An Analysis of the “Interpreter of Maladies”

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An Analysis of the “Interpreter of Maladies”
Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” is a Pulitzer Prize-winning short story. It has notable characters from India and America with their bicultural identity. Through her art of characterization, plot, setting, and many literary devices, the author shows the impact of western culture on immigrants and eastern. She also attempts to depict the resulting miscommunication and disillusionment through the characters conflicting behavior and the story’s progress. The tour of the tourists becomes a source of comparing and contrasting cross-national cultures and their consequences on human nature and relationships. The short story “Interpreter of Maladies” revolves around miscommunication, disillusionment, and identity through a simple, cohesive plot; literary devices like complex, bicultural characters confronting a stereotypical Indian; irony and symbolism; and setting.
The story follows a simple Aristotelian plot that disillusions the main characters as its climax delivers the theme of miscommunication and cross-identity. The beginning, middle, and end are logically connected to develop a climax that breaks the illusionary imaginations of the two main characters, Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi. For Mr. Kapasi, the woman was inspiring and fascinating because “unlike his wife, she reminded him of his intellectual challenges” and used the word “romantic” to describe his job (Lahiri 19). For Mina, Kapasi was the person she could trust more than anyone in the world because he interpreted maladies. On opening her secret to him to heal her wound, she unintentionally proves her disgusting. Hence, questioning the woman’s conscience fails him as a healer for her. Accordingly, the climax removes the characters from illusions and provides the audience with an experience of miscommunication even when there is ‘no language barrier’ (Lahiri 27). Approving the cultural identities of the character, the fluttering away of the paper with the address of Mr. Kapasi as the resolution of the plot discriminates and disassociates Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi forever. However, with all crucial elements, the character’s action does not reveal the character like an epitomic Aristotelian plot. Instead, the characters are revealed through their words, like confessions, quarrels, and sarcasm.
The themes of miscommunication, disillusionment, and identity dominate throughout the story. From the story’s beginning, the audience notices a stark cultural difference among the characters. The Das family is American by culture and Indian by origin, while the cultural phenomenon dominates their lifestyle. Mr. Kapasi has spent all his life in India, so he is typically narrow-minded, labeling a woman as dishonest for his illicit love affair without taking into account her psychological trauma “her confession depressed him” (Lahiri 27). Besides cross-cultural identity, the theme of miscommunication is also the story’s beating heart. The finest example of its dominance is when Mrs. Das and Kapasi miscommunicate despite the same language in the climax scene (Ja...