In a collection of short stories in which each one is characterized by some absurd plot line or ridiculous string of advertisements, a seemingly ordinary, mundane story like "Christmas" from George Saunders' In Persuasion Nation surprisingly stands out. While the story itself is fairly straightforward, with a fairly basic plot and familiar setting when compared to other stories of the collection, and would most likely be taken for granted if placed in any other collection of stories, the fact that it is regarded with such normality immediately calls a sharp contrast to the rest of the stories of the collection, which could be described as anything but "normal". The story starts off with an unnamed narrator claiming that he is broke, living in his aunt's basement at twenty-six, and forced to rely on his uncle to provide him with a mediocre roofing job, which he is fittingly mediocre at. As we read on, our narrator settles into a more observatory/bystander role in the story, and the focus quickly shifts away from him to John, an older coworker of his. All throughout the story we see the other roofers heckle and ridicule John due to his lackluster roofing abilities and claims that he is some "master roofer" worthy of more than hauling tar. The narrator sits and watches as John, father of fourteen kids, easily gets cheated out of his money by one of their coworkers, attempting to intervene but ultimately unsuccessful. In the end, John goes home broke, but it is the narrator who is dejected due to his inability to help out a friend. While the plot of the Christmas party and John squandering away all his money is the framework for the story, through his reactions to the entire situation the narrator reflects on the story in a way that tells us a lot about he himself as a sympathetic, caring character.
It is true that the narrator doesn't completely neglect himself at the beginning of the story, as he takes time to mention his poor financial situation and struggle to find a job, but most of this doesn't appear as an attempt to garner any sympathy from the reader, but rather as a transition to speak about his coworkers and the way they constantly disparage John. The narrator acknowledges that his situation is his own fault and doesn't try to make up any excuses for it, stating that the reason he's losing his girlfriend is because of his "pathetically dwindling prospects" (89). Even when he gets the job as a result of a favor called in by his uncle, he is very truthful about his skill level, stating that "once everyone had seen me work, I became The Great White Dope" (89). Instead of seeking to impress the reader through false claims of excellence at his job and looking for reasons to blame his poverty and failure on, the narrator accepts his situation and goes on about his life, establishing him as a reliable and sensible character. John's reliability, on the other hand, is immediately called into question when the other roofers call him out on his claims of dexterity:
"You are so full of shit," said Rick. "If you were so fast then, why are you so shitty now?"
"You roof like my mother," said Terry, the owner's brother.
"Maybe your mother roofs good," John mumbled.
"She don't," said Terry. "But still she's faster than you" (90).
When John claims that he should be allowed to do the real roofing work, rather than just lug around tar all day, he is met with harsh discouragement from his coworkers, who say that he lies and is in actuality a terrible roofer, We can already observe the type of environment that the roofers work in, and the negativity directed towards John by several of the roofers in this environment. The narrator importantly doesn't join in on the jeering, and later we will see only steps in to help when alone with John, as he knows any attempts to aid John in the presence of Rick, the supervisor will simply get shut down.
A few weeks later is the Christmas party itself, which the narrator describes as characterized by a lot of gambling. While John heedlessly jumps into the gambling, the narrator steers clear of it all: "Finally, in terms of money, I got it: money forestalled disgrace. I though of my aunt, who workers three jobs and whom I had not yet paid a dime for food, thought of my girlfriend, who now paid whenever we went out, which was never, because my five shirts were too stained with tar" (94). The narrator shows his shame with his whole situation in these lines. He is twenty-six and living with his aunt for free, and he understands that this is incredibly altruistic of her and that he ought to at least make some kind of attempt to compensate her. We observe a similar feeling towards his girlfriend. These lines really show the type of character the narrator is. Even though he is essentially at rock bottom, he appreciates when people like his aunt and girlfriend help him out and understands how invaluable their help is at this point in his life. This is why the narrator, unlike John and so many of the other roofers, restrains from gambling; he knows how hard he has worked and how much people have helped him along the way, and is thankful enough to not risk losing all of his hard earned pay check, if only to someday repay those who have been so generous to him. We will see the extent of his generosity later during the Christmas party. When the gambling begins, Rick uses his history of belittling John to his advantage, forcing everyone else out of the game until it is just him and John, and then egging on John to lose all his money. When John finally loses all of his money: the narrator thinks: "A light went on in my head, and has stayed on ever since: It was all about capital. Rick could lose and lose and never really lose. Once John dipped below four hundred, he was dead. He was dead now" (95). The narrator understands how exploitative Rick, a man of higher status in that he is their supervisor, is being to someone like John. John, carrying the burden to support a whopping fourteen kids can't afford to be risking his money gambling, and the narrator understands that if John loses his money, which he does, all of it, "he was dead now." No one else seems to really care about Rick's exploitation of John, as the other roofers, such as Terry, are too occupied either egging Rick on or simply minding their business, guarding their own pay checks. Later, when John attempts to cash in his bonus check for more gambling money, the narrator attempts to stop him:
"You're doing right," I said. "Go on home."
"Ain't going home, John said, and numb-footed across Prairie Island again.
"No no no," I mumbled, vividly drunk, suddenly alive (96).
Here, the narrator recognizes John's attempt to cash in his bonus check, only to inevitably lose more money, and attempts to stop him. We can observe that the narrator genuinely cares for John, as he is the only one actively outside with him, trying to prevent him from burning his bonus paycheck along with the 400 dollars he already lost to Rick. Despite the narrator's best efforts though, John persists and eventually loses it all. Later, when the narrator has quit roofing and started anew, he reflects on what would've happened if he had lucked out and gotten a job as the Assistant Curator, hypothetically sitting at a restaurant with his aunt and girlfriend, and thinks about how pathetic he was that he couldn't even help out one man getting cheated out of his money: "After dinner, the three of us sit there, laughing, laughing at the fact that I, an Assistant Curator at the famous Field Museum, was once a joke of a roofer, a joke of a roofer so beat down he once stood by watching as a nice man got cheated out of his Christmas" (99).
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Friday, May 6, 2016
Mrs. Sen and the Refusal to Adjust
Several of the stories that take place in America in Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" feature main characters who experience a great deal of nostalgia for their homeland of India. Some characters spend their time constantly reminiscing about their life before immigration in India, while others express desire to return in a more reserved manner, such as Mr. Pirzada. The character with the worst case of homesickness in all of Lahiri's stories, however, is Mrs. Sen. Mrs. Sen follows the former of these two ways of expressing her nostalgia, in that not a moment passes without Mrs. Sen mentioning something about her earlier life or childhood in India. Her life is very different America, as she is no longer surrounded by this sense of community that we have come to admire in all of Lahiri's stories that take place in India, but is instead left cooped up and isolated in her apartment while her husband goes out to work. This drastic change of cultures away from something she has been used to her entire life is in itself enough to cause Mrs. Sen to spend an excessive amount of time rekindling fond memories, along with the fact that in her solitary apartment, the only type of social interaction she gets on a daily basis is after school when she babysits Eliot. Not just her thoughts, but her actions as well, particularly her attitudes towards driving and fish, exemplify this notion of Mrs. Sen's nostalgia and ultimately, the underlying refusal to adjust that exists in her subconscious.
We first observe Mrs. Sen's lingering connection to her past in India from the description of the apartment that we receive in the third-person point of view, from Eliot's perspective: "Yet it was his mother, Eliot had though, in her cuffed, beige shorts and her rope-soled shoes, who looked odd" (112-113). Immediately after his mother steps into the room, Eliot comments on how her appearance clashes with that of the rest of the room. This is confusing at first, because Eliot describes his mother as wearing fairly typical American clothing. From this, we can deduce that the reason for this contrast is because the apartment itself resembles and represents India and its culture, likely designed this way by none other than Mrs. Sen. We can already see the persisting ties that Mrs. Sen has with India from her desire to rearrange her belongings in an attempt to make them resemble India. Instead of adjusting and familiarizing herself with the new life that is ahead of her in America, she feels the need to stick to her roots and instead opts to continue living in her past, so much so that it makes Eliot's mother, dressed in a common American outfit, look like an outsider. This idea is further grounded in Mrs. Sen's subtleties and tendencies in her interactions with Eliot. The major habit that Mrs. Sen expresses which leads us to believe she still heavily misses India is the consistency and casualness with which she refers to India as her home. In response to Mrs. Sen's use of the word home, Eliot observes: "The mention of the word seemed to release something in her. She neatened the border of her sari where it rose diagonally across her chest. She, too, looked around the room, as if she noticed in the lampshades, in the teapot, in the shadows frozen on the carpet, something the rest of them could not" (113). It important to note here not just that she refers to India as her home, but also that she doesn't associate her apartment in America with the word "home" at all, giving us the sense that she feels out of place here in America, and therefore still considers her childhood origin of India as her current "home". She does this several times throughout the story and each time expresses the same kind of nonchalance that any other person would use to refer to their home. The difference is that in actuality Mrs. Sen is using the word "home" not to refer to her current and future in America, but instead to the ever-present image of India that she still holds so dearly. Therefore, a normally taken-for-granted habit is alarming in Mrs. Sen's case, as the fact that she uses the term incorrectly in a technical sense shows her inability and lack of desire to adjust in a more emotional, psychological sense.
In conjunction with Mrs. Sen's constant thoughts and absentminded habits of reminiscing and referencing her previous home of India, there are the actions and wants of Mrs. Sen. The best examples of this are what the narrator describes, through Eliot's perspective, as the two things that make Mrs. Sen happy. The first of these is receiving a letter from her family back in India. Lahiri describes the process by which Mrs. Sen does this: "It was her custom to check the mailbox after driving practice. She would unlock the box, but she would ask Eliot to reach inside, telling him what to look for, and then she would shit her eyes and shield them with her hands while he shuffled through the bills and magazines that came in Mrs. Sen's name" (121). Mrs. Sen obviously heavily enjoys conversing with her family back in India through writing letters, as can be observed by the fervor with which she checks the mailbox after every single driving practice. Once she actually gets to the mailbox and unlocks it, instead of simply grabbing what's inside and looking through to see if a letter is there or not, she makes a small game out of it. She covers her eyes like that of a child when playing peek-a-boo and tells Eliot to search through the mail. The determination to check the mailbox everyday, along with her joviality before even seeing if a letter has arrives or not, both reinforce the idea that she is still very much attached to India, as besides this (and fish), not much else brings Mrs. Sen joy. In addition to a letter from her relatives, Lahiri states that the other thing that bring Mrs. Sen joy is fish from the seaside, which seems fairly inconspicuous at first, until we discover the reason why she loves fish so much: "She added that in Calcutta people are 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" (123-124). Again, we see Mrs. Sen's desire to reconnect with her past, this time through a favorite food of fish. This in itself seems acceptable, but later we see just how attached Mrs. Sen still is to her fresh fish eating rituals in India when she refuses to buy fish from the supermarket, claiming that she doesn't like a single fish there. Finally, Mrs. Sen's refusal to adjust to America culminates with her learning to drive throughout the course of the story. Lahiri narrates that Mrs. Sen is really very awful at driving and she certainly doesn't enjoy it, always more apprehensive than eager to practice. At one point she drops her head on the wheel in defeat, claiming that she hates driving. It's as if Mrs. Sen's lack of motivation to learn how to drive stems from the hope, and maybe even belief, that her and her husband's stay in America is temporary, and therefore there is no real use in learning how to drive. Her refusal to learn how to drive serves as a perfect analogy to her refusal to adjust to America as a whole. Whether she does it on purpose or not, her lack of desire and enthusiasm to adjust to driving, and overall America, show her ever lasting attachment to India and lasting desire to return.
We first observe Mrs. Sen's lingering connection to her past in India from the description of the apartment that we receive in the third-person point of view, from Eliot's perspective: "Yet it was his mother, Eliot had though, in her cuffed, beige shorts and her rope-soled shoes, who looked odd" (112-113). Immediately after his mother steps into the room, Eliot comments on how her appearance clashes with that of the rest of the room. This is confusing at first, because Eliot describes his mother as wearing fairly typical American clothing. From this, we can deduce that the reason for this contrast is because the apartment itself resembles and represents India and its culture, likely designed this way by none other than Mrs. Sen. We can already see the persisting ties that Mrs. Sen has with India from her desire to rearrange her belongings in an attempt to make them resemble India. Instead of adjusting and familiarizing herself with the new life that is ahead of her in America, she feels the need to stick to her roots and instead opts to continue living in her past, so much so that it makes Eliot's mother, dressed in a common American outfit, look like an outsider. This idea is further grounded in Mrs. Sen's subtleties and tendencies in her interactions with Eliot. The major habit that Mrs. Sen expresses which leads us to believe she still heavily misses India is the consistency and casualness with which she refers to India as her home. In response to Mrs. Sen's use of the word home, Eliot observes: "The mention of the word seemed to release something in her. She neatened the border of her sari where it rose diagonally across her chest. She, too, looked around the room, as if she noticed in the lampshades, in the teapot, in the shadows frozen on the carpet, something the rest of them could not" (113). It important to note here not just that she refers to India as her home, but also that she doesn't associate her apartment in America with the word "home" at all, giving us the sense that she feels out of place here in America, and therefore still considers her childhood origin of India as her current "home". She does this several times throughout the story and each time expresses the same kind of nonchalance that any other person would use to refer to their home. The difference is that in actuality Mrs. Sen is using the word "home" not to refer to her current and future in America, but instead to the ever-present image of India that she still holds so dearly. Therefore, a normally taken-for-granted habit is alarming in Mrs. Sen's case, as the fact that she uses the term incorrectly in a technical sense shows her inability and lack of desire to adjust in a more emotional, psychological sense.
In conjunction with Mrs. Sen's constant thoughts and absentminded habits of reminiscing and referencing her previous home of India, there are the actions and wants of Mrs. Sen. The best examples of this are what the narrator describes, through Eliot's perspective, as the two things that make Mrs. Sen happy. The first of these is receiving a letter from her family back in India. Lahiri describes the process by which Mrs. Sen does this: "It was her custom to check the mailbox after driving practice. She would unlock the box, but she would ask Eliot to reach inside, telling him what to look for, and then she would shit her eyes and shield them with her hands while he shuffled through the bills and magazines that came in Mrs. Sen's name" (121). Mrs. Sen obviously heavily enjoys conversing with her family back in India through writing letters, as can be observed by the fervor with which she checks the mailbox after every single driving practice. Once she actually gets to the mailbox and unlocks it, instead of simply grabbing what's inside and looking through to see if a letter is there or not, she makes a small game out of it. She covers her eyes like that of a child when playing peek-a-boo and tells Eliot to search through the mail. The determination to check the mailbox everyday, along with her joviality before even seeing if a letter has arrives or not, both reinforce the idea that she is still very much attached to India, as besides this (and fish), not much else brings Mrs. Sen joy. In addition to a letter from her relatives, Lahiri states that the other thing that bring Mrs. Sen joy is fish from the seaside, which seems fairly inconspicuous at first, until we discover the reason why she loves fish so much: "She added that in Calcutta people are 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" (123-124). Again, we see Mrs. Sen's desire to reconnect with her past, this time through a favorite food of fish. This in itself seems acceptable, but later we see just how attached Mrs. Sen still is to her fresh fish eating rituals in India when she refuses to buy fish from the supermarket, claiming that she doesn't like a single fish there. Finally, Mrs. Sen's refusal to adjust to America culminates with her learning to drive throughout the course of the story. Lahiri narrates that Mrs. Sen is really very awful at driving and she certainly doesn't enjoy it, always more apprehensive than eager to practice. At one point she drops her head on the wheel in defeat, claiming that she hates driving. It's as if Mrs. Sen's lack of motivation to learn how to drive stems from the hope, and maybe even belief, that her and her husband's stay in America is temporary, and therefore there is no real use in learning how to drive. Her refusal to learn how to drive serves as a perfect analogy to her refusal to adjust to America as a whole. Whether she does it on purpose or not, her lack of desire and enthusiasm to adjust to driving, and overall America, show her ever lasting attachment to India and lasting desire to return.
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