Metaphors in Jhumpa Lahiri's Fiction
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METAPHORS IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S FICTION: A STUDY A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY MD SOHAIL AHMED Roll No. 06614105 DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GUWAHATI GUWAHATI, INDIA August 2011 We have all come out of Gogol’s Overcoat Fyodor Dostoevsky TH-1053_06614105 Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Guwahati 781039 Assam, India DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis entitled “Metaphors in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction: A Study” is the result of investigation carried out by me at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, under the supervision of Dr Liza Das and Prof Krishna Barua. The work has not been submitted either in whole or in part to any other university / institution for a research degree. Md Sohail Ahmed August 2011 IIT Guwahati TH-1053_06614105 Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Guwahati 781039 Assam, India CERTIFICATE This is to certify that Md Sohail Ahmed has prepared the thesis entitled “Metaphors in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction: A Study” for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. The work was carried out under our general supervision and in strict conformity with the rules laid down for the purpose. It is the result of his investigation and has not been submitted either in whole or in part to any other university / institution for a research degree. Liza Das Krishna Barua Supervisor Co-Supervisor August 2011 IIT Guwahati TH-1053_06614105 Preface and Acknowledgements The elegant, chiselled and to an extent tempered and understated prose through which Jhumpa Lahiri mostly paints varied shades of gray over her Bengali-American story worlds, has already earned her much popular and critical acclaim. Adept in delineating well crafted scenes, it is the distinct tenor of lapping waves of feelings and emotions which permeate the fabric of her stories. While certain aspects of Lahiri’s language recall nineteenth century great prose stylists like Nikolai Gogol, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Hardy, certain others highlight its contemporary elements. She speaks and writes effusively about compelling twentieth century story tellers like R. K. Narayan, Mavis Gallant, William Trevor and James Salter. Just as all these prose stylists from various parts of the world had worked carved out their own fictionscapes like Narayan’s Malgudi, for Jhumpa Lahiri the lives of the distinctive middle class, academically bright Bengali-Americans surrounded mostly by the New England landscape of the USA act as her “two inches of ivory.” However, two of her seventeen stories – “The Real Durwan” and “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar” – express her ability to vividly portray miseries and pains associated with the lives of two marginalised women belonging to the broader Bengali cultural landscapes. With one full length fiction, two story collections and a decade long publication career as writer of fiction and stories, Jhumpa Lahiri, has successfully carved a niche for herself as a powerful prose stylist. TH-1053_06614105 As far as my personal initiation into the metaphorically ambient stories of Jhumpa Lahiri is concerned, it all started first through my reading of the Interpreter of Maladies a number of times around the year 2001. It was followed not by the reading experience of The Namesake but by watching the beautiful eponymous movie made by Mira Nair in April, 2008. Though the movie differs from the realistic fictional portrayal, a few excellent shots captured by Frederic Elmes remained firmly etched in my mindscape. Within a couple of weeks, I went through the novel trying to scrape through its fabric for listing out metaphors as I wished to present a seminar paper around names and naming as a part of my ongoing PhD Course Work at the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at IIT Guwahati. My simultaneous exposure to the nuances of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory under the guidance of my supervisor Dr. Liza Das was instrumental in my decision to undertake this study. I express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my supervisor for her sustained support and encouragement at every stage of this study. At this juncture, I would also like to express my sincere thanks to my co- supervisor Prof. Krishna Barua for her valuable suggestions and encouragement all along. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the suggestions and ideas given by the members of my Doctoral Committee — Prof. Rohini Mokashi-Punekar, Prof. Archana Barua and Prof. S. Borbora. I would also like to sincerely acknowledge and thank Dr. Sambit Mallick for helping and encouraging me in various possible ways. I would also like to express my thanks to Dr. Arupjyoti Saikia, Dr. Mrinal Kanti Dutta and Dr. Sawmya Roy for their interest in my work over several semesters. Among my peers I ii TH-1053_06614105 would especially like to thank Jitu Tamuli and Gopal Sarma for helping me in many ways. I would also like to thank Dr. Merry Baruah Bora and Papori Rani Barooah for their good wishes all through my research. Among the departmental staff I would like to offer my thanks to Surendra Mohan Saloi, Dasarath Das, Tilak Das and Afzal Hussain. I would also like to thank the Library staff at IIT Guwahati and The Central Library, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, the Jawaharla Nehru University Library, the University of Delhi Library, the Jamia Millia University Library, for extending cooperation and possible help. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Altafur Rahman, Chairman of the Governing Body and Sri Utpalmoni Phukan, Principal of Jagiroad College, Assam, for assisting me by granting me leave for my research and encouraging me at various junctures of my study. I would also like to express thanks to my colleagues especially Dr. Raju Barua, Dr. I.C. Mahanta, Sri Tulsi Bordoloi, Manoranjan Moulick and Habibur Rahman. Among my family members I would like to note and express my heartiest thanks to my affectionate wife Malabika Dihingia Baruah for her unstinted support and encouragement all along. For my loving daughter Khushi very special thanks are overdue for her understanding and love towards me. For my little boy Rehan special thanks for your love always. For my parents Md. Habib Ullah and Mrs. Mofida Ahmed I acknowledge my sincerest gratitude. For my octogenarian mother-in-law Mrs. Kanan Kamala Dihingia Baruah I pay my respect for her good wishes. Very special thanks to my iii TH-1053_06614105 dear brothers Safi, Rafi and sister Maina for their love and wishes. I thank friends Anwar, Bahar, Farida, Majaz, Deeba and Bina for all their keen interest in the progress of my work. My thanks to my brother-in-law Alakesh (Bhaiti) and my sisters-in-law Arundhati, Monalisha and Madhusmita (Dihingia Baruahs all) for their good wishes throughout these years. Md. Sohail Ahmed IIT Guwahati August, 2011 iv TH-1053_06614105 Contents Page Preface and Acknowledgments i Chapter I Introduction: The Metaphorical Imperative, Jhumpa Lahiri and Writing 1 Chapter II Bhalonam and Daknam: Metaphors, Names and Naming 35 Chapter III “Love begins with a Metaphor”: Mapping Relationships 85 Chapter IV At Water’s Edge: Metaphors of Land and Waterscapes 144 Chapter V In Lieu of a Conclusion: Interpreter of Metaphors 191 Selected Bibliography 214 TH-1053_06614105 We have all come out of Gogol’s Overcoat Fyodor Dostoevsky TH-1053_06614105 Chapter I Introduction: The Metaphorical Imperative, Jhumpa Lahiri and Writing Metaphor [is] a pervasive mode of understanding by which we project patterns from one domain of experience in order to structure another domain of a different kind. So conceived metaphor is not merely a linguistic mode of expression; rather, it is one of the chief cognitive structures by which we are able to have coherent, ordered experiences that we can reason about and make sense of. Through metaphor, we make use of patterns that obtain in our physical experience to organise our more abstract understanding. Mark Johnson Jhumpa Lahiri (born Nilanjana Sudeshna) shot to prominence with the publication of her very first collection of short stories entitled Interpreter of Maladies in 1999. The Namesake (2003), her first and lone full-length fiction so far, further confirmed her reputation as a master story teller (see Bala). The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 made her a popular name. With these two books, she came to be appreciated as an Indian- American writer who had vividly captured the diasporic experience of the Bengali- American community through her translucent and poetic prose. With the publication of the cycle of stories Unaccustomed Earth (2008) she has been seen as a sensitive writer. What distinguishes her from her predecessors like Bharati Mukherjee and others is that despite the obvious label of “diaspora” (see Banerjee; Das 2010; Dubey; Kaur; Nityanandam; for diaspora-related analyses), she has managed to slip through that TH-1053_06614105 definitional framework. Jhumpa Lahiri usually takes up the realist framework of nineteenth century greats to depict the human predicament – capturing the nuances of human relationships in their varied manifestations. There are candid revelations of her devoted readings of nineteenth-century great stylists of fiction ranging from Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Hawthorne to Thomas Hardy and an overt acknowledgement of being influenced by her readings apart from discussing the immediate impulses behind the composition of The Namesake. Referring to Nikoloi Gogol, the Russian writer, Lahiri remarks in an interview: … I admire [Gogol’s] work enormously and reread a lot of it as I was working on [The Namesake], in addition to reading biographical material. "The Overcoat" is such a superb story. It really does haunt me the way it haunts the character of Ashoke in the novel.