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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Management of Grief, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Managing Versus Experiencing Grief
Bureaucracy
Secular vs. Spiritual
Hope, Duty, and Despair
Navigating Cultural Difference
Summary
Analysis
Shaila Bhave’s house is full of strangers—someone is boiling tea in her kitchen, and others are rummaging in the pantry to make her food. Dr. Sharma, the treasurer of the Indo-Canadian society, pulls Shaila aside to ask if she’s worried about money, but his wife scolds him not to trouble Shaila with “mundane details” right now. The treasurer’s wife asks one of her sons what the “official word” is, and he replies that it was either an accident or terrorism—possibly carried out by someone who is Sikh.
Shaila is in the throes of shock and grief when Dr. Sharma asks her about money, a question that foreshadows the conflict Shaila will later have with Judith Templeton. Similar to Judith, Dr. Sharma has an official, bureaucratic role (Judith is in charge of liaising with family members of victims of the tragedy, while Dr. Sharma is the treasurer of the Indo-Canadian society), and both seem to prioritize material goods and financial concerns over the holistic well-being of people in grief. Dr. Sharma’s wife scolds him in this case, while Shaila will later admonish Judith for doing the same. This is also the first mention of Sikh terrorists; throughout the story, Shaila will navigate her relationships with and prejudices against people who are Sikh in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Themes
In Shaila’s house, two radios play the news, plus the TV is on. A doctor has given Shaila calming pills, which may be why she feels a “deadening quiet,” even though her body is so tense. She imagines the voices of “my boys and Vikram” crying out for her. The woman boiling water says she heard the news early in the morning—at first, they said the plane simply disappeared from the radar, then there were rumors of a hijacking. Many of their neighbors were on that plane, including Shaila’s husband and sons.
While there are plenty of news sources (two radios, the TV, the people in Shaila’s house), none seem to relay reliable information about the plane’s disappearance. Instead, there are different accounts, many of them conflicting, which leave Shaila, and other loved ones of those on the plane, in a state of limbo, not knowing what might have happened, why it happened, or if they’ll ever see their loved ones again. Shaila copes with this lack of clarity and closure by taking pills that deaden her emotions, establishing a conflict between Shaila’s attempts to experience her grief and manage that grief, a conflict that will animate the rest of the story.
Themes
Literary Devices
Shaila sits on the stairs with her neighbor, Kusum, whose husband and youngest daughter were on the plane. Kusum’s other daughter, Pam, runs by to tell her mother that she needs to get dressed to meet a reporter. Pam is the more westernized of Kusum’s daughters—the daughter on the plane was heading to India to spend the summer with her grandparents, while Pam chose to stay home and work at McDonald’s. Kusum says she isn’t going to talk to the reporter and that if she didn’t have to look after Pam, she would hang herself. Pam spits back that her mother wishes Pam were the daughter who was killed.
Judith Templeton, a Canadian government official, visits Shaila’s house. Shaila offers tea and slightly stale biscuits, which Judith refuses out of politeness, but Shaila insists. Judith says she has a degree in social work and has worked with accident victims before, but never on the scale of this tragedy.
Themes
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Judith needs to reach hundreds of people, some of whom, she says, “speak no English.” Others are widows who have “never handled money or gone on a bus” or wives who are “still hysterical” and husbands “in shock and profound depression.” She tells Shaila that the government wants to distribute money to some and have others sign legal documents, and she asks for Shaila’s help in reaching out to people with whom she has struggled to communicate, explaining that she would like assistance navigating “the complications of culture, language, and customs.”
Themes
Judith tells Shaila that everyone she has talked to has remarked on Shaila’s strength—Shaila has responded to the tragedy with extraordinary calm, Judith reasons. If others talked with Shaila, maybe it would help them. Shaila thinks of her calmness as strange and painful, believing herself to be “a freak.” She wishes she could “scream, starve, jump from a bridge,” anything to feel her emotions fully. That calmness would also seem bad and odd to the people Judith calls “hysterical.” Shaila tells Judith that she won’t be any help to her and that everyone must grieve in their own way, but Shaila agrees to let Judith call after Shaila returns from her trip to Ireland.
Four days later, Shaila is in Ireland, where she sees Kusum sitting on a rock overlooking the bay. Shaila thinks of her sons and husband lost in that ocean and of Kusum stumbling and screaming onto her lawn after she first heard of the tragedy. Shaila says police and diplomats have kept relatives informed of developments in the tragedy because they believe “knowledge is helpful to the grieving.” Shaila says maybe that’s true, but that other people she knows seek solace in their own versions of events: that the plane split in two, unconsciousness was instantaneous, and no one suffered. Kusum tells Shaila that “we can’t escape our fate.” She says that her swami told her that fate led everyone, no matter their religion, on that plane to die. Shaila says that, for her part, she has her Valium.
Themes
Shaila and Kusum, along with other relatives of those lost in the tragedy, have traveled to Ireland to identify the bodies of their loved ones. While on the shore, Kusum tells Shaila how warm the water is. Shaila says that they can’t give in to their grief, that they have to wait for their own time to come. Shaila hasn’t eaten or brushed her teeth in four days. Kusum’s swami has told her that it’s selfish to grieve for her husband and daughter; instead, she should be thrilled for them because they are in a better place. Shaila wonders if she’s selfish as she runs along the shore, thinking that maybe her sons hadn’t been trapped under the plane a mile under the ocean surface, maybe the current had dragged them to shore, especially since they had been good swimmers.
Themes
Literary Devices
Dr. Ranganathan, an electrical engineer who lost a large family in the tragedy, joins Shaila and Kusum on the shore. He tells Shaila that, with some luck, someone might have survived the plane crash by swimming to any number of small islands. Shaila points out that her older son, Vinod, was a strong swimmer. Dr. Ranganathan says a strong swimmer could pull a younger boy, like Shaila’s younger son, to safety, which fills Shaila with hope. Dr. Ranganathan adds that it “is a parent’s duty to hope.”
Shaila thinks that Dr. Ranganathan’s world-renowned work in electrical engineering gives him special insight into the inner workings of the universe. He is carrying roses in his pockets and asks Shaila if she would like to let some float away in the ocean in honor of her family members. Instead, Shaila has brought a pocket calculator for her son Vinod, a half-painted model B-52 for her son Mithun, and a poem she wrote for her husband to let him know her true feelings. She lets each object float away in the ocean before boarding the bus to return to the hospital.
Themes
Literary Devices
Shaila says that Kusum is one of the “lucky ones”: she has quickly identified her loved ones so can fly to India to give them a proper burial. Shaila still hasn’t identified her husband or sons. Dr. Ranganathan accompanies her to the hospital to look at photos. Police show Shaila a photo of a boy who resembles Vinod, but Shaila says that it is not him. The police officer says that after people have been in the water for a while, they look heavier. Shaila still insists that the boy in the photo is not her son. Instead of feeling discouraged after the encounter, Shaila feels “ecstatic” with the hope that her family might still be alive. The suitcase in her hotel room is packed with dry clothes for her sons.
Themes
From Ireland, Shaila and Kusum travel to India to arrange funerals for their family members. At the Bombay airport, a customs official won’t let Kusum and Shaila pass because his boss isn’t present. Frustrated, Shaila yells at the man, “You bastard… you think we’re smuggling contraband in these coffins!”
In India, Shaila stays with her parents. Friends and family members come to visit, some of whom are Sikh, and Shaila finds herself involuntarily recoiling from those Sikh visitors. She points out that her parents don’t do the same, that they are progressive people who wouldn’t blame communities for the actions of individuals. Shaila’s mother wants her to stay longer in India, and she stays for three months, then another month after that. Shaila’s mother is a “rationalist,” while her grandmother had “kept stubborn faith in Vedic rituals,” and Shaila feels trapped between these two modes of knowledge.
Shaila travels through India, playing contract bridge in gymkhana clubs and visiting holy sites she hasn’t visited before. People who have become widowers through the tragedy are being shown candidates for new brides. Shaila counts herself lucky that no one thinks of arranging a husband for her, an “unlucky widow.” Six months into her travels, in a temple in a Himalayan town, she sees a vision of her husband. Her husband descends to her, taking her hand in his before telling her that she must “finish alone what [they] started together.” When Shaila’s mother, who doesn’t believe in ghosts or visions, asks Shaila if she noticed anything strange in the temple, Shaila says no.
Themes
Shaila returns to Canada. Kusum has put her house up for sale and plans to pursue inner peace in an ashram in Hardwar run by her swami. Shaila stays in touch with others who lost loved ones in the tragedy. The tragedy brought them together, “melted down and recast [them] as a new tribe.” Kusum’s daughter, Pam, has left for California. Dr. Ranganathan calls Shaila twice a week from Montreal but has recently gotten a job in Ottawa. Still, he can’t bring himself to sell his house, which he has turned into a “temple” to the family he lost, the master bedroom a “shrine,” while he, “a devotee,” sleeps on a cot.
Themes
Literary Devices
Judith Templeton enlists Shaila to visit an elderly couple, who is Sikh, and whose sons were on the plane. The couple has not yet signed papers that would ensure they receive government benefits. Judith explains to Shaila that some surviving relatives are still “hysterical” and shares with Shaila the steps of grief that she has learned from textbooks on “grief management”: rejection, depression, acceptance, and reconstruction. Six months after the tragedy, only a few relatives are “reconstructing,” Judith says. Many, according to Judith, are stuck in a state of depressed acceptance. Shaila finds herself unable to tell Judith that her family surrounds her, that they change shapes to appear to her, and that her days and nights have become thrilling as a result.
In the apartment building, Shaila notices the “distinctive and immediate Indianness of frying ghee.” She tells Judith that the elderly couple will not open up to a Hindu woman like Shaila because they will view her as an outsider, and Shaila involuntarily stiffens at the sight of their beards and turbans. She notes to herself that the couple fear that signing the papers would mean selling their sons for two airline tickets to Ireland, where they would be asked to identify their sons’ bodies. In the house of the Sikh couple, the rooms are dark and stuffy, with the lights off and only an oil lamp lit on the coffee table.
Themes
Literary Devices
The elderly couple has recently come to Canada from India. Since their sons were lost in the tragedy, they haven’t been paying utility bills out of “fear and the inability to write a check.” The telephone has been shut off, and electricity, gas, and water will come next. Shaila talks with the couple in Hindi. She believes that if they think she is here as a translator, they might be offended, knowing there are thousands of Punjabi speakers and Sikhs in Toronto who would do a better job.
Themes
When the elderly couple remains reluctant to sign the papers to get government assistance, Shaila tells them that she too lost her sons, as well as her husband, in the crash. The couple responds by saying that God provides and God takes away, so God will provide, not the government, and that their sons will return to help them.
When they leave the apartment, unsuccessful in getting the elderly couple to sign the papers, Judith says to Shaila, “You see what I’m up against? … Their stubbornness and ignorance is driving me crazy.” When Judith begins to complain about the next person they will visit, Shaila tells Judith to let her out at the subway. She could try to explain to Judith the error of her ways. She could tell Judith that “in our culture, a parent’s duty is to hope.” Instead, she leaves without an explanation and slams the door as she exits the car.
Themes
Literary Devices
During the Toronto winter, Shaila writes letters to editors of newspapers and members of parliament. She says that now they at least acknowledge that a bomb exploded on the plane. She sets up a trust with money that her husband had saved for her sons’ education and sells her house to move to a small apartment downtown.
Themes
Kusum writes to Shaila from Hardwar and describes a vision of her daughter fanning the coals of a kitchen fire in a hut in a small Himalayan town. Kusum asks Shaila what she thinks of that and Shaila says that she envies Kusum for having been able to see her daughter again. Kusum’s other daughter, Pam, never made it to California. Instead, Pam writes Shaila letters from Vancouver, where she works in a department store. Dr. Ranganathan accepted an academic job and moved to Texas, where “no one knows his story and he has vowed not to tell it.” He still calls Shaila once a week.
Themes
While walking through the park on a rare sunny, winter day, Shaila pauses on the path. She looks up into the trees and hears the voices of her family for the last time. “‘Your time has come,’ they [say]. ‘Go, be brave.’” She does not know where the voyage will lead and doesn’t know which direction she will take, but she drops her package and begins walking.
