This story deals with time with a lot of flashbacks. Because Monisha’s mother is dead, all the dialogue that Monisha reports between herself and her mother occurs in flashbacks. Monisha and Dilip’s courtship is discussed in a flashback. However, many of Monisha’s interactions with her father occur in the past–rather than the present. I found it interesting that Monisha spends so little time talking with her father when he comes to visit. This indicates to me that Monisha is emotionally “stuck”.
Another indication of the passage of time is Monisha’s reaction to her father’s aging. (“How old he is, his head shiny with hairlessness, his loose-skinned face where I cannot find any traces of the man I hated.”)
I thought that the voice in this story was really effective in making me care what was going on. She starts out like she is speaking to you in confidence, as a friend, then steps away from the reader when interaction with others is involved. It was just a character in a movie that is aware of the camera, while the other characters are unaware- the character that is talking to us into the camera one minute is pulled into a scene placed there for our benefit the next.
I also really liked the glass breaking in her hand twice. I think was a device to show us the excruciating pain she was going through by reminding us of physical pain we have probably all experienced. (but could be wrong, it seems like maybe it means more than that but I wasn’t sure.) Interestingly though, she doesn’t really mention pain regarding either cut.
I think this story takes place in the present with a lot of thinking of the past. Monisha always thinks about what her mother used to say like “the love of a good man can save your life.”, “the stars are the eyes of the dead.” and “Out of bluest sky, lightning strikes.” She also has flashbacks about how relatives used to react after father left for America to never came back.
Monisha’s father leaving them left her in rage from her adolescent years. Even after marrying and discovering “the love of a good man” she never let go of the hate she had for her father (she thought she might have overcome) and this is evident throughout the story. One of the place a reader can feel that anger is when her father calls and Dilip (her husband) “puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and says, “it is your father.”” she is in the kitchen and her “hand shakes so hard” that she had to “put down the spoon”.
I enjoyed the story, and how it weaved through different events in different time periods almost seamlessly. Monisha recalls these events as they relate to her current thought or task, sometimes memories of 10 years ago, and some of the recent past. She also revisits the same events multiple times, giving us a little bit more information each time, as her past is what drives her thoughts and actions.
By the majority of the story being memories from the past, it really shows that Monisha is stuck there, as it seems to be all she thinks about. Her memories and anger have had power over her for all this time. At the end however, it seems that she has finally found resolve, and that is when she stops with the flashbacks. She also decides to tell Dilip about her past and her mother, like she has finally decided to let go of her memories and her anger.
This was an interesting story. There were a lot of memories and sayings in it. The story doesn’t really go forward much. Or the plot doesn’t grow because most of it is just about this woman who is stuck at a point because she is confused and angry. She has to make a decision about letting her father come see her or not. At this point she goes back in time into thinking about how her father abandoned her and all her mother and her had to go through because of that. She keeps going back and forth in time though. Her husband wants her to let her dad come. I think after this she starts looking for even more reasons to why she can’t but inside on a subconscious level she wants to. She is also confused about why he did what he did and wants answers. She wants to show him she doesn’t care about him. But inside she does. I also liked how even when she is in present her mother’s sayings keep coming up to her mind. Her past seems to have affected her a lot and to get over it I think she had to see her dad. There had been a lot of resentment inside of her which she had just kept in. She had to let it go somehow. Also one of her mom’s sayings “The love of a good man can save you”. I think she wants the love of her father back and part of the reason is her own husband as well.
On Ebony’s post:
I agree with what Ebony said and I found the last paragraph of the post interesting. Where she looks at her father and cant find the man she hated. I think it shows that time can heal people/change people. Now that she actually sees her father she realizes she doesn’t hate him. And she spends little time with him probably because she feels uncomfortable and awkward as if meeting a new person.
This story is all about time and part memories. The young lady Monisha relates all her present events to her past events. She grew up with a single parent and misses a father figure in her life. Her mother dies of a hidden disease cancer and one expects her to be mad at her mother but instead she places the blame on her father. Her mother has a unique way of relating situations with quote that furhter explains what she is trying to pass across. She acted as if she caredless about her father but when she went to his room and covered him up it showed that she still cares about him and all that is left for her is to find it in her heart to forgive him. “The love of a good man” relates to her husband Dilip for being a good and understanding man.
The author uses time to tell the story. She would use the past experience with her mother to explain what happened. The usage of time is done nicely. The mother was very influential toward monisha and how she became who she is.
i liked this story a lot for many reasons. one of the main reasons was how Mona kept bringing in quotes that she remembered from her mother. The whole story kept going back and forth from the present moment to the past, and in such a way that it was not confusing. i thought it was really cute how in the end of the story we see how her baby and her dad both slept the same way. in the beginning of the story i thought that mona’s father had died, yet as i read i saw that ironically it was just the opposite. her father was still alive and it was her mother who had died, from sickness. Besides for the father walking out on the family ten years before he came back to visit mona and her own family, i got a sense that there was love in a strange sense within the family. “When there’s a moment of quiet i say, “he can come the week after Bijoy’s birthday. He can stay only one night…why did i change my mind” to me i saw this that mona’s dad had to have shown her some love as a child, because she wanted to visit in the back of her mind and agreed to let her dad come to visit when she saw the happiness and love that there was between her husband, Dilip, and her baby, Bijoy. also, another time later on in the story we see how mona wants something from her father, yet she’s unsure what it is, when she leaves her baby’s room at night and she sees the light on in the guests bedroom and she goes there to turn it off. Yet, when she sees her dad had fallen asleep from reading, she takes his glasses off and covers him with a blanket. a warm feeling.
Monisha’s mother always held onto this saying. And since Monisha’s mother died after her father’s abandonment, she places all the blame (her mother’s death) onto her father.
“BUT THIS FATHER, on this unsuitably beautiful spring day, ambushes me. How old is he, his head shiny with hairlessness, his loose-skinned face where I cannot find any traces of the man I hated.”
It was not until after she met her father in person that her secluded image of him began to waver. This goes to show that what she has for her father is not only hatred.
“Then I hear my father call out a sleep-soften word. Is it my mother’s name? Someone else’s?”
This clearly indicates that Monisha does care about how her father feels towards her (deceased) mother.
Though Monisha keeps saying (with action) about her deep hatred towards her father, when her father finally arrives, she turns a new leaf. She begins to see him in a different light. Her father complex comes to a resolve.
This story mostly deals with the passage of time in Monisha’s life. The use of time in the story has more to do with the past and how it affects Monisha‘s future (the present). Just as Ebony said, most of Monisha’s dialogue with her mother occurred in flashbacks.
I like the way time is used to explain a lot of things to us. For example, the house where Monisha and her mother leaved after her father left them: “We’d been trained well by generations of grandmothers and windows –aunts whose silences weighed down the air of the crumbling ancestral home where we still lived.” From the statement, we know that the house has been there for so long even without the mention of years.
We also get the unique sleeping position with Monisha’s father and baby. May be I misinterpreted, but I have the feeling that this similar sleeping position has to do with the father’s transition to old age. It is mostly said that when people get old the act in a childlike manner.
I just love the way time is used in the structure of this story.
The story is told by a young woman in present time but who is emotionally stuck in the past. Throughout the story she brings up a lot of memories from the past and each time those memories from the past are somehow linked to the present time. for example, she keeps bringing up different sayings that her mother used to say. Her flashbacks give us a vivid picture of her past and help us to understand why she hated her fahter so much and why she felt negatively towards men marriage (before she found “the love of a good man”). But it seems like at the end she finally lets go of her past and learns to forgive.
I thought this was a very interesting story. It is an expression of how past experiences can effect the present. The narrarator’s back reference to her mothers preachings and how it parallels to her present life is are interconnected with flashbacks. It was a display of her emotional stuggle (unable to let go of the past so she is “stuck” in the present).
In the above story, the author uses the device of time to heighten the readers mental expectations of how and why the main character acts and feels the way that she does. Time also helps the reader to feel sympathetic toward Monisha as a person who suffered an overwhelmingly traumatizing past.
English 2: Family In Short Fiction 
September 23, 2008 at 3:37 pm
This story deals with time with a lot of flashbacks. Because Monisha’s mother is dead, all the dialogue that Monisha reports between herself and her mother occurs in flashbacks. Monisha and Dilip’s courtship is discussed in a flashback. However, many of Monisha’s interactions with her father occur in the past–rather than the present. I found it interesting that Monisha spends so little time talking with her father when he comes to visit. This indicates to me that Monisha is emotionally “stuck”.
Another indication of the passage of time is Monisha’s reaction to her father’s aging. (“How old he is, his head shiny with hairlessness, his loose-skinned face where I cannot find any traces of the man I hated.”)
September 23, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I thought that the voice in this story was really effective in making me care what was going on. She starts out like she is speaking to you in confidence, as a friend, then steps away from the reader when interaction with others is involved. It was just a character in a movie that is aware of the camera, while the other characters are unaware- the character that is talking to us into the camera one minute is pulled into a scene placed there for our benefit the next.
I also really liked the glass breaking in her hand twice. I think was a device to show us the excruciating pain she was going through by reminding us of physical pain we have probably all experienced. (but could be wrong, it seems like maybe it means more than that but I wasn’t sure.) Interestingly though, she doesn’t really mention pain regarding either cut.
September 24, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I think this story takes place in the present with a lot of thinking of the past. Monisha always thinks about what her mother used to say like “the love of a good man can save your life.”, “the stars are the eyes of the dead.” and “Out of bluest sky, lightning strikes.” She also has flashbacks about how relatives used to react after father left for America to never came back.
Monisha’s father leaving them left her in rage from her adolescent years. Even after marrying and discovering “the love of a good man” she never let go of the hate she had for her father (she thought she might have overcome) and this is evident throughout the story. One of the place a reader can feel that anger is when her father calls and Dilip (her husband) “puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and says, “it is your father.”” she is in the kitchen and her “hand shakes so hard” that she had to “put down the spoon”.
September 24, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I enjoyed the story, and how it weaved through different events in different time periods almost seamlessly. Monisha recalls these events as they relate to her current thought or task, sometimes memories of 10 years ago, and some of the recent past. She also revisits the same events multiple times, giving us a little bit more information each time, as her past is what drives her thoughts and actions.
By the majority of the story being memories from the past, it really shows that Monisha is stuck there, as it seems to be all she thinks about. Her memories and anger have had power over her for all this time. At the end however, it seems that she has finally found resolve, and that is when she stops with the flashbacks. She also decides to tell Dilip about her past and her mother, like she has finally decided to let go of her memories and her anger.
September 25, 2008 at 2:31 am
This was an interesting story. There were a lot of memories and sayings in it. The story doesn’t really go forward much. Or the plot doesn’t grow because most of it is just about this woman who is stuck at a point because she is confused and angry. She has to make a decision about letting her father come see her or not. At this point she goes back in time into thinking about how her father abandoned her and all her mother and her had to go through because of that. She keeps going back and forth in time though. Her husband wants her to let her dad come. I think after this she starts looking for even more reasons to why she can’t but inside on a subconscious level she wants to. She is also confused about why he did what he did and wants answers. She wants to show him she doesn’t care about him. But inside she does. I also liked how even when she is in present her mother’s sayings keep coming up to her mind. Her past seems to have affected her a lot and to get over it I think she had to see her dad. There had been a lot of resentment inside of her which she had just kept in. She had to let it go somehow. Also one of her mom’s sayings “The love of a good man can save you”. I think she wants the love of her father back and part of the reason is her own husband as well.
September 25, 2008 at 2:36 am
On Ebony’s post:
I agree with what Ebony said and I found the last paragraph of the post interesting. Where she looks at her father and cant find the man she hated. I think it shows that time can heal people/change people. Now that she actually sees her father she realizes she doesn’t hate him. And she spends little time with him probably because she feels uncomfortable and awkward as if meeting a new person.
September 25, 2008 at 2:54 am
This story is all about time and part memories. The young lady Monisha relates all her present events to her past events. She grew up with a single parent and misses a father figure in her life. Her mother dies of a hidden disease cancer and one expects her to be mad at her mother but instead she places the blame on her father. Her mother has a unique way of relating situations with quote that furhter explains what she is trying to pass across. She acted as if she caredless about her father but when she went to his room and covered him up it showed that she still cares about him and all that is left for her is to find it in her heart to forgive him. “The love of a good man” relates to her husband Dilip for being a good and understanding man.
September 25, 2008 at 4:39 am
The author uses time to tell the story. She would use the past experience with her mother to explain what happened. The usage of time is done nicely. The mother was very influential toward monisha and how she became who she is.
September 25, 2008 at 5:02 am
i liked this story a lot for many reasons. one of the main reasons was how Mona kept bringing in quotes that she remembered from her mother. The whole story kept going back and forth from the present moment to the past, and in such a way that it was not confusing. i thought it was really cute how in the end of the story we see how her baby and her dad both slept the same way. in the beginning of the story i thought that mona’s father had died, yet as i read i saw that ironically it was just the opposite. her father was still alive and it was her mother who had died, from sickness. Besides for the father walking out on the family ten years before he came back to visit mona and her own family, i got a sense that there was love in a strange sense within the family. “When there’s a moment of quiet i say, “he can come the week after Bijoy’s birthday. He can stay only one night…why did i change my mind” to me i saw this that mona’s dad had to have shown her some love as a child, because she wanted to visit in the back of her mind and agreed to let her dad come to visit when she saw the happiness and love that there was between her husband, Dilip, and her baby, Bijoy. also, another time later on in the story we see how mona wants something from her father, yet she’s unsure what it is, when she leaves her baby’s room at night and she sees the light on in the guests bedroom and she goes there to turn it off. Yet, when she sees her dad had fallen asleep from reading, she takes his glasses off and covers him with a blanket. a warm feeling.
September 25, 2008 at 6:37 am
“The love of a good man can save your life.”
Monisha’s mother always held onto this saying. And since Monisha’s mother died after her father’s abandonment, she places all the blame (her mother’s death) onto her father.
“BUT THIS FATHER, on this unsuitably beautiful spring day, ambushes me. How old is he, his head shiny with hairlessness, his loose-skinned face where I cannot find any traces of the man I hated.”
It was not until after she met her father in person that her secluded image of him began to waver. This goes to show that what she has for her father is not only hatred.
“Then I hear my father call out a sleep-soften word. Is it my mother’s name? Someone else’s?”
This clearly indicates that Monisha does care about how her father feels towards her (deceased) mother.
Though Monisha keeps saying (with action) about her deep hatred towards her father, when her father finally arrives, she turns a new leaf. She begins to see him in a different light. Her father complex comes to a resolve.
September 25, 2008 at 9:28 am
This story mostly deals with the passage of time in Monisha’s life. The use of time in the story has more to do with the past and how it affects Monisha‘s future (the present). Just as Ebony said, most of Monisha’s dialogue with her mother occurred in flashbacks.
I like the way time is used to explain a lot of things to us. For example, the house where Monisha and her mother leaved after her father left them: “We’d been trained well by generations of grandmothers and windows –aunts whose silences weighed down the air of the crumbling ancestral home where we still lived.” From the statement, we know that the house has been there for so long even without the mention of years.
We also get the unique sleeping position with Monisha’s father and baby. May be I misinterpreted, but I have the feeling that this similar sleeping position has to do with the father’s transition to old age. It is mostly said that when people get old the act in a childlike manner.
I just love the way time is used in the structure of this story.
September 25, 2008 at 11:23 am
The story is told by a young woman in present time but who is emotionally stuck in the past. Throughout the story she brings up a lot of memories from the past and each time those memories from the past are somehow linked to the present time. for example, she keeps bringing up different sayings that her mother used to say. Her flashbacks give us a vivid picture of her past and help us to understand why she hated her fahter so much and why she felt negatively towards men marriage (before she found “the love of a good man”). But it seems like at the end she finally lets go of her past and learns to forgive.
September 25, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I thought this was a very interesting story. It is an expression of how past experiences can effect the present. The narrarator’s back reference to her mothers preachings and how it parallels to her present life is are interconnected with flashbacks. It was a display of her emotional stuggle (unable to let go of the past so she is “stuck” in the present).
October 2, 2008 at 12:03 am
In the above story, the author uses the device of time to heighten the readers mental expectations of how and why the main character acts and feels the way that she does. Time also helps the reader to feel sympathetic toward Monisha as a person who suffered an overwhelmingly traumatizing past.