Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni the Disappearance

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni the Disappearance

Upon reading Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's short story, "The Disappearance," it becomes fairly obvious that the wife of the male protagonist (all of the characters in the story are unnamed) has left her husband. What is not clear is the reason why she did so. This is because of the narrative technique that the author employs, which is a third-person narration that primarily focuses on the perspective of the protagonist. However, a close read of the text reveals that the protagonist's wife left him because he is dull, insensitive, and neither smart nor attuned to much else other than himself, a fact which the author primarily demonstrates through her protagonist-focused, third-person narrative.

Although the intellectual capabilities of the husband are apparently sound from a purely logical point-of-view (he is, after all, able to hold down a job in an office in which he can provide for his family) his emotional intelligence is certainly stunted. Therefore, the author relies on a third-person narration centered on his perspective to unveil the crucial elements of the story. It is only after a year that the husband thinks he should look for the jewelry of his wife to ascertain whether or not she left him or was kidnapped; the missing jewelry, of course, implies that she abandoned the protagonist and their young son. The brilliance of the author's third-person narrative from the opinion of the husband is that she is able to convey the fact that he is not even aware of how unhappy his wife was before he left him. For instance, when the police officer asks the protagonist if his wife and he had quarreled prior to her departure, he tells the officer they had not. He later recollects the following memory regarding his final interaction with his wife the night she left:

"Surely he couldn't be blamed for raising his voice at those times…or for grabbing her by the elbow and pulling her to the bed…. He was always careful not to hurt her, he prided himself on that…he'd stop if she really begged him, if she cried…After some time she would quite struggling" (Divakaruni).

This quotation proves the protagonist's wife immensely disliked sex with him, and that he is more than likely raping her after yelling at her and forcing her in bed with him. Yet he is brutishly insensitive of these facts, and still "prided" himself in not hurting her. Quite obviously, he was emotionally, physically, and even mentally hurting her. Yet the author's third-person narrative focused on the protagonist is blissfully unaware of these facts, which alludes to the fact that he is insensitive and not attuned to the needs of his wife.

In fact, from the very beginning of the protagonist's relationship with his wife, with any wife, in fact, it is quite clear that he is only focused on himself. He only consented to marriage because his mother told him she was "old," and desired to have grandchildren (Divakaruni). Moreover, the factors that led to his selecting his wife (in an arranged marriage), demonstrate how superficial and even dull the protagonist truly is. The following quotation, in which he places something akin to an order for his requirements for his wife in an arranged marriage, proves this fact.

find me a quiet, pretty girl, he wrote, not brash, like Calcutta girls are nowadays, not with too many western ideas. Someone who would be relieved to have her husband make the major decisions. But she had to be smart, at least a year of college, someone he could introduce to his friends with pride (Divakaruni).

This quotation shows how superficial and self-absorbed the narrator is. He does not desire an equal, or even someone he is compatible with. He wants a mate who will not oppose him ("quiet"), traditional, and who will not embarrass him in front of his friends due to an inferior intellect. This "pride" the author has referenced is truly the downfall of the narrator, who proves extremely dull-witted for believing if a woman can fulfill those limited requirements denoted in this quotation that she will love him, or stay with him. This quote also proves how dull a person he is if he wants a wife only to fulfill these limited requirements.