b. Adapt

The second stage can be called the ‘Adapt’ phase, since it aims to adapt

the European form to African or Asian subject matter, thus assuming partial rights

of intervention in the genre (196).

c. Adept

In the final phase, there is a declaration of cultural independence whereby

African or Asian writers remake the form to their own specification, without

reference to European norms. This is called the ‘Adept’ phase, since its

characteristic is the assumption that the colonial writer is an independent ‘adept’

in the form, as in the first phase, or as in the second (196).

4. Key Points in Postcolonial Criticism

To sum up the postcolonial approach and its criticism, there are six key

points in postcolonial criticism as stated in Beginning Theory,

(1) They reject the claims to universalism made on behalf of canonical Western literature and seek to show its limitations of outlook, especially its general inability to empathize across boundaries of cultural and ethnic difference; (2) They examine the representation of other cultures in literature as a way of achieving this end; (3) They show how such literature is often evasively and crucially silent on matters concerned with colonization and imperialism; (4) They foreground questions of cultural difference and diversity and examine their treatment in relevant literary works; (5) They celebrate hybridity and 'cultural poly valency', that is, the situation whereby individuals and groups belong simultaneously to more than one culture (for instance, that of the colonizer, through a colonial school system, and that of the colonized, through local and oral traditions); (6) They develop a perspective, not just applicable to postcolonial literatures, whereby states of marginality, plurality and perceived 'Otherness' are seen as sources of energy and potential change (199).


17

C. Theoretical Framework

This part explains briefly the contribution of the theories in analyzing and

solving the problems of the study.

This study involves the explanation on Postcolonial Literature, theory of

Place and Displacement and theory of Cultural Identity to answer both the first

and second research questions. Using these theories, the writer will be able to

describe the main characters’ portrayed in those three short stories (the first

research question) and to analyze the experience in exile, experienced by the main

characters in those three short stories (the second research question).

The explanation on Postcolonial Literature provides important background

to comprehend the text, while the theory of Place and Displacement offers great

help to identify the ‘exile’ experiences, experienced by those main characters

since it tells about the reason why the ‘dislocation’ feeling appears in those main

characters in three short stories analyzed.

In addition, the theory of Cultural Identity presents the way to analyze the

main characters’ difficulties in facing the new environments and their struggle

whether to maintain their cultural identity, or even resist against it.

The Postcolonial Approach then is used as a tool to analyze the text since

it relates much on the postcolonial reading.

D. Criticism

Once a literary work published for public, it may generate compliments,

comments, suggestion or even critics from the readers. Like what was written in


18

the essay derived from Voices of the Gaps which were submitted by Nicholas

Gipe, Lindsay Greco, Geri Spencer and Jackie Yang. They criticized Jhumpa

Lahiri as ‘a popular young writer of Indian background who is a sort of

representative figure for non-immigrant Americans who do not fully understand

what it means to straddle the line between two cultures’.

In an interview with India-West, Lahiri admits: “I am lucky that I am

between two worlds. I do not really know what a distinct South Asian identity

means. I do not think about that when I write, I just try to bring a person to life”.

Thus, one main reason for Lahiri’s success as a writer is ‘because she writes for

herself; she does not have critics or peers in mind when writing; she just writes’

(http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/lahiri_jhumpa.php, accessed on December

15, 2010).

Furthermore, it is said that Lahiri is able to demonstrate her point in

writing by merely mentioning the issue that a character is facing and also able to

draw her readers into the story not only through her detail but also by making

them feel the emotional, physical, and mental needs of the characters. All nine of

the stories in Interpreter of Maladies focus on the characters' inability to

communicate with people who are important in their lives. Another impressive

aspect of Lahiri's writing is her ability to write in the voices of both genders. This

method of narration gives her the ability to balance the gender representation in

her book (http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/lahiri_jhumpa.php, accessed on

December 15, 2010).


19

Those three short stories, Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third

and Final Continent are compiled in one book entitled Interpreter of Maladies

with other six stories. All stories contain themes of conflict in relationships

between couples, families and friends.

Through these relationships she explores ideas of isolation and identity, both personal and cultural. The characters in both works frequently encounter crises of identity, which are tied to their inabilities to reconcile their American identity with their Indian identity. Particularly in the short fiction of Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri often leaves these crises unresolved. As a result, her work gives us a rather bleak outlook on the future of her characters. We might imagine that this reflects some of Lahiri's concerns about their real-life analogues. She often correlates her characters' cultural isolation with extreme personal isolation, suggesting that the cultural isolation causes the personal. The instances in which this cultural isolation are resolved or avoided are generally accompanied by a similar resolution or avoidance of personal isolation (http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/lahiri_jhumpa.php, accessed on December 15, 2010). Other remarks to Lahiri’s works come from Dr. Jaya Lakhsmi Rao V. She

said that ‘Miss Lahiri’s endeavor to interpret the maladies of the mind that people

suffer from and the unique manner in which she makes them realize their own

flaws, certainly merit the Prize and the prestige she won with her maiden volume

of short fiction’. With a remarkable insight she delves deep into the psychological

depths of her characters and reveals their inner world by a fascinating yet

deceptively simple style. We come across more reality than fancy in her fiction. It

is hardly an exaggeration to say that her interpretation of the maladies itself acts

like a potent medicine. Yet they are interesting and often make humorous studies

of life (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~vempala/family/Lahiri.html, accessed on

December 15, 2010).


20

The last comment comes from Anita George, who emphasizes on the issue

of dual culture live in one body. She said that ‘Lahiri provides one shining

example that raising a family with two different sets of cultural values can work,

and that creating a single, cohesive identity out of the duality is the key to such

success’ (http://www.helium.com/items/1131538-indian-american-immigration-

literary-analysis-the-final-continent-jhumpa, accessed on December 15, 2010).


21

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

This chapter will be divided into three parts. The first one is the Object of

the Study. It describes the short stories that will be analyzed. The second is the

Approach of the Study. It discusses the approach employed in the analysis, the

description of the approach, the reason of selecting the approach and the

procedure of the application of the approach. The last part is Procedure. It

explains the steps in analyzing the three short stories chosen.

A. Object of the Study

The three short stories explored in this study are entitled Mrs. Sen’s, This

Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent written by Jhumpa Lahiri, an

Indian American author. Those stories can be found in a compilation called

Interpreter of Maladies which contains nine short stories in total. It was published

in India by HarperCollins in 1999. This compilation of short stories received the

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2000.

Mrs. Sen’s tells the story of an Indian woman who takes a job as a

babysitter for eleven-year old boy named Eliot while her husband is busy

working. She defines herself as a ‘professor’s wife, responsible and kind, I will

care for your child in my home (111)’. She cares for Eliot when he is at her place.

The only problem is that she cannot drive. Mr. Sen, who teaches mathematics at


22

the university, urges her to have her driving lessons. Mrs. Sen, however, hates

driving. The ‘driving-matter’ then triggers a multitude of problems.

As an Indian living in America, Mrs. Sen feels she lives in exile. Only two

things make her happy, when she receives a letter from India and finds fresh fish.

However, she is a bit depressed with his new life in the new land.

“’Send pictures,’ they write. ‘Send pictures of your new life.’ What picture can I send?” She sat, exhausted, on the edge of the bed, where there was now barely room for her. “They think I live the life of queen, Eliot.” She looked around the blank walls of the room. “They think I press buttons and the house is clean. They think I live in a palace.” (125) This Blessed House depicts a story about the Indian couple named

Twinkle and Sanjeev who have just bought a new house in Connecticut, US.

When they begin arranging their house surprisingly they find ‘treasures’ hidden in

every corner of their house in a form of Christian effigies and its paraphernalia,

such as a white porcelain effigy of Christ, a 3-D postcard of Saint Francis done in

four colors, a wooden cross key chain, a plaster Virgin Mary and others.

The ‘treasures’ findings somehow surprise them since they are good

Hindus and still hold the Indian tradition even though they live and work in US.

The problem arises when the two religions meet in one house belonging to Indian

immigrants.

Behind an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster of Virgin Mary as tall as their waists, with a blue painted hood draped over her head in the manner of an Indian bride… “No, silly Sanj. This is meant for outside. For the lawn.” “Oh God, no. Twinkle, no.” “But we must. It would be bad luck not to.” “All the neighbors will see. They’ll think we’re insane.” “Why, for having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn?”… “We’re not Christian.” (146)


23

The suspicious feeling of being the part of religion-converting effort and

mixed feelings of excitement, denial and rejection of religious beliefs color this

young couple’s life.



in the New Land and tries to adapt with his new surroundings. He rents a room in

a house belonging to an old woman named Mrs. Croft. Even in their first

encounter the old woman demands he comments about the America’s great leap

into space: the first moon landing by Apollo 11.

The women bellowed, “A flag on the moon, boy! I heard it on the radio! Isn’t that splendid?” “Yes, madame.” But she was not satisfied with my reply. Instead she commanded, “Say, ‘splendid’!”…I said nothing. “Say splendid!” the woman bellowed once again. “Splendid,” I murmured. I had to repeat the word a second time at the top of my lungs, so she could hear (179-180). The attempts to survive in three continents while does not forget the roots

of cultural identity become the main problems in this short story.

B. Approach of the Study

This study utilizes a postcolonial approach to analyze the experience in

exile of the main characters in the three short stories, Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed

House and The Third and Final Continent.

The postcolonial approach is relatively new approach to literary theory

emerging as a distinct literary discourse in 1990s and is therefore not mentioned


24

in several contemporary literary theory books. According to Peter Barry in

Beginning Theory, postcolonial criticism problematizes the claim by liberal

humanists that “great” literature has a timeless and universal significance

regardless of cultural, social, regional and national differences. This universalism

is rejected by postcolonial criticism (193).

Therefore, to find the answer to the research problems, the writer identifies

three stages in postcolonial literature, Adopt, Adapt and Adept, and combines

these stages with the theory of place and displacement, to ascertain the

fundamental characteristics for analyzing postcolonial literature.

C. Procedure

The primary source which is used in this study is three short stories, Mrs.

Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent. In addition to these

primary sources, there are several secondary sources that are important to this

research. These include writings by theorists who have addressed Postcolonial

Literatures, theory of Place and Displacement, theories of Cultural Identity and

Postcolonial Criticism.

Since this study is not a field study, library study becomes the method to

gather the data. The writer goes to the library to find some relevant books, and

browse some sources from the internet.

In undertaking this study, there are several steps used by the writer. First,

the writer read the short stories several times to get a deeper understanding of the

themes and ideas addressed within the primary texts. Second, the writer


25

determines the research problems based on the three short stories. Third, the

writer finds references related in this study by searching for scholarly articles,

books and other materials in the library that shed further light on the primary data.

Fourth, the writer reads broadly within the field of postcolonial discourse to refine

my approach to this particular study. Fifth, the writer synthesizes this study by

relating the theories in Chapter II to the writer’s central hypothesis regarding the

impact of the dislocation of the postcolonial condition on modern literature. Sixth,

the writer concludes this study based on this analysis.


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CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

This chapter explores two central problems: the first is to describe the

main characters in Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and

Final Continent; the second deals with the main characters’ experiences in exile.

In answering the second problem, the writer will reiterate some of the key

experiences of the characters covered in these three short stories, including their

life experiences in exile, this will be followed by an analysis of the deeper

meaning of those three short stories.

A. The Main Characters Portrayed in the Short Stories

In this part, the writer will describe how the main characters in each short

story are portrayed. There are three elements in this part due to the three short

stories chosen, Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final

Continent. Here, the writer tries to illustrate each of the main characters in detail

so that later on the next part, it will be easier to analyze.

1. Mrs. Sen’s

Mrs. Sen, the central character in this short story, is married to Mr. Sen, a

mathematics professor at an American University. Mrs. Sen is described as an

Indian Bengali housewife about thirty years old.


27

She had a small gap between her teeth and faded pockmarks on her chin, yet her eyes were beautiful, with thick, flaring brows and liquid flourishes that extended beyond the natural width of the lids. She wore a shimmering white sari patterned with orange paisleys more suitable for an evening affair than for that quiet, faintly drizzling August afternoon. Her lips were coated in a complementary coral gloss, and a bit or the color had strayed beyond the borders (112).

Mrs. Sen emigrated from Calcutta, India to the United States because of

her husband’s profession. However, Mr. Sen spends too much time at university,

prompting Mrs Sen to take up a job as a babysitter for Eliot, an eleven-year-old

boy, to assuage her loneliness. Everything is as it should be, but only one thing

matters. Mrs. Sen cannot drive. Previously, Mr. Sen urges Mrs. Sen to learn how

to drive so that she will be more independent like American women. Yet, Mrs.

Sen is reluctant to learn how to drive. Mr. Sen pushes her more than she expects:

“Switch lanes,” Mr. Sen said. “You will have to bear left at the rotary.” Mrs. Sen did not. “Switch lanes, I tell you.” He shut off the radio. “Are you listening to me?”…“No more,” she said…“I hate it. I hate driving. I won’t go on (131).”

Despite the fact that she finds difficulty in her driving effort, Mrs. Sen

lives her daily life like what she usually does back in her hometown in India.

When she wants to cook something, instead preparing the ingredients at the

kitchen cabinet, she prefers chopping vegetables on the floor.

He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she chopped things, seated on newspaper on the living room floor. Instead of a knife, she used a blade that curved like the prow of a Viking ship…She took whole vegetables between her hands and hacked them apart cauliflower, cabbage, butternut squash. She split things in half, then quarters, speedily…She could peel a potato in seconds (114). The blade she uses for chopping vegetables seems special to her. In one

occasion, she tells Elliot about the blade she brought from India.


28

She had brought the blade from India, where apparently there was at least one in every household. “Whenever there is a wedding in the family…or a large celebration of any kind, my mother sends out word in the evening for all the neighborhood women to bring blades just like this one, and then they sit in an enormous circle on the roof of our building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night (115). Mrs. Sen still conducts Indian customs, like never wear shoes inside the

house and wearing sari every time, at house and outside. She also never forgets to

apply the vermilion powder in the center part of her braided hair.

…one day he saw her standing before the bathroom mirror, solemnly applying, with the head of a thumbtack, a fresh stroke of scarlet powder, which she stored in a small jam jar. A few grains of the powder fell onto the bridge of her nose as she used the thumbtack to stamp a dot above her eyebrows. “I must wear the powder every day,” she explained when Eliot asked her what it was for, “for the rest of the days that I am married.” “Like a wedding ring, you mean?” “Exactly, Eliot, exactly like a wedding ring. Only with no fear of losing it in the dishwater (117)”. Even though days are dull for Mrs. Sen before Eliot comes, she has two

things which make her happy. The first thing is when she receives a letter from

India. Checking the mailbox after driving practice becomes Mrs. Sen’s habitual as

she waits for any news from her family in India. When the arrival day of Indian

letter comes, Mrs. Sen will be so happy that she embraces Eliot and soon tells her

husband about the letter via telephone.

Subsequently she spoke in her own language, rapid and riotous to Eliot’s ears; it was clear that she was reading the contents of the letter, word by word. As she read her voice was louder and seemed to shift in key. Though she stood plainly before him, Eliot had the sensation that Mrs. Sen was no longer present in the room with the pear-colored carpet (122).


29

Another thing makes Mrs. Sen happy is fish from the seaside. She is fond

of fish so much that she complains on how difficult it is to find good fish in

America compared to Calcutta.

“It is very frustrating…to live so close to the ocean and not to have so much fish.” In the summer, she said, she liked to go to a market by the beach. She added that while the fish there tasted nothing like the fish in India, at least it was fresh…Mrs. Sen said she had grown up eating fish twice a day. She added that in Calcutta people ate fish first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, as a snack after school if they were lucky. They ate the tail, the eggs, even the head. It was available in any market, at any hour, from dawn until midnight. “All you have to do is leave the house and walk a bit, and there you are (123-124).” Mrs. Sen orders her beloved fish by phone daily, and since she cannot

drive it is Mr. Sen’s duty to pick up the orders on his way home. When Mr. Sen

refuses to pick up anymore orders due to his busy schedule at university, Mrs. Sen

becomes so sad,

He found her on the sofa, weeping. Her face was in her hands and tears dripped through her fingers. Through them she murmured something about a meeting Mr. Sen was required to attend…She starred at him. Her lower eyelids were swollen into thin pink crests. “Tell me, Eliot. Is it too much to ask? (125)” Soon, loneliness wraps up Mrs. Sen. She faces the climax of her

unspeakable alienation since she first came to America.

She flung open the drawers of the bureau and the door of the closet, filled with saris of every imaginable texture and shade, brocaded with gold and silver threads…She sifted through the drawers, letting saris spill over the edges. “When have I ever worn this one? And this? And this?” She tossed the saris one by one from the drawers, then pried several from their hangers…“’Send pictures,’ they write. ‘Send pictures of your new life.’ What picture can I send?” She sat, exhausted, on the edge of the bed, where there was now barely room for her. “They think I live the life of queen, Eliot.” She looked around the blank walls of the room. “They think I press buttons and the house is clean. They think I live in a palace.” (125)


30

Mrs. Sen feels depressed by her loneliness at home, her homesick of India

and her incapability of adapt to the new place she lives in. Instead, her husband

keeps urging her to get her driving license quickly. Refuse to continue her driving

practice, Mrs. Sen finds another way to be independent. She takes the bus to go to

the fish market, but the passengers complain of the smell. Finally, she decides to

give it a try, to drive by her own to take the fish, and she gets an accident.

The accident occurred quickly. After about a mile, Mrs. Sen took a left before she should have, and though the oncoming car managed to swerve out of her way, she was so startled by the horn that she lost control of the wheel and hit a telephone pole on the opposite corner…Mrs. Sen cut her lip, Eliot complained briefly of pain in his ribs, and the car’s fenser would have to be straightened (134). The accident makes Mrs. Sen sadder. She is no longer a babysitter for

Eliot since Eliot’s mother takes him home and asks Eliot to be a ‘big boy’ that

does not need babysitter anymore.

It can be implied from the explanation above that the main character in this

short story still holds the tradition she inherited from her origin, but does not want

to involve in the new environment she has been thrust into. She has difficulties to

adapting to her new surroundings and the feels left behind by her busy husband:

she sinks into a pool of sorrow.

2. This Blessed House

The main characters in this short story are Sanjeev and Tanima, called

Twinkle, newlyweds who are trying to adjust their life of marriage. Both of them

have different personalities. Twinkle is free-spirited, spontaneous and lively,


31

excited and delighted by little things. She also does not pay attention to details,

while Sanjeev is the vice versa. He is unadventurous and craves for orders. He

pays much attention to organization and neatness.

Now, in the second month of their marriage, certain things nettled him – the way she sometimes spat a little when she spoke, or left her undergarments after removing them at night at the foot of their bed rather than depositing them in the laundry hamper (142).

He tries hard to arrange every single part of their house in a right place and a right

order when they move to the new place.

He was kneeling on the floor, marking, with ripped bits of a Post-it, patches on the baseboard that needed to be retouched with paint…Sanjeev was organizing his engineering texts from MIT in alphabetical order on a bookshelf, though it had been several years since he had needed to consult any of them (136-137).

They have met only four months before their wedding. In fact, their

marriage was arranged by their parents who are old friends. Before leaving for the

wedding, Sanjeev has found a new house for a good price in a neighborhood with

a fine school system (145). At first, Sanjeev is not bothered when he notices that

the switch plates covered with biblical stickers, or the transparent decal of the

Virgin on the half shell (145).

However, when they begin arranging their house surprisingly they find

‘treasures’ hidden in every corner of their house in a form of Christian effigies

and its paraphernalia.

They discovered the first one in a cupboard above the stove, beside an unopened bottle of malt vinegar...a white porcelain effigy of Christ…There was a 3-D postcard of Saint Francis done in four colors, which Twinkle had found taped to the back of the medicine cabinet, and a wooden cross key chain, which Sanjeev had stepped on with bare feet…There was a framed paint-by-number of the three wise men, against


32

the black velvet background…There was also a tile trivet depicting a blond, unbearded Jesus, delivering a sermon on a mountaintop, left in one of drawers…a small plastic snow-filled dome containing a miniature Nativity scene, found behind the pipes of the kitchen sink (136-137). When the first ‘treasure’ is discovered in that new house, and followed by

other ‘treasures’ and more ‘treasures’ come up in the upcoming days, Sanjeev gets

frustrated. He asks Twinkle to throw away all the stuff found, but instead she

collects them on the mantle and shows them off at every chance. Sanjeev thinks

that all items found by Twinkle lack a sense of the sacredness (138). However, he

cannot resist the display of Christian relics until one day when Twinkle finds a

larger-than-life-sized watercolor poster of Christ, weeping translucent tears the

size of peanut shells and sporting a crown of thorns, rolled up behind a radiator in

the guest bedroom (139).

“Now, look. I will tolerate, for now, your little biblical menagerie in the living room. But I refuse to have this…displayed in our home.”…“I’m going to put it in my study…That way you don’t have to look-at it. “What about the housewarming. They’ll want to see all the rooms.”… “I’ll put it behind the door,” she offered. “That way, when they peck in, they won’t see. Happy? (139)” Again, Sanjeev accepts his wife’s offer. Yet, when Twinkle once more

discovers another bigger ‘treasure’ in the weekend, this time Sanjeev loses his

patience.

Behind an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster of Virgin Mary as tall as their waists, with a blue painted hood draped over her head in the manner of an Indian bride… “No, silly Sanj. This is meant for outside. For the lawn.” “Oh God, no. Twinkle, no.” “But we must. It would be bad luck not to.” “All the neighbors will see. They’ll think we’re insane.” “Why, for having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn?”… “We’re not Christian.” (146)


33

He decides to take an action to remove the Virgin Mary statue from the

lawn, but Twinkle gets angry and cries.

“Where are you going to put it?”…“For now I am going to put in the garage. Then tomorrow morning on my way to work I am going to take it to the dump.”…“Don’t you dare.”…”I hate you.”…“You can’t throw away that statue. I won’t let you.”…“Yes, I can. I will.” “No,”…“This is our house. We own it together. The statue is part of our property.” She had begun to shiver (149). Finally, they reach an agreement. The statue will be placed in a recess at

the side of the house, so that it is not obvious to passersby, but is still clearly

visible to all who comes. Nonetheless, when the housewarming party runs,

Sanjeev is surprised to see her wife leads the guests to join the ‘treasure hunt’ at

the attic. Surprisingly, the group finds a ‘big’ treasure, which is a solid silver bust

of Christ, the head easily three times the size of his own (156).

In this point, Sanjeev questions himself about his ‘home’ and more

dangerously his relationship with his wife. In this continent, where he strives for

the best opportunity, he feels that he is conquered by his own wife. He hates the

fact that he is not able to control the ‘treasures’, as he is usually in control over his

surroundings. Twinkle, more easily adopts the American way of life, likes

smoking and drinking, she cannot cook Indian food well, and builds her town

‘language’ to experience life in the new continent, far from home. She seems to

embrace all new things with a delighted heart and without prejudice.

In this case, religion is not the main conflict, but more the dislocation of

‘home’ in Sanjeev and the new definition of ‘home’ in Twinkle.


34

3. The Third and Final Continent

In this short story, the main character is remained unnamed. Anita George

in her essay, Juggling Apple Pies and Samosas remarks that The Third and Final

Continent is a partially fictionalized account of her parents’ lives in the late 1960s,

during which they emigrated from India to Britain and then finally immigrated to

America to settle permanently (http://www.helium.com/items/1131538-indian-

american-immigration-literary-analysis-the-final-continent-jhumpa, accessed

December 15, 2010).

The main character in this short story is an Indian Bengali man who leaves

India in 1964 with a certificate in commerce (173) and a great wish to achieve a

better future in the new continent. He arrives in London, in a house occupied

exclusively by penniless Bengali bachelors who all struggle to educate and

establish themselves abroad (173). Even though he studies and works in a

continent different from his homeland, he still practices his original customs, like

cooking egg curry which he eats with his hands on a table covered with

newspapers (173) and offering himself for an arranged-marriage (174). He also

adapts with his new environment quickly, like drinking tea and smoking

Rothmans (173), and watching cricket at Lord’s (174).

Soon after he gets married, he moves to America as he is offered a full-

time job with good salary in the processing department of a library at MIT. His

wife is still in India and she will follow him to America if her passport and green

card are ready. Therefore, he stays at YMCA in Cambridge, learns the American

customs, such as trying milk and cornflakes as his daily breakfast menu (175) and


35

converting ounces to grams (175) when he does his shopping. He moves from

YMCA to Mrs. Croft’s, who only accepts students either from Harvard or Tech

(177). Mrs. Croft is an old lady with a peculiar look and an old-fashioned manner.

She wore a long black skirt that spread like a stiff tent to the floor, and a starched white shirt edged with the ruffles at the throat and cuffs. Her hands, folded together in her lap, had long pallid fingers, with swollen knuckles and tough yellow nails. Age had battered her features so that she almost resembled a man, with sharp, shrunken eyes and prominent creases on other side of her nose. Her lips, chapped and faded, had nearly disappeared, and her eyebrows were missing altogether (178). In their first encounter, he is surprised by the loud voice of Mrs. Croft who

always demands him to do something, like to lock up the door, fasten the chain

and firmly press the button on the knob (178), to be punctual in paying the rent

(178) and to shout for American’s success to land on the moon.

The women bellowed, “A flag on the moon, boy! I heard it on the radio! Isn’t that splendid?” “Yes, madame.” But she was not satisfied with my reply. Instead she commanded, “Say, ‘splendid’!”…I said nothing. “Say splendid!” the woman bellowed once again. “Splendid,” I murmured. I had to repeat the word a second time at the top of my lungs, so she could hear (179-180). This command becomes his ritual every time he meets Mrs. Croft every

morning and afternoon in the living room after he decides to rent the room though

he cannot bring his wife in since Mrs. Croft does not allow lady visitors. Yet, he is

happy to have an access to kitchen for cooking curry.

When he unexpectedly meet Mrs. Croft’s daughter, Helen, who comes

once a week for bringing groceries for her mother, Mrs. Croft is at rage.

“It is improper for a lady and gentleman who are not married to one another to hold a private conversation without a chaperone!”


36

Helen said she was sixty-eight years old, old enough to be my mother, but Mrs. Croft insisted that Helen and I speak to each other downstairs, in the parlor. She added that it was also improper for a lady of Helen’s station to reveal her age, and to wear a dress so high above the ankle (186). When the time of his wife’s arrival is getting near, he has to find a new

place of residence for him and his wife, Mala. He moves to a furnished apartment

a few blocks away, with a double bed and a private kitchen and bath (190). Mala

is twenty-seven, and she can cook, knit, embroider, sketch landscape and recite

poems by Tagore (181). Even though for the first time it feels strange for both of

them to live together in one room, they live their daily life by speaking Bengali at

home, eating Indian food as well as going to supermarket and having a picnic.

Their connection as husband and wife is bought closer after their short

visit to Mrs. Croft’s. When he reads Mrs. Croft’s obituary, he is stricken with

grief, it is the first death he mourns in America (196).

After thirty years of living his life in America with his wife and his only

son, they continue passing the tradition to their son, like eating rice with hands

and speaking in Bengali (197), things that they sometimes worry their son will no

longer do after they die. They reside as American citizens, own a house with a

garden and have social security. They have survived for three continents, as well

as survived in the crossroads of cultures.

B. The Experience in Exile

In this part, the writer will present several facts which are written in those

three short stories, including the life experiences in exile experienced by the main


37

characters, and then followed by the writer’s analysis to search for the deeper

meaning of those three short stories.

a. Mrs. Sen’s

When someone is living outside his homeland and questioning which

identity he should embrace, thus he faces the crisis of cultural identity. In Mrs.

Sen’s, it is Mrs. Sen who tackles the crisis of cultural identity as she follows her

husband to move to America. The knowledge gap between Mrs. Sen and Mr. Sen

deepen the crisis of cultural identity experienced by Mrs. Sen.

Mrs. Sen is positioned as a housewife without any productive activity. The

only attempt to bring meaning to her life made by Mr. Sen is to urge her to drive,

so she will become independent. However, Mrs. Sen keeps on questioning how

she belongs in this country. Is she an Indian wife, or an American wife?

Eventually, she chooses the first one. She feels that she is comfort to be Indian

and always collects memories from her homeland through several symbols

depicted in the short story despite the fact that she lives in the land of America.

This condition worsens the crisis in Mrs. Sen. Through several symbols

that she embraces tightly, she claims her resistance toward the American culture.

The first symbol is the blade she brought from India. The usage of the blade

instead of knife symbolizes Mrs. Sen’s refusal to accept the new culture. The

second symbol is sari. She always wears sari everywhere she goes, both at home

and outside. She even has a set of collection beautiful saris in her closet which she

regrets she never have a chance to wear.


38

The third symbol is fish. How she favors fish more than meats indicates

that she is longing for being in Calcutta where she can buy fish anytime, not like

in America. Meanwhile, the car which represents the way to open her minds to

new surroundings is neglected by Mrs. Sen. She rejects the car, like she rejects to

be an independent American woman. As Jonathan Friedman explains that this

crisis consists in gap between the weakening of former national identities and the

emergence of new identities (86), Mrs. Sen is facing also the confusion between

dual identities but at last she resists and fails to adapt to new surroundings.

b. This Blessed House

In this story, it is Twinkle who is facing the crisis of cultural identity. She

lives between two cultures both Indian and American.. She is portrayed smoking

(139), drinking whiskey (140) and interested in Christian paraphernalia (137).

Even her nickname, Twinkle is the famous nursery rhyme in America (142) and

she does not want to use her Indian name, Tanima. In addition, she cannot cook

Indian food (143) even though she also dislikes wearing high heels (141) and is

not in favor of classical music (140). Though she has become American, she has

not ceased to be Indian. These attitudes are typical of the confusion for second

generation of immigrants who are born and raised in America from non-American

parents.

Sanjeev is the example of an Indian man who thrives in America. He has

prospects of becoming a vice president (138) in the firm he works and is able to

cook Indian food much better than his wife (150). He can overcome the crisis of


39

cultural identity by keeping the tradition as well as accepting the new cultures

without distorting one or the other.

c. The Third and Final Continent

The Indian man in this story does not face serious problem regarding his

emigration to Europe and America, but his wife, Mala, does. The crisis of cultural

identity is seen when she first arrival in America. However, with the great help of

her husband, she overcomes the crisis.

The couple struggle to prevent the crisis of cultural identity affecting their

son. They teach their son Indian traditions, like eating rice with hands and

speaking in Bengali (197). By planting the roots of Indian tradition and

encouraging their son to comprehend his own culture before learning other

cultures, he avoids the loss of Indian identity.

As it already reveals in these explanation above, all characters in these

three short stories are seeking a ‘home’ in a new continent. However, they have

different approaches to defining ‘home’.

According to Maxwell, in all three short stories analyzed there is a

disjunction between place and language, the writer brings her own language to an

alien environment and a fresh set of experiences (25).

This will lead to next Maxwell’s theory which he identifies two groups,

the settler colonies (United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia) and the

invaded colonies (India and Africa).


40

Maxwell’s theory suggests that in the case of invaded societies like India, where indigenous peoples were colonized on their own territories, writers were not forced to adapt to a different landscape and climate, but had their own ancient and sophisticated response to them marginalized by the world-view which was implicated in the acquisition of English (25). Thus, the term ‘exile’ appears here. ‘Exile’ is defined as the problem of

findings and defining ‘home’, physical and emotional confrontations with the

‘new’ land and its ancient and established meanings (27).

In Mrs. Sen’s, Mrs. Sen has her own way to define ‘home’. She believes

‘home’ is where she lives in India. She portrays ‘home’ as whatever brings her

close to her homeland in Calcutta. Thus, she always keeps the ‘memory of

homeland’ so tight in herself through a series of symbols and rituals; using the

blade she brought from India instead of a knife, putting on the vermillion powder,

wearing a sari every day and cutting fish according to the Indian custom. She feels

that America is not a ‘home’ to her.

Different from Mrs. Sen, Sanjeev and Twinkle in This Blessed House

somehow handle the adaptation to American culture. They accept America as

‘home’. Nonetheless, when the problem emerges regarding to the finding several

‘Christianity treasures’ at their new house, the definition of ‘home’ are revealed to

be fragile. They have their own way to define ‘home’. Sanjeev, who is a Hindu,

refuses to place the Christian symbol in their house as Christian effigies are not

part of Indian culture. Meanwhile, Twinkle has different attitudes in defining

‘home’. She desires to be as same as other Americans. Thus, they still stand in

cultural crossroads. They do not fully perceive America as their ‘home’, but at the


41

same time they also do not identify India as their ‘home’. They are American and

Indian, but at the same time they are neither American nor Indian.

In The Third and Final Continent, the man seems easily adapts to his new

surroundings. In this point, the man is experiencing the second, and even, the third

‘home’. He neither resists the new culture, nor grasps the traditions. He is

experiencing the cultures in Europe and America, while in the same time not

abandoning his roots as Indian. No doubt that the man does not face ‘a feeling of

displacement’. Like what Bill Ashcroft says about three stages of ‘Adopt’,

‘Adapt’ and ‘Adept’, the man is fruitfully achieving those three phases. First, he

adopts new things he encounters in the new land, like drinking tea and smoking

Rothman in London (173), next he adapts to the changes, like preferring milk and

cornflakes for his breakfast instead of hamburger (175) and finally becomes adept

in the third continent with his own house, an American citizenship and social

security (197). The reason why the man can endure the life in three continents

and stays comfortable with his dual identities is his ability to adapt and his

constant effort to understand himself and his origin. He has his own understanding

in defining ‘home’. By strengthening the roots of his origin and his culture as well

as putting the ‘home’ in his heart, he can make anyplace in this Earth his home.

To conclude, it can be implied that feeling at ‘home’ is not a matter of

place or setting, but it is the atmosphere, both physically and spiritually. While

physical conditions relate to place, spiritual conditions relate to the heart and

mind. If we are physically and spiritually accepting of the place we live as a

‘home’, we can make anyplace in this Earth our home.


42

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION, SUGGESTION AND RECOMMENDATION

This chapter consists of three parts, namely Conclusion, Suggestion and

Recommendation. The first part describes two conclusions drawn from the

answers of formulated questions in this study, whereas the suggestions and

recommendations are directed for teachers who want to make the implementation

of one of three short stories analyzed for the reference in teaching English and the

future researchers who want to conduct study in the same subject.

A. Conclusion

After analyzing those three short stories written by Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs.

Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent, it can be

concluded that the experiences in exile experienced by people who seek new life

in the new continent are always faced into three stages of post colonialism which

are adopt, adapt and adept. Thus, people who can survive with those three stages

will physically and spiritually accept the place they live as a ‘home’.

B. Suggestion for Teaching Implementation

For the English teacher, it is suggested to take one of three short stories,

Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent as the

references for teaching materials, especially for teaching Intensive Reading II.


43

There are four basic competences of teaching Intensive Reading II. First,

the students are able to apply various reading strategies: previewing, skimming,

scanning, identifying main ideas and summarizing. Second, the students are

expected to improve literal and inferential comprehension by reading various

kinds of texts. Third, the students are expected to develop the English vocabulary.

Fourth, the students are expected to write simple responses to the ideas or issues

presented in the text.

Referring to the competences above, the writer draws some indicators of

teaching Intensive Reading II to the students using some selected parts of the

short story chosen. First, the students are able to find the main idea of the text.

Second, the students are able to apply some reading strategies. Third, the students

are able to find the meaning of some vocabulary found in the text. Fourth, the

students are able to find similar words from the text. Fifth, the students are able to

make the conclusion of the text. The lesson plan and materials are attached in the

appendix.

C. Recommendation for Future Researchers

For future research studies, the writer recommends to analyze deeper on

the crisis of cultural identity faced by all characters in Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed

House and The Third and Final Continent. Thus, the topic on how the characters

face the crisis of cultural identity and how they react toward the new cultures

using socio-historical cultural approach and several theories in cultural identity

and diaspora are interesting to be analyzed.


44

REFERENCES

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back.

London and New York: Routledge. 1989. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Postcolonial Studies

Reader. London and New York: Routledge. 1995. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. 1995. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. 1963. Friedman, Jonathan. Cultural Identity and Global Process. California: A Division

of Wadsworth, Inc., 1981. London: Sage. 1994. Hall, Stuart. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. London: Lawrence and Wishard.

1990. Lahiri, Jhumpa. Mrs. Sen’s. Interpreter of Maladies. New Delhi: HarperCollins

Publishers. 1999. Lahiri, Jhumpa. This Blessed House. Interpreter of Maladies. New Delhi:

HarperCollins Publishers. 1999. Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Third and Final Continent. Interpreter of Maladies. New

Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers. 1999. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. 1979. Singh, Khuswant. India: An Introduction. New Delhi: Vision Books. 1990. The Internet Sources: George, Anita. Literary Analysis: The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa

Lahiri. Juggling Apple Pies and Samosa. 15 December 2010 (http://www.helium.com/items/1131538-indian-american-immigration-literary-analysis-the-final-continent-jhumpa


45

Gipe, Nicholas, Lindsay Greco, Geri Spencer and Jackie Yang. Jhumpa Lahiri. 20 December 2005. 15 December 2010

(http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/lahiri_jhumpa.php) Rao, Jaya Lakshmi. Jhumpa Lahiri, a Perceptive Interpreter of Maladies. 15

December 2010 (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~vempala/family/Lahiri.html) Anonymous. Interpreter of Maladies. Wikipedia. 19 December 2010

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreter_of_Maladies) Anonymous. Jhumpa Lahiri. Wikipedia. 19 December 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri)


46

APPENDICES


47

Appendix A

Summary of the Short Stories

Mrs. Sen’s

Mrs. Sen’s tells about an Indian woman who takes a job as a babysitter for

eleven-year old boy named Eliot since her husband is too busy working. She

defines herself as a ‘professor’s wife, responsible and kind, I will care for your

child in my home (111)’. She has a warm apartment and

kindly serves Eliot when he is at her place. Only one

problem she has, she cannot drive. Mr. Sen, her husband

who teaches mathematics at the university, urges her to

have her driving license soon. In fact, Mrs. Sen hates

driving. The ‘driving-matter’ then triggers new

problems. As an Indian living in America, Mrs. Sen

feels she lives in exile. Only two things make her happy, when she receives a

letter from India and finds fresh fish. However, she is a bit depressed with his new

life in the new land.

“’Send pictures,’ they write. ‘Send pictures of your new life.’ What picture can I send?” She sat, exhausted, on the edge of the bed, where there was now barely room for her. “They think I live the life of queen, Eliot.” She looked around the blank walls of the room. “They think I press buttons and the house is clean. They think I live in a palace.” (125)

The matter of being a stranger in a new continent and failure to adapt to the new

surroundings is seen clearly through Eliot’s eyes.


48

This Blessed House

Sanjeev and Twinkle, a newly married couple, are exploring their new house in

Hartford, which appears to have been owned by fervent Christians: they keep

finding gaudy Biblical paraphernalia hidden throughout the house. While Twinkle

is delighted by these objects and wants to display them everywhere, Sanjeev is

uncomfortable with them and reminds her that they are Hindu, not Christian. This

argument reveals other problems in their relationship; Sanjeev doesn’t seem to

understand Twinkle’s spontaneity, whereas Twinkle has little regard for Sanjeev’s

discomfort. He is planning a party for his coworkers and is worried about the

impression they might get from the interior decorating if their mantelpiece is full

of Biblical figurines. After some arguing and a brief amount of tears, a

compromise is reached. When the day of the party arrives, the guests are

enamored with Twinkle. Sanjeev still has conflicting feelings about her; he is

captivated by her beauty and energy, but irritated by her naiveté and impractical

tendencies. The story ends with her and the other party guests discovering a large

bust of Jesus Christ in the attic. Although the object disgusts him, he obediently

carries it downstairs. This action can either be interpreted as Sanjeev giving into

Twinkle and accepting her eccentricities, or as a final, grudging act of compliance

in a marriage that he is reconsidering.

(Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreter_of_Maladies; accessed

December 19, 2010)


49

The Third and Final Continent



in the New Land and tries to adapt with his new surroundings, even when he

decides to rent a room in a house belong to an old woman named Mrs. Croft. The

old woman always demands him, even in their first encounter, to commend about

the America’s greatest leap: the first moon landing by Apollo 11.

The women bellowed, “A flag on the moon, boy! I heard it on the radio! Isn’t that splendid?” “Yes, madame.” But she was not satisfied with my reply. Instead she commanded, “Say, ‘splendid’!”…I said nothing. “Say splendid!” the woman bellowed once again. “Splendid,” I murmured. I had to repeat the word a second time at the top of my lungs, so she could hear (179-180).

The attempts to survive in three continents while does not forget the roots of

cultural identity become the main problems in this short story.


50

Appendix B

About the Author

Jhumpa Lahiri (born on July 11, 1967) is an Indian American author. Lahiri's

debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the 2000 Pulitzer

Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the

popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says

are both "good names," but goes by her nick-name Jhumpa. Lahiri is a member of

the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S.

President Barack Obama. Lahiri was born in London,

the daughter of Bengali Indian immigrants. Her family

moved to the United States when she was three. Her

father Amar Lahiri works as a librarian at the

University of Rhode Island. Lahiri's mother wanted her

children to grow up knowing their Bengali heritage,

and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta. Lahiri

received multiple degrees from Boston University: an

M.A. in English, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in Comparative Literature,

and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-

Bush. Lahiri lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and their two

children, Octavio (b. 2002) and Noor (b. 2005).

(Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri; accessed December

19, 2010)


51

Appendix C

LESSON PLAN OF KPE 141 INTENSIVE READING II For the Second Semester Students of English Language Education Program

of Sanata Dharma University

Subject : Intensive Reading II Level of Students : 2nd semester of English Language Education Study Program Time Allocation : 2 x 50’ Materials : Lahiri, Jhumpa. Mrs. Sen’s. Interpreter of Maladies. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers. 1999. Method : Individual Reading Competence Standard: The students are able to implement appropriate reading strategies to carry out intensive reading activities: understanding main ideas and detailed information, making inference, scanning to search for specific information, and developing vocabulary mastery. Basic Competence : Students improve their reading comprehension ability, focusing on understanding main ideas and detailed information and improve their vocabulary.

Achievement

Indicators

Learning

Experiences

Time

Material

Able to answer

the pre-reading questions about

the experience of living in

other countries.

Pre-activity: The students answer the pre-reading questions.

10’

Handout

1. Able to read the short story, Mrs. Sen’s.

2. Able to do the exercise: a. How well

Whilst Activity: In group of three, 1. The students read the short story

written by Jhumpa Lahiri, Mrs. Sen’s (page 111-135).

2. The students read the story and then do the True-False question in how-well-did-you-read exercise and do the

15’

20’

Handout

Handout


52

did you read? b. Vocabulary mastery

3. Able to check and discuss the answers.

1. Able to make a composition on conveying opinion and ideas.

2. Review the materials

3. Closing

vocabulary mastery exercise by finding the meaning, the synonyms and making a sentence using the difficult words.

3. The students check and discuss the answer.

Post Activity: The students make a short composition in a piece of paper which consist their experience in facing the problem of crisis of cultural identity, for example: the cultural shock happens in a new place. The teacher gives short review of the lesson and gives comments on the students’ composition. The teacher gives short closing.

20’

15’

15’

5’

Handout

Handout

Handout


53

Appendix D

MATERIAL FOR TEACHING INTENSIVE READING II

1. Before You Read! (Pre reading Questions) Discuss with your friends about the crisis of cultural identity, or known as

‘culture shock’ happens in your surroundings. a. What is ‘culture shock’ according to your own knowledge? b. What do you feel when you stay in a new place that has very different

cultural values? c. Do you have any experience in living in a new place where you

experience ‘culture shock’? Tell your friends in a brief discussion.

2. Read the short story and do the exercise that follows! Read Mrs. Sen’s (page 111-125) by Jhumpa Lahiri.

A. HOW WELL DID YOU READ? Read the following statements. If a statements is true, write ‘T’ on the line provided. If it false, write ‘F’, then locate and identify the paragraph in the article that contains the information that help you make your decision.

_______ 1.Mrs. Sen takes a job as a babysitter because she needs additional

income. ( ¶___)

_______ 2.Eliot always enjoys watching Mrs. Sen while she choppes vegetables,

seated on newspapers on the living room floor. (¶___)

_______ 3.Mrs. Sen refuses to drive a car because she has a trauma. (¶___)

_______ 4.Everyday, Mrs. Sen puts vermilion in the centered part of the braided

hair as every married women in India does the same thing. (¶___)

_______ 5. Mrs. Sen never wears sari everyday. She only wears it when there is

ritual ceremony. (¶___)

_______ 6. Mrs. Sen loves fish so much but complains on how different it is the

taste between Indian fish and American fish. (¶___)

_______ 7. Mrs. Sen always waits for a letter from her families in India. (¶___)

_______ 8. Mrs. Sen uses a blade she brought from India instead of using knife

for chopping vegetables and cutting the fish. (¶___)


54

B. VOCABULARY MASTERY Using dictionary, write the meaning of each words, the synonym of the words and write a sentence to help you remember the meaning. 1. chauffeur (¶ 113)

Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

2. blade (¶ 114) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

3. vermilion (¶ 117) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

4. lane (¶ 120) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

5. incomprehensible (¶ 121) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

6. riotous (¶ 122) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

7. tenure (¶ 122) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________


55

Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

8. murmur (¶ 125) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

9. thrilled (¶ 126) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

10. reimburse (¶ 134) Definition: _____________________________________________________ Synonym: ______________________________________________________ Sentence: ______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

C. WRITE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE

Write your own experience on facing a problem of ‘culture shock’. You may write down your funny or embarrassing experience in dealing with ‘new culture’ in the ‘new place’. Include the expression of your feeling in your writings. Write three paragraphs only.


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