Portrayal of Immigrants in Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Namesake' and Bharati Mukherjee's 'Jasmine'.

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i Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Di dalam Tugas Akhir ini, penulis membahas tentang karakter imigran dari dua novel yang berjudul The Namesake yang ditulis oleh Jhumpa Lahiri dan Jasmine yang ditulis oleh Bharati Mukherjee. Kedua karakter yang dibahas di dalam Tugas Akhir ini adalah karakter dari tokoh Ashima dalam novel The Namesake dan tokoh Jasmine dalam novel Jasmine. Keduanya adalah imigran asal India yang tinggal di negara Amerika Serikat.

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ii Maranatha Christian University Statement of the Problem ………...… Purpose of the Study ……….. Methods of Research ………...… Organization of the Thesis ……….

CHAPTER TWO: PORTRAYAL OF CHARACTER IN

THE NAMESAKE ………

CHAPTER THREE: PORTRAYAL OF CHARACTER IN

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APPENDICES

Synopsis of The Namesake

This story is about The Gangulis who are Indian American immigrants in the United States. The story begins when Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli move from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachussetts after they hold their arranged wedding. Ashoke leaves India with the new hope. Unlike her husband, Ashima leaves her hometown with the deep sadness. She cannot imagine that she should leave her family and follow her husband to the country that she is not familiar with. While Ashoke can adapt easily with his job as engineer at MIT and his new life, Ashima finds that it is hard for her to settle in the United States which has different ways of life with India.

The new problem happens when their first son, Gogol, was born. Ashima feels that it is not good if she raises Gogol alone in America which has different culture with her country and without her family or any relative who can help her. Even, her husband just returns to home rarely because of his work that forces him to live apart from her and their children.

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It is shown when she celebrates Christmas and Thanksgiving but she also keeps her integrity as an Indian woman.

Synopsis of Jasmine

Jasmine is a story of a young Punjabi woman named Jasmine whose life takes her from India to the United States.She is a rebellious woman who is really keen on modernity and western things. She marries Prakash, a young Indian man who has modern thought and hates feudalism in India. Prakash has a plan to move to the United States with Jasmine in order to get a better life and continue his study. However, Prakash dies before they leave India. Thus, Jasmine wants to continue her husband’s dream and she arranges illegal document to go to the United States by herself.

After arriving to the United States, there are many problems that Jasmine has to face. She is raped by a man named Half-Face and then she kills him and continues her journey in the United States.

Although Americans sometimes treat her differently, she tries hard to survive in America. She tries to hid her Indian identity and change into an American. She also has two love affairs with Bud Ripplemeyer and Taylor Hayes. Both of them are Caucasian.

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Biography of Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, England in July 1967 and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Her mother introduces about Bengali heritage to her from an early age in order to make Lahiri and her siblings know that they are Indian. Lahiri received her B.A in English Literature from Barnard College in 1989. Then, she received an M.A. in English, an M.A in Creative writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D in Renaissance Studies from Boston University. She joined Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center from 1997 to 1998. Lahiri lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Alberto Vorvoulias-Bush, who is a journalist, and two children. She has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.

Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and Rhode Island School of Design. Most of her works concern about the lives of Indian-American, especially Bengalis. Her first work as a writer is Interpreter of Maladies which become the winner of 2000 Pulitzer Prize, O. Henry Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, etc.

The Namesake is her fifth book and becoming the first novel that she has wrote. It was published in 2003 and filmed by Mira Nair. The film was released in March 2007 in the United States and United Kingdom.

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Biography of Bharati Mukherjee

Bharati Mukherje was born on July 27 1940 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. After the Independence of India, she and her parents travelled to Europe and returning to Calcutta in the early 1950. Then, she attended the Loreto School, Kolkata. She received her B.A. from the University of Calcuttain 1959 and her M.A from the University of Baroda in 1961. She decided to continue her study at the University of Iowa. She received her M.F.A from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1963 and her PH.D. in 1969 from the Department of Comparative Literature.

Mukherjee married writer Clark Blaise in 1963. Mukherjee, Blaise and their children returned to the United States after more than a decade living in Montreal and Toronto, Canada.

Mukherjee has taught at McGill University, Skidmore College, Queens College and City University of new York. Her works are Jasmine (1989) a novel about young Indian woman who tells about identity, The Holder of The World (1993), Leave it To Me (1997) Desirable Daughters (2002) and The Tree Bride (2004)

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

I. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

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and Asian as weaker and inferior race. This happens because European is afraid their culture will be polluted by Eastern culture so European wants Asian or African to just stay with their own cultures. “However, the social transformations that followed the ending of colonial mandates, rising immigration, and economic liberalization profoundly altered the use and understanding of the term hybridity.” (Wikipedia)

However, the cultural mixing can occur in many ways. It occurs through migration which means that people from other countries bring their culture and it influences the natives or the culture of the natives influences the foreigner’s ways of life. Besides, the cultural mixing can occur through media such as books, radio or television. Those media contain thoughts and messages that can influence the life of people. We have knowledge about other cultures through books that we read or television and internet. It means that cultural mixing or hybridity not only occurs to immigrants but it can also occur to all people. “The occurrence of contact typically involves movement of some sort, and in international communication contact entails the movement of cultural commodities such as media programs, or the movement of people through migration.” (Cultural Hybridity and Communication 5)

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this time. She is one of the Indian-American writers that know quite specifically about the life of Indian-immigrants in the United States. Her experiences as an immigrant daughter who is taught about Bengali heritage from an early age make her know about the life of Bengali immigrants who still embrace their ancestral culture in detail.

Lahiri knows the terrain like the back of her hand: the community of expatriate Bengalis in the Boston area; their peculiarly lonely lives with ersatz extended families made up of fellow expats; the customs and world view through which they see their own everyday experience; and the struggle of their American children with their own questions of identity and belonging.(Apte).

Moreover, Lahiri also has won some awards such as Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Magazine Award for Fiction, O. Henry Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, etc. She is also named by The New Yorker as "one of the 20 best writers under the age of 40”. (SAJA-Diasporadics). With all these achievements she has accomplished in the world of literature, I believe that her work is worth discussing.

The Namesake is the first novel written by Jhumpa Lahiri. It tells about a South Asian-immigrant family in the United States and discusses “the theme of immigration, collision of cultures and the importance of names.”(VG Artist Biography). In this novel, “Lahiri demonstrates how much of a struggle immigration can be.” (VG Artist Biography). The Namesake was also turned into a film by an Indian director, Mira Nair, in 2006.

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form of essays and novels. Her works has been addressed by many figures in postcolonial studies even has been the subject of studies. “In addition, her writing has been the subject of significant scholarly engagement in recent years: many of the most recognized figures in postcolonial studies have addressed, often vociferously, the goals of Professor Mukherjee's critical and creative project.” (Chen&Goudie)

In her work, Jasmine, Mukherjee portrays an immigrant woman who has to struggle and faces some troubles in her life. The novel also shows how Western thought can impact the life of immigrant in detail. “…the author is masterful at describing the difficulties faced by immigrants and the extraordinary ways in which they create new identities for themselves.”(Barnejee)

Knowing that the focus of the two novels is about the life of an immigrant, I would like to analyze the portrayal of immigrant characters. In my thesis, Jasmine in Mukherjee’s Jasmine, is an Indian woman who moves to America after the death of his husband and Ashima in Lahiri’s The Namesake is an Indian woman who moves to America after her marriage. As immigrants, they share some similar experiences yet they have different characteristics and different family background. From these two characters, I want to reveal the purpose of the authors to depict the life of immigrant as closely as possible.

II. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

1. How do the authors portray the characters?

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III. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

1. To show how the author portray the characters

2. To show the purpose of the authors in creating such characters.

IV. METHODS OF RESEARCH

The method I use is library research. I begin with reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. After that, I look for some references and materials from the Internet which can support the analysis. Finally, I draw some conclusions of what has been discussed.

V. ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

After analyzing Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, I would like to draw some conclusion. Both Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine deal with the problem that most immigrants face. It is the feeling of being caught in two different worlds or different cultures. However, the characters in these two novels face the problem differently because basically they have different characteristics.

In the beginning of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Ashima is portrayed as a person who embraces Bengali culture very much. She shows her loyalty to her culture from the way she acts, for example, she does not call her husband by name, she wears traditional clothes and she does not eat beef as it is forbidden in Hinduism. She finds the difficulty to accept the reality of American ways of life because she is shocked by the new situation in the United States and she does not prepare herself to enter the new world.

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States. She fears that there will be no one to help her if she finds trouble and she fears raising her children in the country that has different ways of life from India. However, as a woman who should obey her husband, finally Ashima accepts the situation although it is hard for her to get through all these.

As the time goes by, Ashima can learn to open her mind to America. It happens because she has spent so many years in the United States. It is shown when she becomes tougher and more independent to do all the things because she gets accustomed to this way of life for many years. She meets Americans and befriends with them. She is influenced by her children who get American education. However, her welcoming American ways of life does not mean that she forgets her old culture, even she tries to mix it. For example, she and her family always celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving without doing the religious way because she is still a Hindu.

Her decision to live both in India and the United States, it shows that she has changed. Now, she feels that she is Indian and American which means that she is successful in harmonizing both American and Indian cultures.

Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine tells about Jasmine, a rebellious and western-minded woman from Hasnapur, a small village in India. From the beginning of the story, Jasmine is portrayed as a girl who has a strong will to leave her culture. She does not believe in what an astrologer said about her future. It is an uncommon thing because she lives in the society which still believes in superstition.

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Prakash, a modern Indian man who influences her about living in the United States, a land which promises her the freedom she wants.

Based on her characteristics, I conclude that it will be easier for Jasmine to accept the new situations in the United States, even the worst. Although once she gives up and does not want to continue living in the United States, she remembers about her promise to Prakash to burn her husband’s suit in Tampah, the place in the United States that they were going to live. She also accustoms herself to wearing t-shirt and jeans rather than wearing sari as Indian women do. She feels that t-t-shirt and jeans can hide her widowhood which refers to her past. It means that Jasmine does not want to deals with her past as a village woman from India anymore.

However, she cannot deny the fact that she is an Indian and not an American at all. It is shown when she feels more comfortable being surrounded by Asian-descend doctors than Americans. In my opinion, she feels like that because when she is among Asians, she feels that everyone accepts her existence. Besides, being an illegal immigrant, she cannot get the protection from the United States Government. It means that she is still considered not as a part of America at all.

Moreover, she knows that she cannot make Americans stop considering her as an Indian because of her physical appearance that is different. In the end, she shows her change from an ambitious woman who has a big desire to be a part of America to a woman who realizes that she is still a woman immigrant who now lives in a foreign country as a fully Indian.

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lives of Indian-immigrants in the United States. Both characters are women. However, they are facing different situation. While Ashima becomes an immigrant because she should follow her husband with the legal document and later she becomes an American citizen, Jasmine comes to the United States with illegal document by herself and she never becomes an American citizen because she never gets the green card until the end of the story.

Both Ashima and Jasmine build their families in the United States. While Ashima is legally married to Ashoke and becomes a housewife to raise her children, Jasmine lives together without marriage with Bud Ripplemeyer and Taylor Hayes. She also adopts a son from Vietnam.

Both Ashima and Jasmine should fight to survive in the United State; however, the troubles that Jasmine faces are different from Ashima’s. While Jasmine should face the problems from outside herself such as sexual abuse, some racial treatments and the problems from being an illegal immigrant, Ashima faces the problem from inside herself. It happens when Ashima finds it is hard to get accustomed to her new ways of life.

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lives among corn farmers who consider her as an intelligence alien and it is quite extraordinary for them.

Ashima’s life is different from Jasmine’s. Since her husband comes to America to study, both of them live in a better area than Jasmine. They live in the area in which the people are educated and are in a better economic condition. She befriends with American librarians who treat her well and never judge her although she is different from them.

In my opinion, while Ashima is successful in harmonizing her life both in the United States and India, Jasmine cannot do the same thing. The difference between these two women is while Ashima still shows her identity as an Indian and she does not try to act as an American, she mixes some American ways of life with Indian culture, Jasmine wants to be fully American and tries to hide her Indian identity. No matter how hard she tries to be an American, when she enters the American society people still considered her as an Indian woman. Becoming a part of America is not as easy as she thinks. Perhaps she learns and tries to adopt the American ways of life; however, it is not enough to make the American consider her as one of them.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text:

• Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New York: Mariner Books, 2003 • Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine. United States: Balantine Books, 1989

Internet cites:

• Apte, Sundheer.”Jhumpa Lahiri “The Namesake”. “Book Reviews Sept 07

2003. Mostly Fiction Book Reviews. 2007. Mostly Fiction. 20 Augusts 2007. <http://www.mostlyfiction.com/jhumpalahiri/thenamesake/BookReview.ht ml>

• Barnejee, Rane Kaur. “Critical essays on Bharati Mukherjee by Ranne Kaur

Barnejee.”. Literature Criticism. BookRags. 20 Augusts 2007. <http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/Bharati_Mukherjee>

• Budhos, Marina. “Bio of SAJA Speaker: Jhumpa Lahiri Author Winner of

the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.” SAJA June 1999. SAJA-Diasporadics. May 5 2000 Houghton Mifflin & Associated Press. 20 Augusts 2007. <http://www.saja.org/lahiri.html>

• Chen, Tina and S.X Goudie. “Holders of the World: An Interview with

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<http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/mukherjee_bharati.ht>

• Gipe, Nicholas, Geri Spencer, Jackie Yang, Lindsay Greco. “Jhumpa Lahiri b

1967.” VG 20 Dec. VG Bios Entries. 2006. Firefox. 20 Augusts 2007. <http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg.Bios/entries/lahiri_jhumpa.html>

• Wikipedia. “Hybridity as Racial Mixing” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Wikimedia Fondation, Inc. 19:58, 15 June 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybridity>

• Cultural Hybridity and Communication 5. Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of

Globalization. 5 Augusts 2008.