“Interpreter of Maladies” and Cultural / Post-colonialist Lens
“Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and
life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. … the worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling
opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam
in my head,—some way. … Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of
others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his
two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” (W. E. B. DuBois The Souls of Black Folk)
Cultural
 Uses a variety of approaches: deconstructionism, feminism, Marxism, Reader-Response and Af. Am
 1960s revolution against New Crit and against portrayal of others as infantile, exotic, subordinate, savage,
manifestation of Western / dominant culture dreams
 Asks: What about non-dominant backgrounds / how language can represent that reality?
 Culture clashes often determine which one is more dominant
 3 Areas:
o Post-colonialism
o Af Am
 Propelled and created interest in Af. Am lit
 1900s-1970: Af Am criticism did exist but was suppressed, repressed and colonized
subculture—re: personal, cultural, national identity
 Interpreted through the white lens
 1970’s – 80s: black theorists articulated distinctive Af Am list
o Gender studies
Post-colonialism
History:
 19th century: ¼ Earth’s landmass controlled by Western Europe (see Brit Lit map)
 British colonizes believed they were biologically superior: “White Man’s Burden”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_white_mans_burden.gif
 Colonies produced raw mat’ls in exchange for mat’l goods
o Forced labor and slavery commercialized
o Christian ideals allowed for cruelty to heathens / savages
o To be colonized = to be removed from history / loss of identity
o Often portrayed as “other” / offered “hidden desires of Western culture” (Edward Said)
 PC began in 1950s-60s: states in Africa, SE Asia and the Caribbean moving from colonial to postcolonial status /
dismantling of British Empire
 Edward Said interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwCOSkXR_Cw
 Team America: Durka durka (only 1 min) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwCOSkXR_Cw
 Travel to India video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3Il1j2iYA
Purpose for writing and reading texts by African and Caribbean authors:
 To restore dignity and self-respect to people who had suffered from 100s of yrs of dismissal, exploitation and
enslavement by Europeans
 To encourage self-representation in political and artistic ways: tell own story and story of colonial encounter
and consequences – to create psychological base and historical understanding for wise gov’t
 To ask: How is truth constructed?
 To explore ethics, definitions of truth, personal identity, society
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To analyze and challenge established literary canon
To question traditional definitions
To create new discourse for the colonized: reject all transcendental signifieds created by colonizers / embrace
pluralism – uses tools of deconstructionism because, at some point, colonized writers will become resistant
To send messages to Empire on wrongs and damages of hegemony
To explore the oppressed peoples’ views, including
o European settler colonies
o Third-world studies
Concerns: Heterogeneous, universality, difference, nationalism, postmodernism, resistance, ethnicity, feminism,
language, education, history, place, production
 Double-consciousness (W.E.B. Dubois) – ability to live within and between 2 cultures / perspectives
o Colonized people can see 2 distinct views of world: colonizer (conqueror) + self (colonized)
o Neither culture feels at home: unhomelinesss
o Psychological refugee: feelings of abandonment by both cultures
o Antagonist relationship between hegemony and non-hegemony
 Effects of colonial culture w/ intertwined economic and social dynamics for both conqueror and conquered
Questions for colonized:
 Who am I? (historical roots)
 How did I develop into the persona I am? (tensions between cultures)
 To what cultures / countries am I forever linked? (double consciousness)
Noematic value: complexities of world it reveals / not noetic value: subjective qualities about what it perceives
Questions for Analysis:
1. What happens in the text when the 2 cultures clash, when one sees itself as superior to another?
2. Describe the 2 cultures in text. What does each value? Reject?
3. Describe worldviews of each of the cultures in the text.
4. Demonstrate how the superior or privileged culture’s hegemony affects the colonized culture.
5. How do the colonized people view themselves? Is there any change in this view by the end of the text?
6. Describe the language of the 2 cultures. How are they alike? Different?
7. Cite various ways in which colonized culture is silenced.
8. Find the places that are left empty once the Empire withdraws.
Theme: “the human search for love can result in a ‘malady’ when unaccompanied by honest emotion (as is the case
with Mrs. Das) or when inspired by naïve infatuation (as is the case with Mr. Kapasi). Different sets of cultural and morel
values often resulting comic but also poignant failures to connect meaningfully with another person.” (190-1)
Basic conflict: miscommunication of verbal and non-verbal cues due to culture differences: “the gulf of
misunderstanding between Mr. Kapasi and the visiting Mrs. Das results from cultural rather than racial difference. Lahiri
thus moves beyond Eurocentric or Oriental images of India to those of a contemporary postcolonial nation more
concerned with dialogue with its own diaspora than with its former colonizers.” (Simon Lewis LRC)—India in the world of
globalization. Is the gap based on cultural id. As consumer? Dallas is outdated reference.
Mrs. Das isn’t trying to get connection or intimacy, but freedom from guilt.
Some Indian critics have criticized Lahiri as an "outsider," but considerable praise for her work has also appeared in the
South Asian press. Although her work has often been described as focusing on the problems of immigrants--and it is
true that such characters dominate her writing--her real subject is miscommunication. The relationships in her stories
are a series of missed connections. (Brians LRC)
“Lahiri's collection weaves together universal themes of alienation, connection, and loss as her characters embark on
unique quests to find the union between understanding the human experience and finding satisfaction in their individual
lives. Moving between values of collectivist and individualist cultures, they are perfectly suited to navigate the
relationship between the universal and the unique, but they find that the homogenizing forces of globalization, the
chaos of mechanized living, and the silence of loneliness threaten cultural identity instead of fostering a sense of
community and that they threaten individual identity instead of nurturing self-knowledge. It is, ironically, only in the
most transient of relationships that the sought-after union between understanding humanity and understanding self is
found, creating in the collection a dialectic between the failure to understand the human condition and the hope of
embracing its richness.” (Bess LRC)
“Interpreter” = reference to double-consciousness:
“Some time after the publication of her collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999) to international acclaim, the awardwinning author Jhumpa Lahiri wrote about her experiences as a hybrid, diasporic being, as, variously, an American
author, an Indian-American author, a British-born author, an Anglo-Indian author, an NRI (non-resident Indian), an ABCD
(American-born confused desi),1 and a lost and found author, and concludes: 'each of those labels is accurate.'2 In this
piece, she describes fiction writing as an act of cultural translation and identity formation in a tongue-in-cheek Cartesian
manner: 'Translato ergo sum,' I translate, therefore I am. (Kuortti, Nyman: “Problematic Hybrid Identity in the Diasporic
Writings…”
“In Salman Rushdie's Shame the narrator then takes this inevitable alteration in translation to the subjective, cultural
level: 'I, too am a translated man. I have been borne across. It is generally believed that something is always lost in
translation; I cling to the notion [...] that something can also be gained.” (Kuortti, Nyman)
“In the title story of Interpreter of Maladies there is a direct involvement with the issue of translation of identity when
Mr. Kapasi, a tourist guide who also works as an interpreter for a doctor, comments to his client Mrs. Das: 'we do not
face a language barrier. What need is there for an interpreter?'33 The Indian-American Mrs. Das is in India for a visit with
her family and wants Mr. Kapasi to sort out a problem in her marriage as she confesses to him that she had been
unfaithful to her husband. She tells: 'I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. [...] I've been in pain eight years. I was
hoping you could help me feel better, say the right thing.'34 Mr. Kapasi who has become attracted to the woman cannot
understand her confiding in him and 'felt insulted that Mrs. Das should ask him to interpret her common, trivial little
secret.'35 The act of interpretation fails, eventually, when Mrs. Das is angered by Mr. Kapasi's question whether it is
really pain, not guilt, she feels.36 After this, communication ceases, but for the story it seems that Mr. Kapasi has made
an acute observation and given it an accurate interpretation. In conclusion, I would say that even if there were no
language barriers, if there were only one language, interpretation is important, if not indispensable.
As I have argued, Lahiri's story provides an interpretation of the meaning of hybridity in a post-colonial context. It
underlines the centrality of cultural translation in the process of possessing and re-possessing the past and the present,
both chronological and spatial, in a meaningful way. It also outlines a strategy of diasporic as well as gendered resistance
towards existing colonial and patriarchal hierarchies in the post-colony. I should like to conclude with Lahiri's comment
on the importance of fiction in such cultural translation:
Unlike my parents, I translate not so much to survive in the world around me as to create and illuminate a nonexistent
one. Fiction is the foreign land of my choosing, the place where I strive to convey and preserve the meaningful. And
whether I write as an American or an Indian, about things American or Indian or otherwise, one thing remains constant: I
translate, therefore I am. .” (Kuortti, Nyman)
Lahiri—on not having a sense of place / responsibility: “On the other hand, the problem for the children of immigrants,
those with strong ties to their country of origin, is that they feel neither one thing nor the other. The feeling that there
was no single place to which I fully belonged bothered me growing up.”
Questions:
1. How are the Americans characterized? How are the Indians?
2. Lahiri has said, "As a storyteller, I'm aware that there are limitations in communication." What importance in the
stories do miscommunication and unexpressed feelings have?
3. What characterizes the sense of community? What maintains that sense, and what disrupts it?
4. Mr. Kapasi finds it hard to believe of Mr. and Mrs. Das that "they were regularly responsible for anything other
than themselves." What instances of selfishness or self-centeredness do you find?
5. Visitors to Konarak find the Chandrabhaga River dried up, and they can no longer enter the Temple of the Sun,
"for it had filled with rubble long ago ..." What other instances and images does Lahiri present of the collapse,
deterioration, or passing of once-important cultural or spiritual values?
6. What “raw materials” does India offer the family?
7. What “goods” are returned?
8. Where do we see a loss of identity / unhomeliness?
9. How has the family been “removed from history?”
10. Is there empty space left behind after the conquerors leave? What fills it?
Questions for Analysis:
1. What happens in the text when the 2 cultures clash, when one sees
itself as superior to another?
2. Describe the 2 cultures in text. What does each value? Reject?
3. Describe worldviews of each of the cultures in the text.
4. Demonstrate how the superior or privileged culture’s hegemony
affects the colonized culture
5. How do the colonized people view themselves? Is there any change
in this view by the end of the text?
6. Describe the language of the 2 cultures. How are they alike?
Different?
7. Cite various ways in which colonized culture is silenced.