A good story makes you feel something. The author portrays the characters in certain lights that entice the reader to feel something about them. These feelings could be joy, anger, commiseration, or frustration. In A Temporary Matter, Jhumpa Lahiri leads the reader to feel deeply for and about the two main characters, Shoba and Shukumar.
A Temporary Matter’s story started with a dead baby, much like Shiloh and many other stories along the same vein. The basic plot remains similar to others of the type, but stands about the rest insofar as depth. In all these stories, the dead baby is a reason for the couple’s separation, and this story is no exception. Lahiri leads the reader to believe that the baby will ultimately not affect their marriage, that the darkness will heal their rift. Then, with little warning, Shoba announces that she found an apartment, that the whole time they spent getting to know each other again she was "preparing for a life without him" (Lahiri 21). When Shukumar reveals the child's gender at the end of the story, he did so to get a rise out of her. Shoba had hurt him, and he wanted to hurt her as well, to see "her face contorted with sorrow" (Lahiri 22). This veers slightly from the cliche, developing the storyline into something entirely new and thrilling.
Imagery in the story adds more than can ever be said in lesser words. Lahiri stimulates all five senses to make the story more vivid. For example, the food’s sights are defined in detail, as are the smells, tastes, and backgrounds. Shoba prepared meals for when she did not feel like cooking; they are described as "endless boxes of pasta in all shapes and colors, zippered sacks of basmati rice, whole sides of lambs and goats from the Muslim butchers at Haymarket, chopped up and frozen in endless plastic bags" (Lahiri 6). The long list of food conveys the sheer amount and effort that went into preparing and storing the meals. The characters are described in strongly evoked imagery as well. Shoba's "neat proofreader's hand" (Lahiri 7) portrays her personality in those three words. Shoba is very meticulous and thorough, just as her handwriting described suggests. The imagery of A Temporary Matter adds to the reader's interpretation of the story through vivid details.
Lahiri weaves a masterpiece in A Temporary Matter, leading the reader on a journey through the trials and tribulations of Shoba and Shukumar’s marriage after they lost their first and only child. The couple experienced a heavy loss when their child died. Building upon the dead baby cliche, the story develops into an entirely new form of regaining of trust and betrayal. A Temporary Matter is the best short story because it lets the characters and the imagery do the talking. These two elements set the story above the others, drives the reader along like no other story does.
I really enjoyed the word level analysis in your second body paragraph; I hadn't thought about that phrase in that way before. The points you make in this post are good, but it feels like they aren't clearly connected to the thesis enough. I think either mentioning how imagery or the dead baby influences the reader in your thesis may help. Bringing back the idea of the author using these tools to influence the reader's emotions at the end of your body paragraphs could also help tie each point more strongly to the thesis.
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