Friday, September 17, 2010

Out of Place

In "Mrs. Sen" everything seems to be out of place including herself and husband. The fact of having to understand that she is from India makes it easier to know why things in her life seem odd. When Eliot and his mother first meet Mr. and Mrs. Sen, Mrs. Sen tries to show off her house as much as possible to make sure Eliot's mother allows her to babysit him. When Mrs. Sen introduces her husband the narrator even makes the remark of, "as if they were only distantly acquainted." This in a way foreshadows a couple things such as the distance between Mrs. Sen and her husband and also the distance between her and India, which are covered up in the first introduction of Mr. and Mrs. Sen.
Throughout the whole story little and big things show up to show how Mrs. Sen is out of place. For instance, at the very beginning of the story Eliot is describing the apartment they live in with mismatched pieces of rug in front of the pieces of furniture. Mrs. Sen also cuts up vegetables for dinners all day long, which normally isn't done in America. She gets a letter from a person in India later in the story and everything seems to unravel. At the beginning and towards the middle everything seems to be going fine in her times spent with Eliot, but after she reads the letter she tells Eliot that the people in India think she lives like a queen. This is what brought out how she misses everyone in India and if she did want to go for a visit she would not be able to go for a long time, and also brings out how distant her and her husband are because of the fact he doesn't seem to care much about India anymore or her feelings.
Kevin Ostempowski post 3

1 comment:

  1. Great observation of how everything in "Mrs. Sen's" is "out of place" not just the characters. You do a good job of explaining how the description of Mrs. Sen and her husband as "distantly acquainted" plays out in other points of the story.

    ReplyDelete