Post #8 Thesis Proposal

Jhumpa Lahiri has a unique style of creating a picture of emotions without ever directly stating how the character feels. While reading her novels, I have noticed that she talks about the characters, describing their actions with sophisticated language, that generates the image of their emotions. It is never directly implied. In each of her short stories in the Interpreter of Maladies, through her strong characters in The Namesake, even in her slightly longer stories of Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri describes each of the main characters through the eyes of another, emphasizing emotion by reading between the lines.

For my American Author project, I have two projected theses that follow along the same lines of the theme stated above:

1. Loneliness is a major concept found throughout stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. Her stories show the feelings and emotions of a character through the eyes of another, never boldly stating one's feelings, but implying it through subtle and sophisticated language, describing how a character balances two clashing cultures in a somewhat confusing world.

2. Implying emotions is a masterpiece created by Jhumpa Lahiri. Her short stories and novels are eloquently weaved plots that tap into emotions by tone of her writing, not bold statements or direct writing.

To complete this project, I would need to do a little more research on Jhumpa Lahiri's background to see if there was some event that could possibly relate to the theme of loneliness. I would also need some book reviews to see if any other readers have noticed this theme, possibly even relating it to my own thesis.

I can approach this thesis in many ways. I can first try an angle were I interpret how Jhumpa Lahiri implies "loneliness." I can use various quotes across the 3 books to support this. I can also try it from a different angle, possibly comparing her novels to other books by Indian writers, comparing her compelling writing to various other authors who I did not like as much. The theme of loneliness and being an immigrant in a new country does appear in Jhumpa Lahiri's works as well as those of others. This way, I can use the historical context of the writer to guide the thesis and prove it in an efficient way.

Overall, I do believe I will follow my first thesis, creating a paper describing how Jhumpa Lahiri implies the language in her stories, as well as how it could possibly relate to her own life experiences. I can use descriptions and quotes from her works to describe how the characters feel, and how being an immigrant and balancing their own culture with American culture inflicts this feeling of loneliness. I can also draw from my own experiences as an American born teenagers who is also learning to balance a family culture and tradition in a diverse society.