INTERPRETER OF MALADIES: READING REPONSES

As we read this collection of short stories, you will sometimes be asked to write about your reading experience. This will allow you (and me) to be able to see to what degree you are able to do the following things:

1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly.
2. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of inferences drawn from the text.
3. Summarize the central idea of a text.
4. Analyze the development of the key ideas.
5. Analyze how characters develop and interact with other characters in literary texts.
6. Analyze how the characters advance the plot or develop the theme in literary texts.
7. Analyze the effect of diction and tone.
8. Analyze the effect of the structure of a text.
9. Analyze the point of view reflected in a text (e.g. bias, first person, etc.)
10. Analyze how an author uses allusions and source material in literary texts.

Start by reading and annotating the story. Read the story with your pen and note the following things:

• Who is the narrator and what are his/her traits?
• What do you know about the characters? Who are they? How do they change?
• What ideas, words, or images repeat? What effect does this repetition have?
• Where does the story change, shift, or alter its course? What effect does this shift have?
• What doesn’t sit right with you? What bothers you? What is difficult to understand?

For each of the following stories, please prepare a detailed reading response addressing at least four (4) of the questions for each story. You should be prepared to read your answers to class as part of our discussion of the story. Each answer should be thorough and cite specific passages from the text. There is no need to summarize the events of the story in the reading response. Your reading response assignments must be typed. You will take notes during the discussion on your answers and, since they are typed, your reading and discussion responses will be easy to distinguish from each other. Be sure to upload your reading responses to turnitin.com AND bring a hard copy to class.

A strong reading response is one which:
• Shows you read and understood the story.
• Quotes directly from the story more than once.
• Clearly communicates the central idea or theme of the story (your interpretation).
• Examines details of character, plot, and language.
Pick four (4) questions to write about from the following lists:

“Mrs. Sen’s”
1. How does Mrs. Sen change throughout the story? What causes these changes?
2. How does Eliot change throughout the story? Why?
3. Compare Mrs. Sen and Eliot’s mother. How are they different and similar? Compare Eliot’s relationship to them. Compare Mrs. Sen’s apartment and Eliot’s home.
4. How is food used in this story? To what other ideas is it connected?
5. Compare Mrs. Sen’s view of America and India.
6. What does fresh fish mean to Mrs. Sen? What does driving mean to Mrs. Sen?
7. How does Eliot’s relationship to Mrs. Sen change throughout the story. What causes the change?
8. Does the narrator think that Eliot is better off with Mrs. Sen or staying at home by himself at the end? How do you know?

“A Temporary Matter”
1. How do the power outages affect Shoba and Shukumar? How do they connect to the state of their relationship?
2. Who is the narrator? What do you know about the narrator in this story?
3. What indicators do we get, throughout the story, that Shoba is no longer invested in the marriage?
4. Compare Shoba and Shukumar:
a. their temperaments,
b. backgrounds,
c. the way they see their relationship,
d. how they deal with the death of the baby
e. the way they play the truth telling game.
5. What is the purpose of the truth telling game? Why do they play it?
6. What is the role of food in this story?
7. Why does Shukumar tell Shoba the gender of the baby?

“Interpreter of Maladies”
1. How are the Das family described? How does the narrator characterize them?
2. Why does Mr. Kapasi fall for Mrs. Das? What does that tell us about him?
3. Why does Mrs. Das confide in Mr. Kapasi? Why does he think she confides in him? How does this confidence change their relationship?
4. Look closely at the episode with the monkeys. Who is responsible for this situation? What do the characters do in this situation? How do they deal with it?
5. What does the title mean? Where in the story is translation important? Who translates, how, and for what purpose? Where do we see “maladies?”