Frye 1 Characterization within Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri in writing Interpreter of Maladies made several distinct and important

choices in regards to characterization. The story is focalized through the character of Mr. Kapasi, allowing us the opportunity to form opinions of the family he is guiding in a very unique and powerful way. This choice and many others intersect to form the meaning of the story and guide the reader to an understanding of each colorful and distinct character. Mr. Kapasi works two days of a week as a tour guide in India. In this story, he is taking Mr. Das his wife, Mina, and their three children to see the Sun Temple several miles from their hotel. In route to the temple, Mr. Kapasi has a growing admiration of Mrs. Das. Once at the temple, their tour only redoubles his thirst for her company. He decides to offer them a second site, on their way back to their hotel. They then travel to see an ancient monastery and Mrs. Das reveals a secret to Mr. Kapasi. At the end, Mr. Kapasi is disillusioned in regards to Mrs. Das and the attraction spell is ultimately broken. At the third sentence of this narrative, we find the point of view to be third person limited to Mr. Kapasi. The first observation focalized through his perception is of Mrs. Das emerging slowly from [Mr. Dass] bulky white ambassador. This and the following sentence set up importance in the eyes of the reader, as the superfluous description of her movements key us into the importance of her character in the mind of Mr. Kapasi. Mr. Kapasi observes her, dragging her shaved, largely bare legs across the back seat. She did not hold the little girls hand as they walked to the restroom. There are two important points in this description. First, Mr. Kapasi is noticing that her largely bare legs are being drug across the back seat. We gather that Mr. Kapasi is gazing sexually at Mrs. Das. From the statement that she doesnt hold the little girls hand on the way to the bathroom, a great many questions about her character arise. Mr. Kapasi portrays Mrs. Das as indifferent towards her family, selfish, but very becoming. The before-mentioned observation of Mr. Kapasi creates a selfish, indifferent mother and possible caregiver in Mrs. Das, because to this point Mr. Kapasi is not aware of the relationship between them. He states that they appear to all be siblings. Another direct method of characterizing occurs when Mrs. Das appears and asks to paint her daughters fingernails. Leave me alone. This is what Mrs. Das says to her own child, definitely a brute and terrible thing to say to a small girl. Outside of her extremely brash and standoffish personality towards her family, Mr. Kapasi still views her as a sexual being, finding her attractive. His attraction to her is not brought out in concrete terms in the text. Nowhere does it say, He found her extremely beautiful, but it does suggest early on that he has a growing infatuation with the young mother. Mr. Kapasi sees her nature from the beginning and yet, increasingly, through the story his admiration of her increases. He describes Mr. Das and the children and then goes into greater detail when it comes to Mrs. Das. When the paragraph describing her begins it opens with, He observed her, indicating that he was intent on her features, admiring her like a painting or a statue. His observations start from the waist and go down the legs to the shoes, then jumps up to the chest, admiring a calico appliqu in the

Frye 2 shape of a strawberry. Her blouse is likened to a mans undershirt, bringing images of the private, sexual life to the readers mind and possibly insinuating a desire of Mr. Kapasis to be in her presence in such a state. The use of objective correlation relates the feelings of Mr. Kapasi in regards to Mrs. Das. After Mrs. Das took her daughter to the bathroom she bought rice from a shirtless vendor on the street. Mr. Kapasi is said to have heard the shirtless man sing a phrase from a popular Hindi love song, but that Mrs. Das doesnt understand his words and doesnt get offended. This inability to express the desire to this indifferent woman seems to be a conflict of great importance to Mr. Kapasi. The shirtless man could symbolize his sexual desire, and, of course, the mans comment could be his inability to put his feelings into words that she will understand. Mr. Das and Mrs. Das are pitted against one another in a dichotomy that represents their differences and also justifies Mr. Kapasis feelings and desires towards Mrs Das. When the narrator focalizes through Kapasi and onto Mr. Das, he says that the most complicated thing about him was his telephoto lens. Mrs. Das later pulls nail polish from her straw purse. Their material belongings seem to say a lot about them, from the one statement that Mr. Das was very simple, yet, the camera was complicated. Therefore, the purse and nail polish are simple, but they could be said to be the only simple things about Mrs. Das. When we first hear Mr. And Mrs. Das speak, they argue. Mrs. Das wanted an air-conditioned car and Mr. Das tells her to quit complaining. A few lines later, Mr. Das wants to take a picture of an emaciated man and his bullocks and, at the same time, Mrs. Das looks out the other window at two transparent clouds passing in front of one another. These two actions give us a metaphorical representation of what the characters are feeling. Mr. Das can relate and identify with the suffering man and his hunger for something, anything to change his state of affairs, and, at the same time, he finds beauty in suffering in a very complicated manner. While Mrs. Das is extremely transparent and shallow, but appears to be very complicated. Of course we must remember that Mr. Kapasi is the one who is watching these two characters, therefore, his voice, through double voicing, is what we are trusting. Double voicing draws forth a unique and colorful narrative, allowing us peeks into the mind of Mr. Kapasi, as he views the antagonist Mrs. Das. The use of similes is the most striking way that he describes Mrs. Das and allows us into his judgment of her. For instance, he likens her arranging her sunglasses on her head to a tiara. He also, in a flashforward, says he would like to freeze with her, which causes the reader to reflect back on the frieze that they just admired together: What he referred to were the countless friezes of entwined naked bodies making love in various positions, women clinging to the necks of men, their knees wrapped eternally around their lovers thighs. In addition to these were assorted scenes from daily life, of hunting and trading, of deer being killed with bows and arrows and marching warriors holding swords in their hands. This striking passage brings images of marriage to the readers mind, for one thinks of finding a mate and being eternally with that person, but at the same time the use of daily life brings to mind the reality of such a bond. Our protagonist is dealing with his owning failing marriage, trying to keep a hold of it, but feeling like he is unable to fulfill

Frye 3 his wifes desires. The narrative passage above shows the sexual side coupled with the domestic practical side in a manner that is brought up again only with the young mother, Mrs. Das, as the one who is in receipt of his affection and energy. Such use of metaphors, and, later, revelations of their latent meaning, pack more punch and strike to the heart of Mr. Kapasis conflict between his life and the life he envisions with Mrs. Das. The use of flashforwards deepens our understanding of Mr. Kapasi and how we relate to him. After writing his address on a slip of paper for Mina, he falls into a flash forward where he and the young mother exchange letters, talk about their marriages, and ultimately fall in love, but then, in contrast, he fears he wrote the wrong address on the slip and trips into another flashforward, where the diction conveys his anxiety. He uses words such as: worried, misspelled, accidentally reversed, dreaded, lost, never, hovering, dropped, and jumbled: all in the span of one paragraph. Through choosing more doomlike words to describe Mr. Kapasis anxiety we feel what he is feeling and the flashforwards work. We further our understanding of Mr. Kapasi through one extended metaphor. In the story, monkeys crowd the pages with their antics and surprising audacity. When the family and Mr. Kapasi are first on the road, a group of monkeys cause them to stop and they get out to take pictures. The monkeys were described as: seated in groupswith shining black faces, silver bodies, horizontal eyebrows, and crested heads. Then at the end of the story their actions, rather than their features, are described: the monkeys now sat, solemnly observing the scene below. Mr. Kapasi observed it too, knowing that this was the picture of the Das family he would preserve forever in his mind. These monkeys are extended metaphors for Mr. Kapasi and his feelings during the trip. When the monkeys stop the car and excite everyone, Mr. Kapasi is just realizing the beauty of the woman in the back seat and his excitement could be equivalent to that which the monkeys express, but he reviewed the monkeys appearances, just as he only looked at Mrs. Das appearance. Also Mr. Kapasi is native to this land, unlike the Das family who are only visiting family in the region. So his perception of the monkeys features subsides into his realization of their calm and solemn observations, which could possibly indicate his feelings for the Das family, being a class of people he doesnt really care to understand or be around. The monkeys staring down at the family shows us Mr. Kapasis own feelings towards the experience, now being separated from them, but having a greater understanding of who they are. On the exterior, Mr. Kapasi is portrayed as a helpful, dedicated, loyal, calm, and intelligent man, but, on the interior, we find him to be conflicting in morals, obsessive, troubled, and excitable. He had specified both the cut and the fabric to his tailor This information uncovers a little about his interior, allowing us insight into how orderly his life is, but it also depicts the care he takes with his appearance. When we find out he, Sometimes [he fears] that his children know better English than he does, we realize his insecurities about his intelligence. His loyalty to his wife reflects not integrity, but feeling of being trapped by his position, having had a family with her, it was an arranged marriage, and she is never satisfied with how he provides for the family. Mr. Kapasi views Mr. Das in a poor light in the beginning of the story, but by the end he shifts to sympathizing with him, as we the reader have been doing all along. It seems that Mr. Kapasis judgment of Mr. And Mrs. Das changes by the end of the story,

Frye 4 but the readers sympathies stays fixed. How does the narrative pull off this feat? Mr. Das squeezes hands like an American, is clean-shaven, and look[s] exactly like a magnified version of Ronny. He is non confrontational with his own children and he refers to his own wife by her first name, when talking to his daughter. Mr. Das is a professor and he tries to say that he is like Mr. Kapasi, but Mr. Kapasi feels differently by being curt in response. We sense from the way that Mr. Kapasi passes over Mr. Das that he does not care for the man, but later in the story he says, Her confession depressed him, depressed him all the more when he thought of Mr. Das at the top of the pathunsuspecting and unaware that one of his sons was not his own. This is where the climax appears, where Mr. Kapasi realizes Minas true nature and shifts to sympathizing with Mr. Das. The conflict is the true test of Mr. Kapasis character, in that he must determine what course to take with Mrs. Das. Increasingly through the story his language for describing her is elevated, as well as his narrowness of vision. He only describes what she is doing and spends little time on the rest of the family. He even shirks his responsibility as guide to be with Mrs. Das, which showed his admiration for her. At the climax, Mrs. Das tells Mr. Kapasi, You probably have children my age, which crushed his hope for some romance with this woman and somewhat brought him back into reality. Then she confides in him, telling him that Bobby is not Mr. Das son, but belongs to a friend of his, who had stayed for a short stint. Two moral situations arise from this declaration from her. First he has to decide whether to be honest with her when she asks for help with her problem, her pain. Second he must decide whether to tell the young Bobby about the secret. The diction again increases the tension after Mr. Kapasi learns of her secret, with words such as: insulted, common, trivial, little, desperate, pains. He decides to be honest and forthright with her, Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt? At this point she looks at him and leaves without giving him a proper insult, as he says. This moment was dramatized for a very important reason: it showed Mr. Kapasis shift from being obsessed with her to looking at the rest of the family, which occurred in the dnouement. The final passages of the story unfold the resolution and resolve the complications between the group of monkeys and the family. Mr. Das doesnt do anything to help Bobby, who is being attacked by the hungry monkeys; it was Mr. Kapasi who shoos them away, at Mrs. Dass plea. It seems she hadnt changed, resigning herself to remain in her dependent ways, hiding her secret from a husband she doesnt love. This is why I think the author chose to show her asking Mr. Kapasi to do something to stop them rather than her husband. In this way, we see that she is still fixed on not telling him, not trusting him, and not coming clean with her adultery. The story unfolds a tale that is wrought with excellent characterization, which seemingly ties the reader to the main character and shoves off the protagonist Mrs. Das. Diction and other narrative techniques such as flashforward present a clear vision of the way in which we are supposed to read this story and intensify our look at Mr. Kapasi. We are allowed to follow him in his obsession over this apparently complex, yet unwittingly superficial character of Mrs. Das. When the story ends, we feel as Mr. Kapasi does that the family is better of not knowing the troubles of Mrs. Das and that we are better off not knowing where their lives will take them.