Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
The Rise of Indian Americans’ Identity in Zitkala Sa’s “Impressions of an
Indian Childhood” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies”
Hala Abdel Razzaq A. Jum’ah
The Hashemite University/ Department of English Language and Literature, Zarqa, Jordan
[email protected]
Dr. Kifah (Moh’d Khair) Ali Al Omari
The Hashemite University/ Department of English Language and Literature, Zarqa, Jordan
[email protected]
Abstract
The present paper scrutinizes the seismic shifts of the Indians' identity during the
twentieth century. It tends to outline the Indians' collapsing image at the end of the century,
taking Zitkala Sa's "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" and Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of
Maladies" as sample stories to represent such shifts. Both Sa and Lahiri embody different
aspects of the Indians’ identity in which the sense of originality, culture and spirituality changes.
The paper dwells on the changes of these aspects from the beginning to the end of the twentieth
century due to several factors such as World War I, World War II, and many other social and
political developments during this century. The main argument, thus, is that the writings of the
Natives transfer to depict their transitional period. To prove this argument, the researchers
analyze the Natives’ distinctive identity, inspecting four distinguished components, originality,
culture, spirituality, and struggle in Zitkala Sa’s story. The paper moves to contradict the
Natives distinguished identity at the end of the twentieth century, taking Lahiri’s story as a
sample for application. It ends by tracing the transitional break of the earlier identity’s
components, emphasizing the aspects of imitation, destruction, and shallowness. These aspects
make up the main thread of the Indians’ changing identity at the end of the century. By adopting
this frame, the researchers consider the Indians’ identity to be one of the most important
constitutive norms that changes and adjusts itself to suit many drastic developments that took
place throughout the century.
Keywords: Voice, culture, Zitkala Sa, Jhumpa Lahiri, identity, shallowness.
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 1
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
I. Introduction
This study tends to trace the seismic shifts of the Indians’ identity during the twentieth
century, taking Zitkala Sa’s “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” (1921) and Jhumpa Lahiri’s
“Interpreter of Maladies” (1999) as a model. Precisely speaking, it is conducted to portray a
comprehensive image of the Indians’ identity transformation during the century. The study
examines the transitional point of the Indians’ identity during World War I and World War II,
trying to find out how such identity transfers from being original to an imitative one, from
having its own distinctive culture to a whipped and ignored one. The movement is from
spirituality to destruction, causing their identity to become an imitative identity, lacking its own
voice and distinctive features. The Indians become senseless and aimless. Their life is
disillusioned by the whites’ fantasies. One can notice a sense of bitterness and hopelessness in
their life.
II. Methodology
The present paper traces the development of the Indians’ identity from 1920s as mirrored in
Zitkala Sa’s story. Then, it moves forward to show how such identity fades during and after WW
I and WW II (1914-1945), causing total destruction to the Indians’ identity from within, as
presented later at the end of the century in Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies”. These two stories
embody the writers’ thoughts and conflicts and reflect a total transformation in American
literature and culture. In fact, they were written at the beginning and at the end of the century,
enabling the researchers to trace the development of the Indians’ identity during the century. The
main argument, thus, reveals that the Indians’ identity collapses at the end of the twentieth
century after it was united by the Indians’ tribal, communal, and spiritual connections at the
beginning of the same century. In order to elaborate more on this argument, the paper discusses
the aspects of imitation, heritage, spirituality, and struggle in both stories.
Iii. Discussion and Analysis
Suffering from the sharp contrast between the inherited culture and the new world, Indian
Americans try to sustain this constant contrast and tension to attain their identity during the
twentieth century. They tend to expand and to establish their own nation despite the stereotypical
classifications. At the beginning of the twentieth century, people use stereotype as a form of
prejudice to eliminate diversity through generalization. Therefore, Indian Americans tend to defy
such stereotypical notions by having and producing their own identity to fit the twentieth century
newness. The term ‘ethnic identity’ refers to “a person’s socio-psychological identification with
a group which has unique cultural traits, such as a language or religion” (Liebler, 1996, p. 2).
Experiencing “a distinct perspective on the formation of ethnic identity” (Liebler, 1996, p. 1),
the voice of ethnic minorities rises and changes. Zitkala Sa’s story depicts the life of the Indians
in the first half of the twentieth century. It presents the preserved identity of the Indians through
the eyes of an unnamed girl at the age of seven. The story traces such an identity through
different sections as My Mother, The Legends, The Beadworks, and The Coffee-Making. These
sections prove the fundamental existence of the Indians despite the paleface missionaries’
attempt, as the mother’s girl calls them, to destroy such united identity by force. The story ends
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 2
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
by the mother sending her daughter, now eight years old, to the East to whites’ boarding schools
in order to educate her.
On the other hand, “Interpreter of Maladies” presents a different perspective of the Indians’
identity. In this story, Mr. and Mrs. Das, Indian Americans visiting the country of their heritage,
hire middle-aged tour guide Mr. Kapasi to be their driver for the day as they tour. Mr. Kapasi
notes the parents’ immaturity. Mr. and Mrs. Das look and act to the point of childishness, go by
their first names when talking to their children, Ronny, Bobby, and Tina, and seem selfish and
indifferent to the kids. On their trip, when her husband and children get out of the car to sightsee,
Mrs. Das sits in the car, eating snacks that she offers to no one else, wearing her sunglasses as a
barrier, and painting her nails. Mr. Kapasi talks about his weekday job as an interpreter in a
doctor’s office. While Mr. Kapasi begins to develop a romantic interest in Mrs. Das, she reveals
a secret. She tells Mr. Kapasi the story of an affair she once had, and that her son Bobby had
been born out of her adultery. She explains that she chose to tell Mr. Kapasi because of his
profession. The story ends by everyone trying to rescue Mrs. Das from monkeys which begin to
trail her on her way home.
Published in 1921, Sa’s story challenges, as Gottesman points out, the norm of a poor
mixed-blood born on an Indian reservation. Stereotypically, Zitkala Sa is supposed to be
“invisible, silent, segregated, and submissive; instead she achieves notoriety through her writing,
oratory, and musical skills and was highly vocal and aggressive in pursuit of her own
development and the legal, economic, and cultural rights of Native Americans” (Gottesman,
1994, p. 877). Her story encloses within it what characterizes American society before World
War 1. “Before World War I what characterized American society were individuality, values,
property, order and culture, but the first World War denied these attitudes” (Pajer, 2009, p. 102).
Zitkala Sa wants to trace the importance of the individual at that time in shaping the society’s
foundation.
Seen as sub humans and imitative people who do not have their own role in documenting
their distinctive voice and personal experiences, the unnamed Indian American girl in Sa’s story
is proud of her “wild freedom and overflowing spirits” (Sa, 1921, p. 45) in cultivating herself
without depending on others, she has “no fear … of intruding [herself] upon others” (Sa, 1921, p.
45). She is narrating her experience while she was a child with her mother. Thus, she challenges
the unexpected by documenting her own voice in an elegant way instead of imitating others. The
girl has “long-standing consensus on the norms and values that constitute American identity”
(Schildkraut, 2007, p. 597). Tackled as an autobiographical text, Sa’s story might exhibit the
voice of minority, their norms and values that formalize the Native Americans’ identity in
general, and Sa’s in particular.
Sa hints at the Americans’ identity in the first half of the twentieth century to indicate how
such identity works as a salad pot instead of a melting soup as expected in the second half of the
twentieth century. She highlights the fact that Natives’ are distinguished from those who are
white and everyone has his/her own individual characteristics. Therefore, their identity,
presented by their voice, affronts and denies the stereotypical notions of imitating and
assimilating with others. Sa explores “the blue lines on [the old woman] chin” (p. 39), “the
beadworks” (40) and “the painted faces and … the white bosoms of elk’s teeth” (p. 43) in
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 3
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
celebration as distinctive features of Natives’ life style. In fact, Liebler (1996) describes the
whites’ attempts at eliminating the Indians’ distinctive identity by saying:
American Indians have been the targets of federal programs aimed at
assimilating them into White culture, such as the late nineteenth century
policy of sending American Indian children to distant boarding schools
and the more recent program to move American Indians into cities (p. 1)
Fighting to maintain their originality, the Indians in the second half of the twentieth century will
no longer anticipate their originality and individual features as the Dases in Lahiri’s story. The
unnamed girl stands against the whites’ attempts to wipe her identity and everything that makes
her special in following her heritage.
“Free as the wind that blew [the girl’s] hair” (p. 37), the unnamed girl reflects the Natives’
capacity of learning. Despite the fact that she, at the age of eight years, “knew but one language,
and that was [her] mother’s native language,” the girl constructs her own identity independently.
She learns from “self- inflicted punishment” through which her mother’s quietness made her
“feel strongly responsible and dependent upon [her] own judgment” (p. 40). She wants to prove
to others the fact that she has the seeds of cultivating herself even though she is young. She
decides to move to the white community to fulfill her spiritual thirsty for knowing and learning.
She benefits from “the clash of civilizations [since it] was fundamental and investable” (Borden
and Graham, 1978, p. 217). Therefore, she moves with “two paleface missionaries” (p. 45) to
the East in order to educate herself.
Though the unnamed girl moves willingly with the two missionaries, she is proud and
motivated by her inherited culture. Culture is part of the “constitutive norms” that form “the
meaning of a collective identity” (Abdelal, 2005, p. 3) of Native Americans. For her, culture is
sensed as a way of life of her people and their values, beliefs and behaviors. Moving from one
generation to the next, Sa draws on the girl’s perspective of culture. She displays the importance
of culture by viewing the Natives’ hospitality, respect and tradition as constitutive norms that
shape and compose their identity.
“With very few exceptions, the earlier Indians did not [, as the late Indians,] … assimilate
into white culture” (Borden and Graham, 1978, p. 218). Hospitality is one of these exceptions as
explored in Sa’s story when strange people pass beside the wigwam of the mother “to rest, and to
share [the family’s] luncheon with [them], for they were sure of [the family’s] hospitality” (p.
38). Moreover, in the coffee-making incident, the girl “offers [coffee] to [the grandfather] with
the air of bestowing generous hospitality” (pp. 42-43) despite her young age and her mother’s
absence.
Besides the Indians’ hospitality, respect spreads between children, young, and old people as
opposed to those in the second half of the twentieth century. As children, the girl remembers how
she, with other children, used to “exchange [their] necklaces, beaded belts, and sometimes even
[their] moccasins” as “gifts to one another” (p. 41). Moreover, such respect is sensed in the way
children treat elder people and vice versa. The girl stands “long moments without saying a word”
shyly at the entrance “to invite the neighboring old men and women to eat supper with [the
family]” (p. 38) upon the mother’s request. The girl, in her halt at the entrance, does not intend to
withhold the invitation, but to assure that “[she] should not hinder other plans” (p. 39) after
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 4
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
sensing the atmosphere. Therefore, the Natives endure the responsibilities in “maintaining pride
in one’s ethnic heritage and continuing to observe its tradition” (Schildkraut, 2007, p. 600).
Similarly, elder people show respect not only to children, but also to each other. For instance,
the mother treats her daughter with the utmost respect in the old warrior’s presence when the girl
prepares “coffee on a heap of dead ashes” (p. 43). Besides that, the mother, though invited to a
feast at Haraka Wambdi’s wigwam, cooks a meal for Chanyu, since “his aged mother-in-law is
lying very ill” (p. 43).
Another important pillar of Native Americans’ culture and Indian identity formation is
tradition. In the Indian worldview, the world of legends has its magical power for the members to
gather and to sit up “eagerly listening for every word” (p. 39). In the course of storytelling event,
the girl “pillowed [her] head in [her] mother’s lap; and lying flat upon [her] back” (p. 39). These
legends indicate the permanent motivation of the Indians in preserving and recalling the basis of
their culture through which they “define themselves with everything they say” as an oral
“survival of their culture and spirituality” (Abel, 2009, p. 6).
The white missionaries’ attempt to assimilate the Natives is defeated by the Natives’ ability
to preserve their own culture by tattooing their faces since the Natives are away from their
homeland and thus identity. The girl pays attention to “two parallel lines on the chin of one of
the old women” (p. 39). Moreover, they maintain their inherited culture of beadworks in its
“bunches of colored beads” (p. 40). Likewise, the Natives ensure their traditional costumes in
celebrations. In celebrations, both generations, the old and the young, paint their faces and wear
special costumes.
Unlike the whites’ shallowness, Native Indians are proud of and known for their spirituality.
Their spiritual connections have a great healing power that is realized completely in their social
connections on the one hand, and in natural connections, on the other. Their spiritual connections
are pure and inclusive of different ages. However, such spiritual connections are replaced in the
second half of the twentieth century by the sense of isolation and blindness as depicted in
Lahiri’s story. Despite her young age, the girl in Sa’s story seeks her mother’s comfort by
saying “mother, when I am tall as my cousin Warca-Ziwin, you shall not have to come for water.
I will do it for you” (p. 37). Such spiritual connections extend to aging people. The neighbors
gather to dry corn and many wild fruits as cherries, berries and plums. This social connection
contributes to the communal existence of the Indians as opposed to the whites’ segregated
community. As expressed by Hurst (2011), “the importance of community in American identity
resonates in both mainstream and marginalized quarters” (p. 16).
Natural connections are also safeguarded and remembered by the Natives to defy their
spiritual identity against the whites’ superficiality. They respect nature to the point that the girl
was forbidden from plucking a single plum from a bush since it lies on a sacred ground. Her
mother alerts her daughter by saying:
Never pluck a single plum from this bush, my child, for its roots are
wrapped around an Indian’s skeleton. A brave is buried here. While he
lived, he was so fond of playing the game of striped plum seeds were
buried in his hands. From them sprang up this little bush (p. 44)
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 5
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
The mother tends to teach her daughter how nature is part of their spiritual existence and thus
identity. It presents the importance of land for children to recognize their pursuit in recalling
what the whites try to eliminate by forcing the Natives to immigrate. Their identity, as the girl
notices, is sacred as the existence of their nature to indicate both their spiritual and communal
connections, even though they are away from their homeland.
The Indians are “alive both physically and spiritually” with continuous sight of hope (Abel,
2009, p.7). They dismiss the entity of evil in their lives and only invoke the ‘Great Spirit’ to
spread an optimistic expectancy and hope between them. However, they experience both internal
and external struggles in imitating what the whites try to bleach. These struggles create an
identity crisis within the self. Gans (1979, p.1) notes that “people are less and less interested in
their ethnic culture and organizations … and are instead more concerned with maintaining their
ethnic identity.” They can’t keep balance between their cultural existence in preserving their
cultures and their ethnics, on the one hand, and in cultivating their spiritual coherence despite the
whites’ act of segregation, on the other. Such a feeble balance causes the Indians’ sense of
dissociation in their cultivated spiritual connections, and thus an internal struggle.
The Indians seek affiliation within the self despite the whites’ act of segregation in calling the
Indians ‘the other’ that resorts to assimilate the distinctive anchors of the Indians’ charges into
Americans. However, the Indians are aware of the whites’ mission in bleaching their spirituality
first and then their cultural anchors. In contrast, late Indians, like the family in Lahiri’s story,
worship the whites’ culture and thus assimilate to them. Such awareness is viewed in Sa’s story
through the girl’s persistent aim in chasing her shadow. “Standing straight and still, [the girl]
began to glide after [her shadow], putting out one foot cautiously” (p.41). The metaphor of the
shadow hints at the core of the Indians’ internal struggle. Because of their haunted past in
particular, they are not able to catch their shadow, and thus identity, nor to run away from it.
The Indians’ affection of their land is a vital component of their identity. The unnamed girl in
Sa’s story can’t fully get her identity since she is away from her homeland. “For the Indians the
location where their tribes have come to the Earth is the center of the universe, that is, a sacred
place” (Abel, 2009, p.5). Thus, the girl is not able to catch her sense of identity since it becomes
a memory only, a memory of the land. Her shadow reflects what is unattainable for the
minorities. It mirrors the Indians’ sense of loss since they “cannot really break from their Native
American origin” i.e. their roots in homeland (Abel, 2009, p.12). Similarly, the girl’s determined
goal in confronting her shadow at once will never come to an end. She explains: “when, with the
greatest care, I set my foot in advance of myself, my shadow crept onward too. Then again I tried
it; this time with the other foot. Still again my shadow escaped me” (p.41).
Moreover, the girl notices that her shadow follows her whenever she tries to overtake it. It
becomes part of her culture since she can’t get rid of it. In other words, it is her past, her
“identification of [herself] as tribal member” and her memory (Smith, 2001, p. 6). The girl draws
on the constant emergence of one’s past and memory in not being able to transcend her shadow.
She says:
I began to run; and away flew my shadow, always just a step
beyond me. Faster and faster I ran, setting my teeth and clenching
my fists, determined to overtake my own fleet shadow. But ever
swifter it glided before me, while I was growing breathless and hot.
Slackening my speed, I was greatly vexed that my shadow should
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 6
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
check its pace also. Daring it to utmost, as I thought, I sat down upon
a rock imbedded in the hillside. So! My shadow had the impudence
to sit down beside me! (p. 41)
The girl and the Indians at large are haunted by their own shadows, their pasts. The shadow
transfers to a symbolic notion and becomes part of their memory and their culture. Therefore, it
is a moving entity since it transforms within the Indians’ inner self without being able to run
away from it. Consequently, the shadow is an irredeemable reminder of the Indians’ internal
struggle. It reminds them of the unattained fulfilled new identity and their inability to escape
from their old tortured one.
Since the Indians are not attached to their communal roots, represented by their land, they
suffer from an external struggle that is caused by the whites’ segregation and colonization.
Actually, “the importance of community in American identity resonates in both mainstream and
marginalized quarters” (Hurts, 2011, p.16) even if an ambivalent tension is expected to emerge
in rejecting an identity crisis. However, this struggle is disregarded by the late Indians
themselves, the Dases for instance. The Dases, as will be mentioned later on in Lahiri’s story,
fail to engage with the real world, preferring a fantasized one. In fact, Sa’s use of the word
‘paleface’ indicates the colonizer’s missions in bleaching the Indians communal and spiritual
connections. The mother shows how the paleface “has stolen our lands and driven us hither,
having defrauded us of our land, the paleface forced us away … we were driven, my child,
driven like a heard of buffalo” (p. 38). The Indians are forced to immigrate to western countries
and thus create an external struggle to the Indians who have to adapt to their new circumstances.
According to Abel (2009), “this can be interpreted as a colonial oppression, since this form of
adaptation has never been part of the Indian way of life” (p.10).
Not surprisingly, the mother highlights the rudeness of the whites in dehumanizing the
Indians adaptation in the west. She points out how the paleface, “who is a sham,- a sickly sham!”
might even “take away from [them] the river [they] drink” (p.37). It is the whites’ dehumanized
actions that create a tangible struggle to the Indians where the unnamed girl notices her mother’s
tears. The girl notices how her mother was often “sad and silent, at which times her full arched
lips were compressed into hard and bitter lines, and shadows fell under her black eyes” (p.37).
Therefore, Sa explains the Indians struggle at large effectively by portraying a framework from
the colonized perspective.
Another important pillar of the Native Americans’ identity is their language. “An American
Indian’s ability to communicate in an American Indian language shows attachment to and
investment in a tribal affiliation” (Liebler, 1996, p.5). Therefore, the whites try to break away the
Natives’ original language since they fully understand its ultimate significance to American
Indian identity. Unlike Mr. Das’ Americanized accent in Lahiri’s story, the unnamed girl, in Sa’s
story, indicates how “[she] knows but one language, and that was [her] mother’s native tongue”
(p. 45). However, the mother exhibits how the paleface missionaries tend eagerly to educate the
Indian boys and girls and send them to the East. In offering education, the whites try to erase the
core of the Indians’ identity after separating them from their lands. However, the mother insists
on maintaining her inherited language through which “a young interpreter, a paleface who had a
smattering of the Indian language” is present (p. 46). For her, “language is really the heart of any
culture” (Smith, 2001, p. 61).
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 7
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
In fact, the mother senses the “white men’s lies” (p. 46) from the very beginning. She doubts
the palefaces’ free education. She considers their education a way to destroy the Indians’ identity
and then make them fruitful to the dominant white society, as expressed by Hirschfelder (2000)
“kill the Indian and save the man” (p. 129). She anticipates the intention of the whites’ education
by saying “the paleface, who owes us a large debt for stolen lands, have begun to pay a tardy
justice in offering some education to our children. But I know my daughter must suffer kneely in
this experiment” (p. 47). This hidden intention of the whites’ education is what Smith (2001)
speculates behind these whites’ boarding schools. He points out, through the eyes of Indian
students, how the boarding schools constitute a scary new world:
When we entered the Mission School, we experienced a greater hardship,
for there we encountered a rule that prohibited the use of our own
language, which rule was rigidly enforced with a hickory rod, so that
the new-comer, however socially inclined, was obliged to go about like
a little dummy until he had learned to express himself in English (p. 60).
The whole idea of boarding schools is done wisely by the whites after they force the Indians
to immigrate in order to replace the Indians inherited identity. However, the mother insists on
reminding her children of their heritage and culture by doing the things that the whites try to
eliminate by herself rather than forgetting their Indians’ roots as the Dases in Lahiri’s story did.
Also, the same can be seen in the way the mother’s son, Dawee, speaks and communicates with
his family members. He speaks using his mother tongue language, despite the fact that he goes
and learns English in the boarding schools.
These conflicts and struggles, both external and internal, pave the way for the Indians’
identity crisis in the twentieth century to shift, as the researchers assume, from being a reserved
and maintained identity to become a destructed and ignored one. Throughout the twentieth
century, America goes through a period of Newness through which “important developments
bring changes in American life” (Canfield and Wilder, 1954, p. 595). By 1920s, America was a
world power in transportation, education, and literature. The key concept for this century is
optimism.
Americans, however, did not share this optimism to the same degree. Indians, for
instance, did not share John Gunther’s opinion about the century as “absolutely lousy with
greatness” (qt in Canfield and Wilder, 1954, p. 594). Thousands of immigrated Indians, living in
city slums, had to challenge their surroundings after they were forced to give up their lands. They
had to work long hours in unhealthy circumstances. This sense of discrimination leads to an
identity crisis. According to Abel (2009), the emergence of the present identity crisis among
Native Americans is influenced by “the cultural phenomena of stereotyping, discrimination and
mimicry as it is perceptible in the relationship between the members of the dominant white
society and Native Americans” (p. 5).
Besides many developments over the twentieth century, both wars, World War I and World
War II, affect the Indians’ identity. The period from 1914 to 1945 has tremendous impacts on the
Americans’ identity, in particular the Indians. America confronts huge cultural and social
changes after World War I. Americans’ identity was very much influenced, just like that of the
Indians. During and after World War I, people suffered from moral and psychological
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 8
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
destruction. People’s security was also stolen and destroyed. The war motivated them to face
danger on the expense of their education and jobs. Such experience is, as Hoffman (1965) says,
“a vague feeling that in a time of war all other activities were unimportant, a great curiosity
about matters of courage, injury and death- these were for the most part the prevailing motives”
(p. 72). However, with the invention of many technological devices, weapons in particular, the
soldiers soon realized that “survival was not the question of bravery and skillfulness, but luck,
and they believed that it was not a real war but a massacre” (Pajer, 2009, p. 101). Consequently,
the motivation of war turns into a nightmare. Indians’ identity commences to change its
disposition through which disillusionment takes place. The Indians’ united identity begins to
fade. In 1930s, the well-known Americans’ attributes, Indians’ in particular, such as:
“positivism, optimism and the faith in the American Dream are ceased to exist” (Pajer, 2009, p.
102).
Continuously, American people took part in World War II and its dangers. During the war,
people become aimless without a clear goal. Everyone follows his/her own interests regardless of
the communal and spiritual connections. The strength of all free people, as expressed by
Eisenhower, lies “in the unity, their danger in discord” (qt in Canfield and Wilder, 1954, p. 770).
WW II brings serious economic problems forcing people to work even harder than their earlier
jobs. In fact, after WW II, people have to challenge themselves by working more than one job,
especially the minorities. The Indians in particular have to decrease their expectations. They
have to abandon their individual habits to adapt to their new environment. In so doing, the
Indians’ united identity collapses and what is left is an alienated person even within the same
family.
Lahiri explores how the twentieth century and its developments and wars wipe the sense of
originality. Unlike Zitkala Sa’s characters, Lahiri’s characters are no longer celebrating their
individual and discerning features. Everyone is alike; they look the same, talk and behave in the
same way. Indeed, she exhibits the Indians’ experiences after immigration where both difficulties
and joys of assimilation arouse. Lahiri anticipates in her collection of nine stories the peculiar
shift of the Indians’ identity in the second half of the twentieth century. Written in 1999, Lahiri,
in “Interpreter of Maladies,” expects the shortcomings of civilization and the effects of the new
expanding world on the inherited culture in which imitation replaces their inherited culture.
Thus, destruction and shallowness emerge in their new identity instead of the united one. In fact,
she elucidates such a loss in the Indians’ identity by exploring the Das family’s imitative life in
clothes, behavior and language.
Rejecting the internalized stereotypes in the first half of the twentieth century, Indians, in the
second half of the same century, tend certainly to be included in the dominant white society
without insisting on being an Indian. The Dases, like other Indians, “accept the stereotypes,
which may result in losing their own Native American identity and traditions” (Abel, 2009, p.
10). Mr. Kapasi, the Das’ driver in the trip, notices how the family adopts an Americanized way
of wearing clothes. He shows how “the family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the
children in stiff brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors” (p. 13). They want to
achieve their attitudes in assimilating with the whites’ way of living. Women in the second half
of the twentieth century, for instance, “took up smoking.” Moreover, “short skirts and the use of
cosmetics became fashionable” (Canfield and Wilder, 1954, p. 597). Mr. Kapasi observes how:
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 9
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
[Mrs. Das] wore a red-and-white-checkered skirt that stopped above
her knees, slip-on shoes with a square wooden heel, and a close-fitting
blouse styled like a man’s undershirt. The blouse was decorated at
chest-level with a calico appliqué in the shape of a strawberry… Her
hair, shorn only a little longer than her husband’s, was parted far to one
side. She was wearing large dark brown sunglasses with a pinkish tint
to them, and carried a big straw bag (p. 14).
The Dases are Indians but not from India. Their dress is wholly American. They try to
idealize American way of living. Women break away from the traditional costumes and
achievements. Consequently, Mrs. Das breaks the conventional image of the Indians’ reserved
clothes. She tries her best to view her American beauty when she polishes her nails in the car
despite the trip’s difficulties.
Indeed, the Dases highlight the importance of American way of living through Mr. Das’
behavior in greeting Mr. Kapasi who points out how this family has difficulties in relating to
Americans despite their Indians’ roots. Thus, they are caught in the middle of a different culture;
they can neither capture the essence of their Indian roots, since they are away from homeland,
nor become wholly American. Their adopted behavior grabs Mr. Kapasi’s attention when he
greets Mr. Das. When Mr. Das introduces himself, “Mr. Kapasi had pressed his palms together in
greeting, but Mr. Das squeezed hands like an American” (p. 13). Mr. Das acts differently
compared to the mother’s acts in Sa’s story in calling the white, the palefaces, to indicate the
whites’ act of segregation. Unlike the mother’s overwhelmed and disgusted feelings towards the
whites, Mr. Das seems to be proud of his status as a stranger when he tells Mr. Kapasi about his
American roots with an “air of sudden confidence” (p. 14).
Another pillar in the Indians’ new imitative identity is their language and voice. As
expressed by Smith (2001), the Indians’ language is also abolished since “hundreds of native
languages and dialects were to be replaced by English” (p. 62). In Lahiri’s story, Mr. Kapasi
looks out to the Dases accent and shows how “it is just like the ones [he] heard on American
television programs” (p.16). In fact, Mr. Kapasi anticipates the coming generation’s earned
English by referring to his own sons. He remarks how “English was the only non-Indian
language he spoke fluently.” He admits how “[English] was not a remarkable talent [since] he
feared that his children knew better English than he did, just from watching television” (p. 18).
Hallucinating by their new accent, the family is no longer familiar with their mother tongue
language since they are born in America. “[The Indians] could not understand very well what
[they] said for [they] had forgotten much of the Indian languages” (Smith, 2001, p. 62). Mrs.
Das does not seem to understand the words of the song of the shirtless men who sing a phrase
from a popular Hindi song. Similarly, the Indians’ voice turns to be smoothed by the whites as
their identity turns in which “[Mr. Das] voice, somehow tentative and a little shrill, sounded as
though it had not yet settled into maturity” (p. 13).
Advocating the imitative way of living, the Indians’ culture is revolutionized by the
Indians themselves. They start, as the Dases, to forget willingly the inherited culture of their
ancestors. They seek acceptance among white citizens, rejecting what chains them as values and
heritage. Moreover, they violate the ideal constitutive norms that bound them, generate an ideal
type of life and set “expectations for group members for how [they] should look, sound, think,
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 10
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
act, and worship” (Schildkraut, 2007, p. 598). Seen as a sign of tardiness, culture and values are
replaced by a consumer society that relies on materialism. The Indians live in an “age of
efficiency.” It is in this age that “the individuals are only objects and members in the system and
they are changeable” (Pajar, 2009, p. 105).
In Lahiri’s story, Mr. Kapasi illustrates what Hoffman (1965) calls “a product of the
opportunity for quick wealth” (p. 135). He demonstrates how he has another job as an interpreter
in a doctor’s office. Moreover, he tells the Dases how he surrenders his earlier job as an English
teacher since “the doctor offered to pay him twice as much as he earned at the grammar school”
in order to pay for his children (p. 19). Mr. Kapasi mirrors the individuals’ state at the end of the
twentieth century who has to make production like machines as fast as possible.
Money, instead of values and manners, measures whether a certain individual is accepted
and respected or not by the society. People forget their values and standards since they are busy
only in collecting money. They replace their values with new American Dream. This sense of
loving money is manifested by Mrs. Das’ complaining of not having an air-conditioned car. She
screams at her husband, “I told you to get a car with air-conditioning, why do you do this, Raj,
just to save a few stupid rupees, what are you saving us, fifty cents?” (p. 16).
Rudeness is another component of the new imitative identity that replaces the concept of
respect in the reserved Natives’ identity. Rudeness evaporates every means of proper and needed
respect between the family’s members. The Dases members show no respect to each other. The
story begins with a bicker between Mr. and Mrs. Das about the one who should take Tina, their
daughter, to the toilet. Moreover, such rudeness is sensed in the way the parents act to each
other. As Mr. Kapasi notices:
Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an older brother and sister, not
parents. It seemed that they were in charge of the children only
for the day; it was hard to believe they were regularly responsible
for anything other than themselves. Mr. Das tapped on his lens
cap, and his tour book, dragging his thumbnail occasionally across
the pages so that they made a scraping sound. Mrs. Das continued
to polish her nails. She had still not removed her sunglasses (p. 16).
The family “advocates one extreme of complete assimilation” (Schildkraut, 2007, p. 600) to
the extent that the parents themselves need morality to guide them. Everyone is busy in doing his
own things regardless of the others’ needs. They do not value each others’ feelings by treating
each other rudely in the presence of their children.
In addition, rudeness, carelessness and indifference prevent Mr. Das from watching his son,
Ronny, when he approaches a goat to give it gum. Busy with the only complicated thing he
wears, his camera, Mr. Das demands his other son, Bobby, to “make sure that [his] brother
doesn’t do anything stupid” with having “no intention of intervening” (p. 13). Similarly, the
parents are indifferent to the point that they did interfere at any of their children’s problematic
behaviors, as when Tina begins to play with the lock of the car on her side, clicking it with some
effort forward and backward.
The rotten core of the Indians’ new constructed identity is also displayed through their
tradition and heritage. Although Mr. Kapasi recognizes some common cultural heritage, the
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 11
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
Dases are no more familiar with India than any other tourist. Despite the fact they are Indians,
they come to India during holidays. Mr. Das arrogantly demonstrates to Mr. Kapasi how he was
“born and raised in America” (p. 16). He continues, “our parents live here now, in Assansol, we
visit them every couple years” (ibid). For the Dases, India becomes an area to visit rather than a
traditional substratum to be restricted to. He is detached from his heritage and tradition to the
point that he relies on a tourist guidebook entitled “INDIA” to inform him about his homeland.
Throughout the trip, he goes awry to engage with his home land in any substantial way. Instead,
he prefers to hide behind the description of the guidebook. His touristic view of India forgoes
him from connecting to the country that his ancestors call home.
Replaced by the Indians’ interests in the borrowed culture, the Indians’ tradition fades
away in the second half of the twentieth century. Unlike Sa’s intention to advocate the unnamed
girl’s legends and tattoos, Mrs. Das admires the borrowed culture and tradition in a delirium
way. When she intends to give Mr. Kapasi her address in order to send him their photo together,
“she had hastily ripped from a page of her film magazine” (p. 20). She cannot give up her
magazine for, as Mr. Kapasi notices, “the blank portion was limited, for the narrow strip was
crowded by lines of text and a tiny picture of a hero and heroine embracing under a eucalyptus
tree” (ibid). The Dases, the mother in particular, advocate the whites’ culture. It emerges together
with their mother culture to reach what Huntington calls “the multiple traditions.” For
Huntington, “multiple traditions will, in time, become a multicreedal America, with groups with
different cultures espousing distinctive political values and principles rooted in their particular
cultures” (qt in Schildkraut, 2007, p. 605).
Having a new Indian identity that is imitative and whipped from its original culture, the
Indians’ life is destructed. Their life turns to be both isolated and blind, trapped within
destructive self. They are no longer recognized as one nation that has its own spiritual, tribal, and
communal connections. Unlike the optimistic Indians’ connections in Sa’s story, Lahiri dwells
on the senseless and aimless life of the Indians after wars. The Dases in Lahiri’s story did not
“search for community as a necessary condition for the existence of the individual” (qt in Hurst,
2011. P. 18).
Lahiri’s story exhibits the families’ connections that are damaged and as a result cause the
individuals isolation. Though the Dases’ family supposes to have fun in the trip, everyone is
busy in doing his/her own things without noticing their existence. In fact, communication breaks
down repeatedly with hurtful outcomes. Mr. and Mrs. Das fail to communicate, not because of
language barrier, but because Mrs. Das hides behind her sunglasses most of the time and Mr. Das
conceals his face either in a guidebook or in his camera. He takes the camera from his eye only
when he looks back to his guidebook. They are trapped within their own superficial interests and
hostile to each other. Mrs. Das ignores her Tina’s request of polishing her nails and quiet busy in
polishing her own. Moreover, the children play in an isolated way, everyone has his/her own
interests and even if they communicate, they communicate rudely. Ronny, for instance, calls his
brother dummy when he asks his father “why is the driver sitting on the wrong side in his car?”
(p. 16). The father disregards any actual communication with his son, saying to him “don’t call
your brother a dummy” (ibid).
Such isolation is what remains after wars with its sensational emptiness that replaces the
family’s bounds. Indeed, Hoffman claims that after the wars “what was left was the isolated
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 12
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
person” (p. 75). Mrs. Das reveals how she no longer loves her husband, whom she has known
since she was a young child. She also admits that she has subversive impulses toward her
children and life. Furthermore, she cannot adapt her existence with her whole family. She gives
Mr. Kapasi an impatient sigh when she asks him “how long’s the trip?” She cannot handle two
and a half hours with her entire family (p. 15).
Besides isolation, blindness is also one of the essential effects of peoples’ destructive selves
at the end of the twentieth century. People chose to be blind rather than following the old
restricted constitutive norms. In seeking escapism, they tend to hide beyond their inherited
tradition. In fact, “there was a growing tendency on the part of the younger generation to rebel
against the authority and the traditions of their elders” (Canfield and Wilder, 1954, p. 597). Such
an escape releases people from their responsibilities, from seeing the truth and from speaking
their inner voices. Mrs. Das hides behind her sunglasses, so she cannot clearly see her
responsibilities as a wife and a mother. Similarly, Mr. Das disposes of the sad truth about his
wife’s infidelity. He views the world through his own camera. Since he adjusts either to shot
certain images or not, he views the world happily without reflecting and portraying the ugly
reality. As a result, Mr. Das cannot acknowledge that his younger son, Bobby, is a product of an
affair Mrs. Das had eight years ago.
Lacking the inherited connections, the Indians’ inner selves are destructed, leading them to a
shallow and superficial life. Lahiri explores how Indians transfer to objects rather than living
entities and souls seeing appearances playing an essential role in their living. They appear to care
a lot about their appearances, especially to those who are dominant, the whites. They look for
acceptance after they were once outcasted from their homes by the whites. However, as Abel
(2009) notes “the farther they move from the center, the weaker they become spiritually, and
their survival based on a strong attachment to their land is threatened” (p. 6). Consequently, the
Indians after wars live a shallow life. They advocate appearances and daydreaming rather than
the earlier Indians’ rejection of internal and external struggles, as explored in Sa’s story.
The Dases family in Lahiri’s story deeply worships appearances. They go to trips together,
but not with each other. Mr. Kapasi classifies such a fact from the toilet incident. Mr. Das
complains that Mrs. Das should take Tina to the bathroom since he bathed her the night before.
Moreover, they want to show the whites what is not there, love. Mr. Das insists on having his
wife in the pictures of the family together at Udayagiri and Khandagiri. He wants such a picture
to please others for he suggests that one of these pictures could be used for the Christmas card.
He admits how the family may not have the chance again to be together at one place when his
wife says to him “pretend I’m there” (p. 24).
Earlier, Indians, in the first half of the twentieth century, adjust the whites’ created struggles
for their benefits as the unnamed girl who makes use of the whites’ boarding schools to cultivate
her education without destroying her roots. However, the Indians at the second half of the
century move with the current smoothly to the extent that they live the created fantasy world of
the whites i.e. daydreaming. The whites tend to suck every way that bound the Indians with
reality. In other words, the whites seek the Indians’ segregation by forcing them to forget their
pasts and live in fantasies only.
As seen in the story, Mr. Kapasi begins to daydream about his coming relationship with Mrs.
Das. Mrs. Das notices Mr. Kapasi’s other work, as an interpreter in a doctor’s office, and
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 13
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
considers it to be ‘romantic.’ Mr. Kapasi is seduced by her description of his job. In fact, he
starts fantasizing about Mrs. Das, seeking a world that is not arranged as his marriage. He wishes
a world where only dreams flourish, a world that is not real but only exists in the mind. He hopes
for such a world to the point he is disappointed with the family’s decision to stop for lunch at a
roadside restaurant. Moreover, he feels enthusiastic and imagines the witty things he will write to
her when she asks him for his address for she could send him a copy of the family’s pictures.
Besides fantasizing their own dreams, the Indians also fantasize their surroundings in the
second half of the twentieth century. Mr. Das, for instance, photographs the Indian cotter whose
suffering he finds appropriate for a tourist’s shot. He asks Mr. Kapasi to pull over the car to the
side of the road in order to take “a picture of a barefoot man, his head wrapped in a dirty turban,
seated on top of a cart of grain sacks pulled by a pair of bullocks” (p. 17). He wants to shot the
picture disregarding the man’s need for help. He sees only what he wants to see; an interesting
souvenir from a foreign land. Even when Bobby, the family’s son, is haunted and surrounded by
monkeys, at the end of the story, Mr. Das do nothing but shot another picture, as though this
scene is part of his fantasized world and somehow separate from reality.
Iv. Conclusion
To conclude, the analysis of the chronological development of the Indians’ identity from the
beginning till the end of the twentieth century in Sa’s and Lahiri’s stories reveals how the Indians
fail to preserve their identity. Their original identity only becomes part of history and then
forgotten. It has undergone many changes to suit the century’s development. The Indians fail to
resist the stereotypical classification created at the end of the twentieth century. They disregard
their outstanding identity and decide to be one with the whites, like the unnamed girl who
chooses the whites’ education and moves gradually to be like Mrs. Das, an Indian only by name.
They become what the whites think of them at the beginning of the century.
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 14
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
References
Abdelal, Rawi, Yoshiko Herrera, Alastair Johnston, and Rose McDermott. (2005 ).“Identity as a
Variable.”
Abel, Anita. (2009 ).“Native American Identity Crisis in the 20 th – Century United states”. In
Simon, Zottan (ed). First American Studies MA Student Conference. Debrecen: University
of Debrecen.
Borden, Morton and Otis L. Graham, Jr. (1978). The American Profile. 2nd edition . Lexington:
D.C . Heath and Company : University of California.
Canfield, leon and Howard Wilder. (1954). The Making of Modern America Cambridge:
Houghion Mifflin Company.
Gans, Herbert J. (1979 ). “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in
America.”Ethnic and Racial Studies 2:1.
Gottesman, Ronald. (1994). The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th Edition. Vol. 2.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 877-905.
Hirschfelder, Arlene. (2000). Native American: A History in Pictures. New York: Dorling.
Hoffman, Frederick J. (1965). The Twenties: American Writing in the post war Decade. New
York: Free Press.
Hurst, Mary J. (2011). language, Gender and Community in Late Twentieth-Century Fiction.
New York: ST. Martin’s Press.
Lahiri, Jhum pa. (1999 ). “ Interpreter of Maladies.” Houghion Mifflin Company.
Liebler, Carolyn. (1996). “American Indian Ethnic Identity: An Analysis of Tribal Specification
in the 1990 Census”. Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Pajer, Aliz. (2009). “The Effects of World War I in Earnest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises,
F.Scott Fitzgerald’s’ The Great Gatsby and Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine. In Simon,
Zottan (ed). First American Studies MA Student Conference. Debrecen: University of
Debrecen.
Schildkraut, Deborah. (August 2007). “Defining American Identity in the Twenty-first Century:
How Much “There “ iS There?”. The Journal of politics, Tufts University. Vol.69, No 3,
pp. 597-675.
Smith, Maureen. (Fall 2001). “Forever changed: Boarding School Narratives of American Indian
Identity in the U.S and Canada”. Indigenous Nations Studies Journal, Vol.2.
Zitkala – Sa. (1921). “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Boston: The Hiberside Press.
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 15
Volume 3
March
Issue 4
2017
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND
CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926
Hala Abdel Razzaq A. Jum’ah BIO STATEMENT
Hala Abdel Razzaq A. Jum‟ah was born in Zarqa, Jordan, on June, 12, 1990. She earned her BA
degree in English Language and Literature from The University of Jordan, Amman, in 2012. She
is studying now for her MA degree in English Literature in the Hashemite University, Zarqa,
Jordan. She works as a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of English at Hashemite
University, Jordan, during the academic year 2013/2014. In addition, she gets the same job in
other private and public universities in Jordan in the next years till now. Hala’s research interests
include Drama in general, and William Shakespeare in particular, nineteenth and twentieth
century American Literature, and modern theories of literary criticism. Email:
[email protected]
Dr. KIFAH (MOH'D KHAIR) ALI AL OMARI/ Corresponding Author BIO STATEMENT
KIFAH (MOH'D KHAIR) ALI AL OMARI was born in Amman, Jordan, on June 6, 1970. He
earned his BA in English at The University of Jordan, Amman in 1991, his MA in English
Literature from the same university in 1995, and his PhD in English Literature from The
University of Texas at Arlington in 2006. He has taught English for more than five years in
different public and private schools in Jordan before he worked as a Teaching Assistant of
English in different universities, including The University of Jordan, The Hashemite University,
and The University of Texas at Arlington. He works now as an Associate Professor of English
literature at the Department of English Language and Literature in The Hashemite University,
Jordan. He works also as Director of the Office of International Relations at the same university
for more than two years. He is now on a sabbatical leave in Tabuk University, Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia. His research interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature,
detective fiction, modern theories of literary criticism, and cultural studies. Kifah Al Omari is a
member of APETAU – Association of Professors of English and Translation at Arab
Universities- since 2008. Email: [email protected], [email protected]
http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index
Page 16