Can somebody please find Bobbie Ann Mason and get her to answer my questions!!? GAHH.

Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh” tells the story of a withered man and marriage—a man stripped of his masculinity and a marriage robbed of its marital bliss—or at least that’s how it begins. It is a story told through the eyes of Leroy Moffitt, yet it is a story that yields the evolution of his wife Norma Jean. As “Shiloh” progresses and we discover more about Norma Jean and her completely disjointed life from Leroy’s, a question arose in my mind that I simply cannot find a definitive answer to. In fact, I’ve changed my mind about the answer at least four times within the time it took me to write the first and third sentences of this blog, but here it is: does “Shiloh” tell the tale of a marriage gone sour after a family tragedy, or does it merely convey a wife’s realization of her indifference, or possibly resentment, towards the man she was forced to marry since her adolescence?
I cannot tell if Leroy is oblivious, or just lazy. The impression that I get of him is that he knows his wife is indifferent to him, and he knows that she thinks of him as a hindrance. And rather than growing up with her and witnessing her evolution into womanhood, he works. He is a truck driver, and he is never at home until he has a car accident and is no longer mobile enough to continue working.
This accident seems both a curse and a blessing: a blessing because it allows him to discontinue work and reconnect with his wife, and a curse because his homecoming is ill-received by Norma Jean and eventually leads to the disintegration of their marriage. Mason describes his homecoming as a time when Leroy is “finally settling down with the woman he loves,” but does he truly love her? The only evidence I could find to prove that he just might actually love Norma Jean is in his adoration of her beauty, her flawless skin, and her “frosted curls…like pencil trimming.” Of course, you can’t forget to mention that log cabin that he obsesses over. He claims that he’ll build this cabin for her, and that they’ll grow together in that cabin, and that that’s all it will take to get back those fifteen years he lost from his marriage. I’m hesitant to believe that this proves his love for her. In my interpretation of Leroy Moffitt, I believe he feels he has to love Norma Jean simply because they have been together so long, when really want he truly wants it to be happy himself. Norma Jean wants nothing to do with a log cabin; Norma Jean wants Leroy to get a job and, essentially, grow up. To love somebody is to want them to be happy at all costs. If Leroy truly loved Norma Jean, he would abandon his romantic yet unrealistic desire to build a log cabin and do what would make both as them—as a couple; as a team; as a unit—happier and more compatible. Instead he describes his love for her in his depiction of her physical beauty. He wants to reconnect with her, but it takes not but until “the oven timer goes off” for him to forget why he wants to do this. Is that love? Is that even friendship?
I wonder what affect the death of their first and only child had upon their marriage, but I’m also drawn to the notion that perhaps there was no loving, devoted relationship for the death to have impacted in the first place. Norma Jean did become pregnant as a teenager, after all, and Bobbie Ann Mason omits the specifics behind their marriage—whether it was imposed upon them by family values or they chose to get married out of love; perhaps this is purposefully done to add that opaque dimension of speculation to “Shiloh.”

Sorry Mrs. Turpin, You Lose.

Yes, this quote is entirely overused, and I’m almost hesitant to use it, but I feel that it applies oh, so perfectly to the life of Mrs. Turpin as depicted through Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation”: actions speak louder than words, my friend. Mrs. Turpin claims to be among the righteous, when she is really only self-righteous; she believes she is favored in the eyes of God, when she is really most in need of God’s saving grace. Mrs. Turpin’s actions perfectly exemplify the definition of hypocrisy in that she preaches that which she herself does not practice. She is ridden with a critical and judgmental eye as well as a superiority complex that seems to genuinely hinder her ability to form loving relationships, or any relationship for that matter, with others.
Upon delving into this story, I found myself rather curious about Mrs. Turpin’s past. Had she always acted this condescendingly and unkindly to others, or do her own deeply-rooted insecurities bring out the worst in her? How can a woman, who claims that her philosophy of life is to “help anybody out that needed it,” think of only two things on a regular basis: herself and hateful thoughts of those surrounding her? The response to these questions I can only speculate, yet the questions themselves lead me to believe that Mrs. Turpin is not only as phony as she is fat, but also that her so-called revelation was nothing more than a sudden and momentary jolt of fear—a fear of God and of punishment, rather than a flood of guilt and desire to change.
Yet I do believe that Mrs. Turpin had a revelation. As evidenced through her subconscious belief that she is favored in the eyes of God, that her needs come before the needs of others, and that she has the right to pass judgment upon her fellow man, Mrs. Turpin has placed herself about the human race—either she believes she is angel, or she believes she is even more divine. She is blinded by this belief so much so that she loses sight of her true infinitesimal stature in comparison to the divine. She lost in her self-righteousness so much so that she dares to challenge the God whom she claims so angelically to serve. In shouting to God, “Who do you think you are,” she crosses a serious and almost devilish boundary; in God’s echoing back the same question, Mrs. Turpin is struck with her “revelation.” She is not an angel, and she is nowhere near the divine. She is human. She is tiny. And that is where her revelation ends. I believe that, at most, she is humbled by this experience; unfortunately, I am a firm believer that people hardly ever change, and a woman so frozen within her own pride and vanity deserves no higher expectation than such. Perhaps now Mrs. Turpin will be able to better conceal her true identity, feelings, and thoughts; perhaps the façade she regularly imposes will include better acting than before. It is not enough to have God speak to you, to be divinely touched—that means nothing if one does not listen and allow himself to be touched.

Interpreter of Maladies

Ayten Salahi
Mr. Coon
English IV AP
12 September 2008

His Eyes and Mind, Her Words and Actions

Behind every character within Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, there exists a purpose, a theme—a window through which to perceive, or a sight upon which to bestow. Every action is transplanted with great precision, every response with careful meditation—nothing is said or done accidentally. Lahiri is able to manipulate these six characters such that Mr. Kapasi becomes this window, and the Das family becomes this site. Yet there are truly only two whose interactions the readers are most drawn to, whose thoughts and words are most captivating, and it is not inadvertently so. These two are not entire characters; they are parts of characters. It is through the eyes and mind of Mr. Kapasi that we become acquainted with the intense cultural disparities between the native Indian and the American assimilates. It is through the words and actions of Mrs. Das that we are introduced to both a personification of the seven deadly sins and a woman so suffocated by the pressures bestowed upon her by her heritage that she believes it justifies her way of being.

Lahiri utilizes both Mr. Kapasi’s perspective and his thought processes as tools to accentuate his and the Das’s profound cultural divergences, as well as the undeniable fascination that is born from these differences. Everything about them is different—the way the dress, the way they interact, and even the way they perceive. Upon observing these distinctions, one cannot help but notice that each and every contrast is carefully and purposefully transplanted immediately before or after its counterpart so as to powerfully present these concentrated contrasts. Lahiri describes the Das family’s attire, with their “stiff, brightly colored clothing,” their “flashing silver wires” covering the children’s teeth, and Mr. Das with this “shorts, sneakers, and T-shirt” and a “camera slung around his neck.” Directly following this description is that of Mr. Kapasi’s attire himself, with his greater concern for the durability and practicality of his “gray trousers” and “matching jacket-style shirt, tapered at the waist.” Further following that description comes that of Mrs. Das, with her “skirt that stopped before her knees,” her “close-fitting [chest-level] blouse,” and her unnecessarily large straw bag. Such distinctions—and such careful and thoughtful placement of said distinctions—allows one to observe that even the most trivial aspects of daily life differ between the two cultures.

And yet, that observation can only be made through Mr. Kapasi—he is truly the one and only character who is even mindful of the others around him; he is the only character whose thoughts seem to contain any substance concerning his surroundings. He notes this difference in clothing, and continues to note the unusual interactions between the family members in that they “were all like siblings, [and] Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an older brother and sister, not parents.” His work as an interpreter haunts him and his wife with an overwhelming sense of failure and an evocation of devastating memories, whereas Mrs. Das deems such an occupation as “romantic,” making the patients “more dependent on [him] than the doctor.” From these divergences, and from this lack of innate understanding, an odd infatuation is born between he who observes and that which he is observing, yet their intentions are not the same. She flatters him, however unintentionally, and he her with his admiration and unwillingness to part with her. To him, Mrs. Das represented the possibility of a new friend who valued his work. To her, Mr. Kapasi represented solely the possibility of freedom from her guilt—her intentions were almost entirely selfish, whereas his were to quench a certain burning curiosity.

It is through the greed defining her actions, the gluttony of her constant munching, the sloth in her unwilling and winy nature—it is through the lust that drove her infidelity, the cold and indifferent wrath she bestows upon her family, the pride with which she rejects Mr. Kapasi’s advice, and the envy with which she covets a different life—that we are presented with Mrs. Das—the personification of the seven deadly sins. Lahiri utilizes this character to symbolize the internal conflict that occurs within nearly every assimilate: how much of our own culture do we preserve? Mrs. Das symbolizes a woman so torn by this perpetual internal dilemma that she has surrendered to it, asphyxiated to the point where she herself has been lost, to the point where she had “fallen out of love with life.” From this loss of self and of love comes not only the onslaught of the seven deadly sins and her undeniable relation to them, but also the dreadful notion that her family must suffer for her unhappiness.