Response to Bloomsbury Court Group

I’m delighted every one of you completed your blog on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.  Your group is doing a great job managing time to stay on schedule.  It makes for rich interaction when we, as students, participate as expected, enabling each other to learn from different insights and to debate viewpoints.  It’s also exciting in class when three or four hands are in the air, signaling several who are eager to express diverse opinions.  

Brad pointed out the Indian culture in “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar” seemed to convey that an unmarried person was not living life to the fullest.  I agree.  In fact, in this short story, the single Bibi felt disabled, not just because of her seizures, but also because of her lack of prospects for finding a husband.  However, don’t Americans also generally echo this sentiment to some extent?  Unmarried friends and relatives over a certain age are commonly the target of match-making, blind dates, set-ups at group functions, and frequent inquiries as to their dating status.  Don’t paired adults typically find it awkward when the numbers don’t come out “even” if couples are mixed with one or three single people?

Greg expressed the same conclusion our class came to today in considering what Bibi needed most:  someone to love her and someone whom she could love.  She finally found that in the unconditional love of her child.  I have to disagree with two other observations Greg made, though.  Bibi was already obsessed with finding a husband before the final doctor gave her that advice for a cure (160-61), so I don’t believe the physician made her worse.  Also, Bibi did have a long history of seizures while her father was alive, so her medical problems did not begin after his death (166).  Greg referred to the elderly woman in “The Third and Final Continent” as Mrs. Foster, but I'm sure he meant Mrs. Croft.

Maggie had a bright idea seeing the light as a barrier to communication between Shoba and Shukumar in “A Temporary Matter.”  I shared her strong reaction against Shoba’s confessions.  I judged her secrets to all be selfish, and the last three to be emotionally damaging to her husband.  However, this mean streak did not just show up since the stillbirth; most--if not all--occurred prior to her pregnancy.  Maggie expressed frustration with the outcome of the plot, yet we don’t know that Shoba actually left Shukumar.  As Maggie pointed out, the darkness encouraged open dialog between them, and Shoba turned off the lights in the final paragraph (22), re-opening discussion.  Shukumar came “back to the table”--an idiom for showing willingness to negotiate toward a mutual agreement.  He sat down and they both cried--together.  Maybe that was the end of a temporary matter and the beginning of a more honest, permanent relationship.

Katie wondered if Mrs. Das would send the photo to Mr. Kapasi in “Interpreter of Maladies.”  Although she may still want to, we know she won’t, since his address has blown away up into the trees (69).

I’ll bet you all have more to say--details we’d benefit from if your comments were fleshed out further.  I challenge each of you to rise to a higher level of professionalism in your blogs.  We’re constantly being reminded that whatever we put on the Net stays there indefinitely and is available for our future employers, graduate schools, etc.  In addition to not posting data that casts negative light on us, we need to post items that showcase our best work.  

I’ve found I produce higher quality posts when I compose them in a word processor, using the spelling and grammar checks, then re-read them before copying to paste into the blog space.  If I haven’t said anything substantial or original enough for a classmate to argue or nod and say, “I never thought of it that way,” or “That makes this viewpoint clearer,” then I still have content to add.  

Although blogs are informal, we need to include the name of the text we’re citing, and use the conventions of putting quotation marks around short story titles, italicizing book titles, and adding page numbers in parentheses when referring to passages from the texts.  This literally puts all our readers on the same page, even if they aren’t in our course, or found our blog when researching comments on that narrative.  That wider potential audience is another reason we ought to check our facts in the book to avoid misquoting the author and to name characters accurately.

Another helpful practice is to note how we each tend to overuse certain pet words, such as “good,” “really,” “like,” and “story,” that can be replaced by more specific, varied terms--using a thesaurus online or within our word processors.  These small improvements can boost our credibility and add variety, interest, and richness to each piece we write.  If it's important enough to publish on the Web, it deserves a few extra minutes of our time.