As its title suggests, place and space figure heavily in Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest novel, “The Lowland.” The reader finds herself journeying from the craggy shores of Rhode Island, to the bustling streets of Post-independence India, and finally in the hyacinth filled pools of the titular lowland area of Tollygunge, Calcutta. It is here that the mystery and tragedy of Lahiri’s novel takes place, a compassionate tale of family, betrayal, and political ideology set against the backdrop of the Naxalite movement in 1960s Calcutta.
Gauri is perhaps The Lowland’s most complex character, an emphatically unemotional woman whose secretive nature leaves her loneliest of all. Of all the lives Udayan touched, it was Gauri’s he damaged most. Love for Udayan …show more content…
Subhash is a quiet boy who seeks to please his traditional parents. Udayan is Subhash's younger brother by two years. While Subhash seeks to remain nearly invisible and spend time with books, Udayan is dynamic and outspoken. As the boys get older, Subhash stays devoted to his love of marine chemistry while Udayan spends excessive amounts of time focusing on the politics of 1950s India. During that time, the Indian regime is being challenged by a new communist group that embodies the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. The Indians believe it is time for a change and that the teachings of Mao will provide a better life for the citizens of India.
Udayan works hard to convince his family that something must be done about the Indian president's regime. Udayan begins to sneak out of the house to paint slogans on the sides of buildings and to attend rallies of another up and coming communist party, the Communist Part of India; Marxist-Leninist. Subhash, wanting to maintain the peace with Udayan, attends a rally but is not swayed into participating in the new …show more content…
Lahiri does not reassure us with universalizing pronouncements about aging or love; the marriage is “a shared conclusion to lives separately built, separately lived,” and the honeymoon begins with the spectacle of a local funeral: “For a moment it is as if they, too, are part of the funeral. There is no sense of its boundaries, where it begins or ends, or whom it grieves.” Reminded of their own deaths in the earliest days of their wedded union, Subhash and Elise inhabit the psychology that Lahiri has painstakingly delineated as the defining trait of Americanness: an intricate, dynamic balance between flux and constancy, permanence and
Gauri is perhaps The Lowland’s most complex character, an emphatically unemotional woman whose secretive nature leaves her loneliest of all. Of all the lives Udayan touched, it was Gauri’s he damaged most. Love for Udayan …show more content…
Subhash is a quiet boy who seeks to please his traditional parents. Udayan is Subhash's younger brother by two years. While Subhash seeks to remain nearly invisible and spend time with books, Udayan is dynamic and outspoken. As the boys get older, Subhash stays devoted to his love of marine chemistry while Udayan spends excessive amounts of time focusing on the politics of 1950s India. During that time, the Indian regime is being challenged by a new communist group that embodies the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. The Indians believe it is time for a change and that the teachings of Mao will provide a better life for the citizens of India.
Udayan works hard to convince his family that something must be done about the Indian president's regime. Udayan begins to sneak out of the house to paint slogans on the sides of buildings and to attend rallies of another up and coming communist party, the Communist Part of India; Marxist-Leninist. Subhash, wanting to maintain the peace with Udayan, attends a rally but is not swayed into participating in the new …show more content…
Lahiri does not reassure us with universalizing pronouncements about aging or love; the marriage is “a shared conclusion to lives separately built, separately lived,” and the honeymoon begins with the spectacle of a local funeral: “For a moment it is as if they, too, are part of the funeral. There is no sense of its boundaries, where it begins or ends, or whom it grieves.” Reminded of their own deaths in the earliest days of their wedded union, Subhash and Elise inhabit the psychology that Lahiri has painstakingly delineated as the defining trait of Americanness: an intricate, dynamic balance between flux and constancy, permanence and