Pub 4 - Post Modernism

About a week and a half ago and old friend of my father came to our office to say hello. This man is 73 years old and while he was speaking to my father his wife called him to check and see how his day was going and such. After speaking to his wife he was getting ready to leave, when I then asked him, “Tom, how many years have you been married to your wife?” He then responded, “Joey, I have been with her for 54 years and it may have been tough sometimes but I never got tired of her”. When he said that to me I thought to myself, “Damn, 54 years with the same lady”. If you think about it, relationships these days don’t even last a fraction compared to what they used to. Couples had respect for each other, and didn’t try to compromise their relationship by cheating or lying unlike now in present time. This could be referred to as post modernism.

A literary work that could to exemplify post modernism would be the short story “Interpreter of Maladies”, by Lahiri. The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Das and the truth told to Mr. Kapasi and how he thinks of her can all be summed up into this term of post modernism once explained properly. Back in the past time such as the 50s, someone who cheated was frowned upon and usually unheard of. Now you hear as an example, “John and Becky broke up because he cheated on her with her best friend” or something relative to that just as what occurred in Interpreter of Maladies, except Mrs. Das husband never found out. While Mr. Das was walking up the trail with his kids Mrs. Das explained what happened with herself and a good friend of her husband one day while she was making coffee when he stayed over their house a few days for job interviews. The author explained, “He made love with her swiftly, in silence, with an expertise she had never know, without the meaningful expressions and smiles Raj always insisted on afterward”(Pg. 350). In saying this Mrs. Das had known her husband and had been with him since they were children and for eight years she has kept it a secret that she cheated on him and that their son Bobby was not even his. This is an example of things that you hear of happening in our present day world.

Those of you whom watch modern day shows such as Access Hollywood with all the gossip or others such as the Jersey Shore that used to go on see many examples of relationships and the way these people behave as an example of present post modernism. All you hear about is this celebrity breaking up and that one cheating and a truck load of a lot of other unnecessary controversy. This is all stuff that was unheard of and uncalled for in the past and the short story Interpreter of Maladies, by Lahiri is quite relatable with this. What Mrs. Das did was wrong and the fact that she has been keeping this a secret from her husband for so long and not loving him was even worse.