When I was putting the collection together, I knew from the beginning that this had to be the title story, because it best expresses, thematically, the predicament at the heart of the book -- the dilemma, the difficulty, and often the impossibility of communicating emotional pain and affliction to others, as well as expressing it to ourselves" ("A Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri," From a Reader's Guide for Interpreter of Maladies, 1999). Cultural miscommunication is a metaphor for romantic miscommunication and vice versa.
Likewise, the title of "The Third Continent" suggests the distance that often exists in relationships, and the fact that for immigrants in a relationship, America can become a third continent, a place to explore their mutual distance in a new context, for better or for ill. According to the Reader's Guide to the collection, "collapse, deterioration, or passing of once-important cultural or spiritual values," marks the tale of the "Interpreter of Maladies," embodied in the decay of the relationship of the married couple, and the lie that is at the heart of their marriage ("Questions for Discussion," From a Reader's Guide for Interpreter of Maladies, 1999). The failure of American married love in the title work seems to offer the tantalizing possibility of better communication and extramarital romance in India, but is thwarted by the cruelty of American sincerity and the harshness of reality that there is corruption and lies...
Kapasi's Indian fantasy of transgression with an American, and in Mrs. Das' Indian-American household.
The initial, apparent failure of love to spontaneously generate in "The Third Continent" is successfully broached by American sincerity, and the fact that the Indian arranged marriage is infused with the enthusiasm and novelty of a new country. One reviewer noted that despite the existence of romantic unhappiness in so many of the stories and although the author's subject is frequently that of an "ill-advised marriage," her subject "is not love's failure... But the opportunity that an artful spouse...can make of failure" (Crain, 1999).
Works Cited
Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri" From a Reader's Guide for Interpreter of Maladies. Published by Houghton Mifflin. 1999. [4 Apr 2007]. http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/interpreter_maladies.shtml#conversation
Crain, Crag. "Subcontinental Drift." The New York Times 11 July 1999. [4 Apr 2007]
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/11/reviews/990711.11craint.html
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies and Other Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
Questions for Discussion." From a Reader's Guide for Interpreter of Maladies.
Published by Houghton Mifflin. 1999. [4 Apr 2007]
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/interpreter_maladies.shtml#questions
