The Failure of the American Dream: Lives of Undocumented immigrants from the Third World In her book The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai depicts the life of an undocumented immigrant who went to America in hopes of escaping from political upheavals and getting rid of poverty. Rather than having unlimited opportunities and the feeling of security as he had expected, the main character Biju changed from one low-paid job to another and constantly lived in the fear of being deported. Throughout the novel, such contrast of dream and reality happens frequently and therefore creates the notion of a failed American dream. In this essay, I will investigate how the author illustrates the failure of the undocumented immigrants? American dreams, why it is significant, and whether such
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During an interview, Desai said that she tried to start this book by ?really writing about my own experience as an immigrant travelling between East and West, from India to the England to the States? and realized that she couldn?t ?keep the story to such a small location?. I argue that rather than focusing only on domestic undocumented immigrants, the story of The Inheritance of Loss takes place from Harlem to Himalayas and provides a global perspective in which the author explores human history of slavery and colonization in a larger sense. The author implies that institutional power is a global phenomenon rather than a unique issue of America. In the 30th chapter of the novel, readers can see how difficult it is for an Asian from the Third World to obtain a U.S. Visa. For these people, the chances of going to America depend solely on a couple of randomly asked questions. It is the U.S. Visa officers rather than themselves who can decide whether they can have better lives or
During an interview, Desai said that she tried to start this book by ?really writing about my own experience as an immigrant travelling between East and West, from India to the England to the States? and realized that she couldn?t ?keep the story to such a small location?. I argue that rather than focusing only on domestic undocumented immigrants, the story of The Inheritance of Loss takes place from Harlem to Himalayas and provides a global perspective in which the author explores human history of slavery and colonization in a larger sense. The author implies that institutional power is a global phenomenon rather than a unique issue of America. In the 30th chapter of the novel, readers can see how difficult it is for an Asian from the Third World to obtain a U.S. Visa. For these people, the chances of going to America depend solely on a couple of randomly asked questions. It is the U.S. Visa officers rather than themselves who can decide whether they can have better lives or