https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/29/the-boundary
The Boundary by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Relating to someone with a much different, more difficult past is hard to relate to, but there are mediums that bridge that gap. These stories, songs and emotion that travels between people is the easiest way to relate and learn from others. Jhumpa Lahiri's Italian story The Boundary is able to overcome this barrier and present to the reader the ideas we associate with home and how difficult they can be to settle with. The ever apparent contrast in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Boundary highlights the struggle that immigrants must endure after moving to an unfamiliar country.
Lahiri presents to the reader a young narrator, assisting his father and family in caring for a vacation home owned by a faraway man of wealth. The narrator's own family lives in a small cottage behind the grand home. The narrator's family is an immigrant family that works to care for another home and his guests. They are presented as outsiders. The narrator remarks that "The owner lives abroad, but he’s not a foreigner like us. In the second paragraph, the narrator has already remarked a stark difference between themselves and the others in the story. They are the people that do not belong and they accept this fact. They have hidden to this secluded home in the desert to get away from the prejudices that come with this thought.
The visiting family has invaded this space as many other have and claimed it as her own story to write. The mother of the guest family doesn't go out and celebrate the festivities with her family, but instead stays home and writes about the narrator and their family. The story ends with the narrator finding "shopping lists in the faint, small script that the mother used, on other sheets of paper, to write all about us" referencing the days she spent bathing in the sun scribbling away on her notepad. The narrator and their family have now become characters in a story that they were not allowed to tell themselves. Similar to how immigrants lives are written off in government and media, a woman with the money to afford vacations and a big family takes the right to write about a subject that isn't allowed to put in their own thoughts or feelings. She likely discusses the tranquility of the home or how happy those working are, but in reality, the narrator's family has suffered hardship and has come to this home planted in the middle of an empty desert to escape others' assumptions about them. This woman revokes the narrators right to tell their own story. They lose their voice in the telling of their own life.
The way that the family speaks about the landscape and the ambiance of the home is similar, but opposite, of how the narrator sees it. They each speak of the quiet, the lack of people, the empty desert. The visiting family uses words like "peaceful" and "relaxing", while the narrator wonders "what they know about the loneliness here. What do they know about the days, always the same, in our dilapidated cottage?...Would they like the harsh quiet that reigns here all winter?" It is the contrast of being an outsider. In this situation, however, the outsider is the person that calls this place home. The narrator is still treated as someone who does not belong here and is unwelcome. They are left with only the quiet and the desert when everything settles, compared to the pretty, expensive life that this family possesses.
These two families are the only people for miles and the focus of this story. Still, they are given significantly different circumstances that change their view of their surroundings. A relaxing getaway can be a prison depending on past experiences. When surrounded by hate and fear and being forced away from home, an empty desert can seem isolating and lonely. A child growing up with their only interaction coming from school and week-long visitors, it can be extremely hard to love home. This is a life that some are forced to live to escape hate and overcome bias.
The way that the family speaks about the landscape and the ambiance of the home is similar, but opposite, of how the narrator sees it. They each speak of the quiet, the lack of people, the empty desert. The visiting family uses words like "peaceful" and "relaxing", while the narrator wonders "what they know about the loneliness here. What do they know about the days, always the same, in our dilapidated cottage?...Would they like the harsh quiet that reigns here all winter?" It is the contrast of being an outsider. In this situation, however, the outsider is the person that calls this place home. The narrator is still treated as someone who does not belong here and is unwelcome. They are left with only the quiet and the desert when everything settles, compared to the pretty, expensive life that this family possesses.
These two families are the only people for miles and the focus of this story. Still, they are given significantly different circumstances that change their view of their surroundings. A relaxing getaway can be a prison depending on past experiences. When surrounded by hate and fear and being forced away from home, an empty desert can seem isolating and lonely. A child growing up with their only interaction coming from school and week-long visitors, it can be extremely hard to love home. This is a life that some are forced to live to escape hate and overcome bias.
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