David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "pulitzer-prize"
THE LOWLAND
It’s hard to know where Jhumpa Lahiri is going with her novel, THE LOWLAND. It’s about two brothers who were born fifteen months apart, but were often mistaken for each other. Both are good students, but one is conservative and the other is a revolutionary.
Subhash, the older one, and Udayan, were born in North Calcutta. Lahiri shows them fashioning a putter into an all-purpose club and sneaking into the exclusive golf course near where they live. Her point seems to be that India hasn’t changed much since independence. You still have the haves and the have nots. Strangely she never uses the word “Untouchable.” Not that the boys are poor; their parents are sort of upper middle class, just not rich enough to belong to the club.
Matters come to a head when the Naxalite (communist) movement entices Udayan, and he is introduced to Gauri, a friend’s sister, whom he marries in defiance of his parents. In the India of the time, the late sixties and early seventies, parents chose their children’s spouses. Subhash would never have done that, but he does decide to attend a college in Rhode Island to study some sort of oceanography, where he picks up some American habits.
Ultimately Udayan pays with his life and Subhash goes home to console his parents. They act like he's not there. He disapproves of the way they treat Gauri, rather like a servant girl, and he decides to marry her and take her back to America with him. This is really where the story starts. Gauri is pregnant with Udayan’s child. She’s also been studying philosophy and Subhash does everything in his power to help her achieve her goals in that respect, despite the child. Remarkably the baby seems drawn more to her “father” than her birth mother.
I had a bit of a problem with Gauri’s behavior. She’s inappreciative; she can’t form a normal mother/daughter bond with her own child. I know we can’t help how we feel, but one would think being saved from life as a servant girl would have more of a psychological impact, whether sexual or only platonic. But apparently, as an author, Lahiri needs this to happen. Despite this, her objective, journalistic approach doesn’t provide much of a tone. And what is she saying about Udayan? Is he responsible for the unhappiness most of the characters go through because he wanted to help poor people? There’s no denying matters would have been quite different if Udayan had lived. Or is she saying that it doesn’t matter where the traumatic incident happened, that we’re all influenced by our families, and that they set the course of our lives?
Subhash, the older one, and Udayan, were born in North Calcutta. Lahiri shows them fashioning a putter into an all-purpose club and sneaking into the exclusive golf course near where they live. Her point seems to be that India hasn’t changed much since independence. You still have the haves and the have nots. Strangely she never uses the word “Untouchable.” Not that the boys are poor; their parents are sort of upper middle class, just not rich enough to belong to the club.
Matters come to a head when the Naxalite (communist) movement entices Udayan, and he is introduced to Gauri, a friend’s sister, whom he marries in defiance of his parents. In the India of the time, the late sixties and early seventies, parents chose their children’s spouses. Subhash would never have done that, but he does decide to attend a college in Rhode Island to study some sort of oceanography, where he picks up some American habits.
Ultimately Udayan pays with his life and Subhash goes home to console his parents. They act like he's not there. He disapproves of the way they treat Gauri, rather like a servant girl, and he decides to marry her and take her back to America with him. This is really where the story starts. Gauri is pregnant with Udayan’s child. She’s also been studying philosophy and Subhash does everything in his power to help her achieve her goals in that respect, despite the child. Remarkably the baby seems drawn more to her “father” than her birth mother.
I had a bit of a problem with Gauri’s behavior. She’s inappreciative; she can’t form a normal mother/daughter bond with her own child. I know we can’t help how we feel, but one would think being saved from life as a servant girl would have more of a psychological impact, whether sexual or only platonic. But apparently, as an author, Lahiri needs this to happen. Despite this, her objective, journalistic approach doesn’t provide much of a tone. And what is she saying about Udayan? Is he responsible for the unhappiness most of the characters go through because he wanted to help poor people? There’s no denying matters would have been quite different if Udayan had lived. Or is she saying that it doesn’t matter where the traumatic incident happened, that we’re all influenced by our families, and that they set the course of our lives?
