Immigration Theme Analysis

The story’s narrator grows up in India and attends school in England, living there as an immigrant with several other Bengali bachelors. When he gets a job in Boston, North America becomes the third continent on which he lives. As the story depicts the narrator’s journey from India to England and then his transition to America, it naturally portrays his experiences as an immigrant, and of his efforts to acclimate to his new home and define and find himself. The story also shows the immigrant experience through the narrator’s fears and expectations regarding his arrange wife, Mala, as she comes to join him in the United States. The narrator is originally fearful about how Mala’s arrival might stunt his own ability to assimilate as well as concerned about whether she herself will be able to emotionally handle the transition. Yet they do successfully make a home in Boston. At the end of the story, thirty years have gone by, and the narrator and Mala are happy with the life they’ve built, though they worry their college-aged son may not hold onto any Bengali culture at all once they die. Over its course, the story depicts the complexities of immigrant life: the balance and struggle between maintaining traditions, the alienation of being alone in a foreign land, and the pride of building a new life.

Through the contrast of the narrator’s life in London and then Boston, the story captures different sorts of immigrant experiences. In London, the narrator lives with several other Bengali bachelors. All are “penniless” and “struggling to educate and establish themselves abroad.” Yet by having each other, they continue to maintain the traditions of Bengali life: eating egg curry with their hands, drinking tea, and lounging barefoot in drawstring pajamas. On the weekends, they socialize with other Bengalis, watch cricket, and listen to Bollywood songs. In Boston, in contrast, the narrator lives alone at the YMCA, and has no Bengali community. He reads the newspaper cover to cover in order to “grow familiar with things.” He works, but doesn’t socialize. The narrator still wears his drawstring pajamas, drinks four cups of tea each day, and does not consume beef or alcohol, all according to his Bengali customs. Yet, in the midst of this time of loneliness, the narrator also changes. For instance, he gives up eating rice for breakfast and instead has cornflakes—a small change, perhaps, but culturally significant, and indicative of the possibility for change that immigration offers.

When the narrator rents a room from the elderly Mrs. Croft, his experience as an immigrant shifts again. Now he no longer lives alone, and must put up with Mrs. Croft’s rather overbearing demand that he agree that the landing of American astronauts on the moon—which he doesn’t care about at all—is “splendid.” Yet he also discovers that traits that he saw as setting himself apart—his formality and polite deference—are traits that Mrs. Croft sees as being the sign of a “gentleman,” an exemplar of American polite society. Through Mrs. Croft’s eyes, the narrator in this moment can see himself in a new way, as fitting into, being a part of, and offering something to American society in a way he previously had not.

Yet the narrator’s feelings about and experience of immigration are complicated by his fears about the arrival of Mala, his new wife. When during a walk around his neighborhood the narrator sees an Indian woman’s sari grabbed by a dog on the street, he worries about how Mala will cope in Boston. This worry is not mere compassion. Rather, he feels the burden of having to protect Mala. Whereas earlier the narrator was a new immigrant trying to find his place, now that he feels more comfortable he is worried about how associating with other immigrants—even his own wife—will affect his own life and growing assimilation. When the narrator picks Mala up at the airport, and she is dressed in a traditional sari, with red decorative dye on her feet, the narrator doesn’t “embrace her, kiss her, or take her hand.” In part, he acts this way because he doesn’t know her well, but it is also because he now rejects the traditional Bengali lifestyle that she represents. The knitted sweaters she gifts him are “tight under the arms,” which again indicate how the reemergence of this traditionally Bengali way of life now feels constrictive to him.

Once again, Mrs. Croft helps to shift the narrator’s perception by allowing him to emotionally understand his wife, and to realize he can weave Indian and American culture together. When the narrator brings Mala to meet Mrs. Croft, the elderly woman assesses Mala’s appearance. The narrator suddenly remembers his own immigration to London and feels a deep sympathy for his wife. “Like me,” he notes, “Mala had traveled far from home, not knowing where she was going, or what she would find.” In seeing his wife being assessed, he recognizes her bravery in immigrating at all, and the way that he and his wife are connected in this bravery and experience.

When Mrs. Croft declares Mala a “perfect lady,” just as she once described the narrator as a gentleman, the narrator is further able to see himself in his wife. Seeing through Mrs. Croft’s eyes, he realizes their Indianness is not a thing to be left behind but, in fact, embraced as they make a home in this new country. As the narrator and Mala grow closer in the following months, the couple embrace both their heritage and their new life. They meet other Indian immigrants and buy traditional spices like “bay leaves and cloves.” However, they also embrace new things like watching sailboats and eating ice cream cones.

At the end of the story, the narrator and Mala live on a tree-lined street, twenty miles from Boston, and their son is enrolled at Harvard. They can’t remember a time when they were strangers, either to each other or to the world they now know. They still visit Calcutta and, when they do, they bring back Darjeeling tea and drawstring pajamas. They also know that though their son will go into the adult world “alone and unprotected,” possibly forgetting some of his heritage. Still, the narrator believes his son can successfully navigate any adventure with their support. After all, having lived in Massachusetts for thirty years, he and Mala have proved a new world can eventually become home.