The stories in Interpreter of Maladies are and examination of various forms of human frailty. Discuss, with reference to the four stories you have studied.
The stories in Interpreter of Maladies, by Lahiri, are an examination of various forms of human frailty. The following human frailties are explored; the fragility of love, appearance and reality, the need to be loved and wanted, and the nature of truth and communication. The stories are "A Temporary Matter", "Interpreter of Maladies", "A Real Durwan", and "This Blessed House".
The fragility of love is explored in "This Blessed House". Sanjeev does not really know if he loves his wife Twinkle.
"He did not know if he loved her. He said he did- p147.
Sanjeev has never been "in love". Sanjeev could only tell you "what he thought (love) was not".
When Sanjeev first meet Twinkle, he thought she was perfect. Their parents had arranged their marriage. On the surface the two of them seemed to be compatible. It was not till they were living together he started to notice things about her that annoyed him. He had hated things, just because twinkle liked them.
He resented the ways she was so untidy, the way she would just leave he shoes in the door way, how she left her underpants on the bedroom floor. When twinkle starting collecting her Christian icons, Sanjeev, could not bear the way she found them so interesting and fascinating. He especially hated the way she forced him to have a statue of the Virgin Mary on the front lawn. To him this was against his religion, and he despised her more for doing it.
In "a temporary matter", we see the fragility of love. Shukumar remembers;.
"Their first meals there, when they were so thrilled to be married, to be living together in the same house at last, that they would just reach for each other foolishly, more eager to make love than to eat"p10.
This was the way before Shoba gave birth to the dead baby. Now they find it hard to talk and communicate.