The Father

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Bharati Mukiherjee's story, "The Father" and how it portrays a culture clash between two related Indians, a father and daughter. The paper relates that both characters in the story have two very different ethical standards about procreation and the meaning of fatherhood and that the cultural clash between the father and daughter exists on several levels - generational, gender-based, ethical, and personal.

From the Paper:

"Babli's father comes from a culture that is a patriarchal culture in terms of its explicitly stated values, for, as Mr. Bhowmick sees it, male authority and wisdom should rule the household. Now the father's daughter will raise her child in a household with no male presence. Of course, this sense of patriarchal dominance is fictional to some degree. Mr. Bhowmick came to the U.S. from Ranchi because his wife, a professional in her own right insisted upon this move. But he still believes the pretence of male dominance should be protected in principle. In fact, because he feels forced to stay in the U.S. due to his wife, seeing his daughter flagrantly deny her need for a man even to father a child, makes him feel more powerless in the face of women in America. According to anthropologist Lalervo Oberg, culture shock arises when suddenly one's sense of certainty is destroyed when one enters a foreign environment. A person undergoing culture shock experiences it as a series of "upsets--breaks in reality because people behave differently" in a new culture and because the shocked individual finds him or herself in unfamiliar circumstances."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Guanipa, Carmen. "Culture Shock." San Diego University. 17 Mar 1998. 2 Jul 2007. <http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/CGuanipa/cultshok.htm>
• Mukherjee, Bharati "The Father." From Literature and the Writing Process.Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, & Robert Funk (Eds.). New York Prentice Hall, 2007.
• Oberg, Lalervo. "Culture Shock & the Problem of Adjustment to New CulturalEnvironments." Worldwide Classroom. 2007. 2 Jul 2007. <http://www.worldwide.edu/travel_planner/culture_shock.html>

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