Interpreter of Maladies

The primary theme of this powerful short story has to with our human inability to accurately communicate our own—or understand others'—emotional experience. Mr. Kapasi is an excellent communicator....

Initially, Mr. Kapasi—a driver for tourists—observes Mrs. Das with some reserve. She is not interested in her children very much, and she is dressed somewhat provocatively. She also does not appear...

Mr. Kapasi’s unhappiness stems from his son’s recent death. His loneliness and personal disdain for his life make him vulnerable to Mrs. Das. This is the beginning of the conflict that occurs in...

In 'When Mr. Pirzada Came To Dine,' Lilia's parents befriend Mr. Pirzada, a Bengali academic, who has been awarded a grant by the Pakistani government to study New England foliage. Invariably, Mr....

“Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri explores the unhappiness of people in loveless marriages. This problem crosses cultures. This story involves a man who has lost a child and his wife who...

Some symbols in the chapter "Mrs. Sen's" in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies include the food consumed by the characters within the story, Mrs. Sen's chopping knife (brought to America from...

In the short story "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American family—Mr. and Mrs. Das and their children—are visiting India. Mr. Kapasi, from whose viewpoint the story is told,...

While Mr. and Mrs. Das are of Indian descent, they come to their parents' homeland as tourists. To Mr. Kapasi, a traditional Indian man, they are just as foreign in their behavior and in their...

When communication breaks down, a marriage suffers. “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri presents characters that live with this frustration. Failing marriages, buried guilt, and...

Although Mr. Kapasi seems to be attracted to Mrs. Das, he looks at her legs her breasts and feels flattered by her fascination with his job as an interpreter for a doctor's office, readers are not...

Mr. Kapasi is a romantic who empathizes with the pain of others. While these characteristics are useful in his job as a medical translator, the “interpreter of maladies” of the title, they also...

"Durwan" is a word comprised of Urdu, Hindi and Persian roots. According to Oxford Dictionary, it means a porter or doorkeeper, yet in many cases, like Boori Ma's, durwans may only be cleaning...

The term "interpreter" on the most basic level simply means a translator, or more specifically someone who does oral translation in person as opposed to a literary translator who works primarily...

One possible central conflict is the internal conflict that exists within Mr. Kapasi, the character whose perspective guides "The Interpreter of Maladies." Mr. Kapasi is the driver hired by the Das...

The story centers around a day in the life of an Indian tour guide, Mr. Kapasi. An Indian-American family has come to India on vacation, obtaining his services as their guide. There are five in the...

In Interpreter Of Maladies, Mrs. Sen's regression of behaviors is evident through: 1) Her tendency to place Eliot in the role of mature confidant. When the fish vendor calls to inform Mrs. Sen that...

This short story is written from a third-person limited omniscient perspective, with the limited omniscient focus on the character of Mr. Kapasi. The narrator begins to tell us of Mr. Kapasi's...

This is very good question to begin your thought process with a compare and contrast essay. In fact, both of these characters, Mrs. Das and Miranda, can be compared quite easily, especially with...

Mrs. Das and Mrs. Sen are two interesting characters to compare. Both Indian women who are unhappy and somewhat bored with their lot in life, Mrs. Das and Mrs. Sen both embody domestic...

While Lahiri emphasizes the cultural differences between Mr. Kapasi and the Americanized Das family, the most central conflict in the story is the internal conflict within Mr. Kapasi. There is a...

Mrs. Das's large sunglasses serve as one symbol in the text. A symbol is something that has both literal and figurative meaning; this means that her sunglasses are actually present, literally, in...

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies makes the argument that cultural assimilation, by distancing a person from their roots and heritage, can make a person even less likely to understand...

In Jhumpa Lahiri's short story "Interpreter of Maladies," Mr. Kapasi, a tour guide, develops an affection for Mrs. Das, an Indian-American woman visiting India with her husband and their young...

Here are some quotes from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: "Our baby was a boy," he said. "His skin was more red than brown. He had black hair on his head. He weighed almost five pounds....

“Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri brings to the surface unhappy marriages. Told from a third-person limited point of view, the objective narrator reveals the perceptions of Mr. Kapasi,...

Cultural displacement means being plucked out from “my” place and dropped into an alien environment. What makes a place “mine”? The food we love, friends and family, the weather, shared...

“The Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri portrays two dysfunctional people who encounter each other on a trip to visit a sun temple. Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das secret discussion between them...

Mr. Kapasi Mr. Kapasi is the main character, the protagonist of the story. He is a middle-aged man with a few children and a loveless marriage. His wife blames him for the death of their son from...

The story “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri centers on understanding between people in a cultural gap. Normally an interpreter uses his language skills as a tool of acknowledgement. This...

The lack of communication between Mr. Kapasi and the Das family leads to a lack of emotional connection by making it hard for the parties to comprehend the mannerisms and behaviors of each other....

Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" is a nuanced story highlighting the culture clash between the American-raised Das family and their Indian tour guide Mr. Kapasi. These culture differences...

Mrs. Das is encouraged to confide in Mr. Kapasi because he has told her that he works as an “Interpreter of Maladies.” While this job is oral translation for medical patients, she looks on it as...

In the three short stories, Lahiri portrays cultural displacement as a melancholic experience for individuals. It reminds them of how alone they truly are in a new world. Cultural displacement...

Although writer Jhumpa Lahiri—who was born in London and grew up in Rhode Island—is not a native of India, she is still a member of its global diaspora. Lahiri's parents were born and raised in...

Hello! You asked about the impact of cultural displacement on the characters in "Mrs. Sen." 1) Mrs. Sen It is obvious to Eliot that Mrs. Sen misses her home in India. She finds it difficult to...

Each pair of characters is the subject of a different story in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. Shoba and Shukumar are a married couple in "A Temporary Matter," but by the end of the story,...

Lahiri uses the motif of interpreting to draw attention to the difficulty human beings have in not only understanding their emotions for themselves, but also in expressing their emotions accurately...

By having an American couple of Indian heritage return to India, Jhumpa Lahiri eliminates other factors from our consideration of the story. If it had been a white couple that had no connection to...

Hello! A good topic to explore would be that of conflict, especially between both Indian and American cultures, in the lives of the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies. Lahiri's...

The Difficulty of Communicating One's Emotions The story conveys that it is extremely difficult for human beings to communicate their feelings truthfully. Mr. Kapasi is unable to really communicate...

Our immediate impression of Mr. and Mrs. Das is that they are not very caring parents. They "bickered" about which one of them has to take their young daughter to the bathroom, and Mrs. Das loses...

In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Mrs. Das, her husband, and her children are all born and raised in the United States. This creates a cultural gap between the Indian American family and...

Christopher Booker, the writer behind the theory of the seven basic plots, might suggest that the plot line that best suits Jhumpa Lahiri's short story "The Interpreter of Maladies" is the one of...

In this story, a man named Mr. Kapasi serves as a kind of tour guide in India for the Das family, who are Americans of Indian descent. Mr. and Mrs. Das have three children, but they seem, in many...

If one were to ask an author to explain why they arranged a set of stories in a particular way, the author would probably not have one single, straightforward reason. The stories in Jhumpa Lahiri’s...