Leaves of grass part 1

" I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease....observing a spear of
summer grass."

The speaker here is a person consulting nature on his or her being. Nature throughout the poem is personified as is the persons soul. The author gives the soul human quality when he "invites" the soul. The repetition of the word "belong" connects how the speaker and nature are connected through atoms. Atoms is a word often used in scientific formats connecting the poem to nature. Nature is again brought up in the in the mention of "summer grass" the term spear is harsh and violent when describing the grass . Another definition of spear is a weapon. Through this double meaning the author is connecting now nature and therefore also the man in violence. While nature and the man in the rest of the poem are flowing and more gentle the author is saying sometimes nature and humans can become violent.

Mrs. Sen's part two

" It's delicious," she would conclude, setting down the plate after a bite or two. Eliot knew she didn't like the tastes;she'd told him once in the car...She sat at the table as he ate, drinking more wine and asking how his day was, but eventually she went to the deck to smoke a cigarette, leaving Eliot to wrap up the leftovers." This quote characterizes Eliot's mother. She lies to Mrs. Sen, which shows she's fake. She's not a maternal figure. Smoking cigarettes shows she doesn't care what kind of example she sets for her son. Leaving her young child to clean up the leftovers by himself is selfish of her. She is not acting like the adult. The characterization of Eliot's mother is so important because it is a foil for Mrs. Sen who is completely opposite, she is maternal and warm. The immaturity and selfishness of his mother highlights the warmth and maternal instincts of Mrs. Sen.

Mrs. Sen's

"And thats all in India?' 'Yes,' Mrs. Sen replied. The mention of the word seemed to release something in her...She too looked around the room, as if she noticed in the lampshades, in the teapot,in the shadows frozen on the carpet, something the rest of them could not. 'Everything is there." Here the author is portraying the emptiness that Mrs. Sen feels in America and how she longs to go back to her home. Lahiri portrays this this through the cold diction and imagery. Lahiri uses words such as frozen to show the coldness of her new home. The word shadows creates a feeling of emptiness and things that are behind us, remanent of what things once were. Representative of the good life Mrs. Sen had in India. The word "everything," when used by Mrs. Sen is meaningful because while in America she has objects and even her husband if she thinks that "Everything" is left in India then she does not care about anything in American in her new home.

Sexy

"Tell me something,what does it mean, that word sexy?" ..."It means loving someone you don't know." This is what Rohin, Miranda's coworkers son, tells Miranda. This is significant because his answer describes Miranda's affair with a married man. She feels so connected to him and her world revolves around the little time he can spend with her yet they are not a part of each others everyday life. Even though they know each other intimately they don't truly know each other on a deeper level. The choice of the word sexy is vital to the theme of the story because of it's different meanings and the effects of it's use by different characters. When Dev tells Miranda she is sexy in the mapparium Miranda felt happy and excited and loved. However when Rohin describes being sexy Miranda feels numb as she realizes how empty her affair with Dev was.

"A Real Durwan"

"Mr. Dalal had decided to install one basin in the sitting room of their flat and the other one on the stairwell of the building, on the first floor landing. "This way everyone can use it," he explained from door to door. the residents were delighted: for years they had all brushed their teeth with stored water poured from mugs....Among the wives however, resentment quickly brewed. Standing in line to brush their teeth in the mornings, each grew frustrated with having to wait their turn." This passage shows how people can become spoiled and instead of appreciating something that was given to them as a gift by the Dalal's they can only focus on what they don't have. The author shows the reader the change in attitude about the basin by creating different tones. When the resident first hear of the basins the reader knows they are excited and pleased through the authors choice of words such as "delighted," this along with comparing the basin to the worse process of brushing there teeth with stored mug water creates a tone of happiness." Then the tone changes after the residents had used the basins for a while. The author chooses words like "resentment," and "frustrated," to describe there new feelings toward the sink which creates an impatient tone. This switch in emotion from excitement to impatience displays that human nature that nothing is ever good enough we are always greedy for more.

When Mr. Pizada Came To Dine

Samantha Sokoloff

Mrs. Baione-Doda

19 September 2008



" Mr. Pizada won't be coming today. More importantly, Mr. Pizada is no longer considered Indian." my father announced, "Not since Partition. Our country was divided. 1947." When I said I thought that was the date of India's independence from Britain my father said, "That too. One moment we were free and then we were sliced up," he explained drawing an x with his finger on the counter top, "Like a pie. Hindus here, Muslims there."...It made no sense to me. Mr. Pirzada and my parents spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes, looked more or less the same. they ate pickled mangoes with their meals, ate rice every night for supper with their hands. Like my parents, Mr. Pizada took off his shoes before entering a room, chewed fennel seeds after meals as a digestive, drank no alcohol, for desert dipped austere biscuits into successive cups of tea. Nevertheless my father insisted that I understand the difference," (Lahiri 25). This passage uses the point of view of a child to display how silly and superficial decisions made my adults can be. Lilia when being explained partition by her father can not grasp how people who are so similar can have so much conflict over the differences they have created. Because Lilia can not understand the differences and instead can only see similarities it forces the reader to question the validity of the differences her father is describing.When her father explains how and why the country was divided he uses very simple analogies for a complex and painful thing and this is representative of how people attempted to solve the issue of making peace between to cultures by simply diving them up. This passage contributes to Lilias journey of expanding her mind to understand a different culture which in the end she discovers is not so different at all.

outside reading part 1

"Shoba looked at him now, her face contorted with sorrow. He had cheated on a college exam, ripped a picture of a woman out of a magazine. He has returned a sweater and got drunk in the middle of the day instead. These were the things he had told her. He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of a hospital. He had held him until a nurse knocked and took him away, and he promised himself that day that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise." This passage is the tragic rush of feelings and realizations that Shuckumar goes through after his wife Shoba tells him she is leaving him. The passage describes all of the secrets he has shared with her when the power was off leading up to the most painful secret of holding his dead baby. The significance of Shuckumar holding his son in a darkened room is that it makes the reader think back to the other secrets that Shoba and Shuckumar have shared with each other while the lights had been turned off. Darkness is also a symbol of pain and creates an image of emptiness which they had gone through with the loss of a child and now the loss of love for one another.