The Lowland Conquered Vs Conqueror

Danielle Flores
Professor Kaiserman
English 110
24 May 2017
The Lowland: Conquered vs Conqueror. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri is a story of two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, on different paths in life. Subhash, the oldest brother, travels to American in order to receive his PhD while his brother Udayan stays behind in their homeland to join the political movement. Udayan, soon marries a girl name Gauri but when he dies Subhash returns home and marries his brothers widow, against his families wishes. Subhash returns to America with Gauri and her unborn child, Bela. While Udayan embraces, the Asian culture connected to his political movements, Subhash and Gauri learn to try to embrace the American culture they live in. In the novel, we watch
Gauri specifically has the most problem trying to adjust to her new environment, especially on the first day where she notices that “No one came to prepare the tea, to make the beds, to sweep or dust the rooms. On the stove [Subhash] cooked breakfast on a coil that reddened at a button’s touch. Oatmeal and hot milk” (Lahiri, p. 117). Her clothing is another source of confusion since she has no idea what to wear; on one side her culture dictates that she wears Indian attire but she notices that American clothing that the American girls wear. For a while she embraces the hybridity of both cultures by putting a winter jacket over her Sari. The atmospheres are also different as she notes that the university in Rhode Island does not need a guard, all one has to do to enter the university is walk in. Since Gauri only returned to India once, the culture shock for her was mostly just her own ideas of what was expected of her. Subhash had already adapted the American ideology when she married him that he did not expect her to keep the traditions that a woman usually did in a
Subhash travels back to India over the years he was in America, for his brother’s death, to visit his parents and for each parent’s death. Each time the visit showed Subhash how much he had changed culturally. On his first visit, back he realized that what he learned and saw in America were not something that he can share to his family, especially his parents how didn’t seem to understand. While American was a culture shock to Subhash coming back home became a culture shock also. Subhash began to see the little things about his culture that he missed before; his mother serving them before eating, difference in relationships, cultural clothing and