Interpreter Of Maladies By Jhumpa Lahiri

Often, avoiding a problem is the worst way to better a problem. The problem will just worsen over time, causing people to grow further apart. In her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri describes people and their unsolved problems. Each story’s characters’ difficulties involve their issues with their relationships due to miscommunication to show how essential communication is in a relationship. To illustrate the miscommunication in the relationship and thus how essential communication is in a relationship, Lahiri utilizes literary devices. In one story, she uses characterization to describe a tour guide and his customer who have hazy views on reality. Lahiri describes the conflict of a newly married couple. Another
This miscommunication further develops the theme of how essential communication is in a relationship. When the electricity went out, Shukumar went to search for something to put the birthday candles in so he and his wife Shoba could see their dinner. As he saw no better option, he settled for a potted ivy plant. The plant sat on the windowsill over the sink, but the “soil was so dry that he had to water it first before the candles would stand straight” (10). It was “inches from the tap” (10) but still dry and almost lifeless, much like the couple’s love. Shoba and Shukumar’s love was healthy and lively when they first got married; they were so “thrilled to be married, to be living together in the same house at last, that they would just reach for each other foolishly, more eager to make love than to eat” (10). Nowadays, the two eat together out of tradition and because they have to. They have become “experts at avoiding each other” (4) and communicate less and less. Often, Shoba and Shukumar are very close to talking to each other, but both inch away from the opportunities they receive. The plant was healthier and less dry than its current state once upon a time, similar to Shoba and Shukumar’s love. Another symbol of the couple’s love that Lahiri uses is food. Food repeats itself throughout Interpreter of Maladies that it is a motif. Back when the couple’s relationship was at its best, Shoba used to overstock the house’s pantries with food. They had so much food that they had agreed that the stock would “last for their grandchildren to taste” (7). Shoba and Shukumar have “eaten [all of the food] by now” (7). Not only did Shoba treat their house as a home when their pantries were full of food, rather than a hotel like she does now, she also communicated with Shukumar back