Lives of Displacement and Pain of Exile in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowlands

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the novel, The Lowland, of Jhumpa Lahiri who has focused on the themes of displacement, rootlessness and exile caused by diaspora. Physical uprootedness creates within the concerned section of the population a sense of being marginalized and thereby leading a sense of 'otherness' within the geopolitical territory to which they have migrated. These immigrants encounter both physical and mental diasporas. Lahiri's novel has been a dazzling display of the conflicts and contradictions, longings and the anguish, expectations and the agony of the compulsive situations that demand compromise and flexibility. Facing the intersections of sex and race, her characters are portrayed with confessions, frustrations and painful loss of identity, as they feel cut off from their historical and cultural roots. Finding the new world hostile and incomprehensible, they falter and stumble initially but try to reconcile to the life situations accepting the transition as unavoidable destiny. In her hovel, Lahiri has engaged herself to investigate the mental and psychological stresses, turmoil and complexities of their problems. She digs deep into the innermost recesses of the minds of the characters to explore the mental labyrinths as her protagonist feel deprived of their roots and strive to feel at home when homeless, to feel rooted in alien land when unrooted from their native land.