30 pages • 1 hour read
Jhumpa LahiriA Temporary Matter
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Shukumar
The “close third” narration focuses on Shukumar’s point of view. He is the connection between the reader and the events of the house. As a deeply insecure, 35-year-old “mediocre student,” Shukumar is hardly ever awake to see Shoba leave for work. The narration depicts him as experiencing depression. For the past three months, he has been struggling through the final bits of his dissertation, a project that he is not optimistic about completing. Shukumar feels emasculated by Shoba’s professional determination and has isolated himself in their Boston home. Shukumar is also jealous of Shoba’s connection to her cultural past, and he struggles with his own cultural identity. After coming down with a case of dysentery on his first trip to India as a young boy, his parents opted to leave him home in Massachusetts when they returned to India moving forward. He never had the same opportunity as Shoba to develop his Indian identity. It was not until Shukumar’s father died during Shukumar’s final year of college that he developed an interest in his background. He envies Shoba’s upbringing in India and laments that he was unable to have his own cultural experiences in his homeland: “He wished now that he had his own childhood story of India” (12). Shukumar’s inability to answer the exam question about the ghazal also underscores his disconnect from his Indian heritage, and by extension, Shoba.
Shukumar feels guilty for being in Baltimore when his wife went into labor three weeks early, but he reassures himself that Shoba convinced him to go. In the aftermath of their loss, Shukumar finds himself inexplicably disinterested in his wife of three years. He initially believed that they would be able to move forward, but Shukumar is now resigned to the thought that the gulf between him and Shoba is insurmountable. Shukumar adopts the role of domestic caretaker once Shoba becomes disinterested in cooking. He simply follows her meticulous directions instead of improvising or personalizing the recipes. His cooking is serviceable, but it lacks the intimacy that someone like Shoba was able to achieve with her dishes. However, as Shukumar progresses through the nights of the planned blackouts, the candlelit confessions temporarily rejuvenate him. Although Shukumar feels betrayed by Shoba’s plan to leave him, his relief that she is not pregnant suggests he sees separation as a reasonable recourse.
Shoba
Prior to the loss of her stillborn baby, Shoba is an organized, outgoing, type A person who is always prepared for any eventuality. In the six months following the delivery, Shoba has become withdrawn and disinterested in her shared life with her husband, Shukumar. At 33 years old, Shoba has started to look worn and disheveled, “like the type of woman she’d once claimed she would never resemble” (1). The story’s narration depicts Shoba as experiencing postpartum depression. Disconnected, she forfeits her domestic role to Shukumar and focuses solely on her proofreading job in downtown Boston. She keeps a separate bank account for her bonuses, an action that foreshadows her eventual decision to get an apartment without Shukumar. Although Shoba initially regards the “temporary matter” of the power outages as an inconvenience, she uses the interruption as an opportunity to reveal her plans to her husband.
Shoba is a practical woman governed by reason and order. She admits to disliking Shukumar’s only published poem because it is “sentimental.” Shoba’s rejection of the sentimental is illustrated in her actions upon returning home from the hospital. She collects the couple’s possessions into a pile, thereby rejecting the life she has built with her husband. In addition, Shoba harbors quiet resentment for Shukumar, whom she believes was absent from the hospital the day of the delivery. Shoba’s character exemplifies avoidance of grief. However, at the end of the story, Shoba’s weeping for “the things they now knew” (22) indicates the forward movement of her journey in processing her grief, which she now shares with Shukumar.
Shoba’s Mother
After the loss of Shoba and Shukumar’s child, no one visited the house besides Shoba’s mother. She left Arizona and stayed with the couple for two months, doing whatever she could to help them get back on their feet. Her service was for the sake of Shoba, as she resented Shukumar for not being present at the delivery: “She was polite to Shukumar without being friendly” (9). Even though Shoba and Shukumar have experienced a shared trauma, Shoba’s mother is protective of her daughter and does not extend her sympathies to her son-in-law. The strained relationship between Shukumar and Shoba’s mother heightens the obstacles between Shoba and Shukumar. When Shukumar singularly spoke about the death of his child to Shoba’s mother, she responded, “But you weren’t even there” (9). Her resentment is echoed in Shoba’s avoidance of Shukumar.
In addition to helping with household chores, Shoba’s mother erected a cultural shrine and prayed for healthy grandbabies in the future. Her devout religious practices connect her to India in a way that Shoba and Shukumar cannot quite achieve. As a first-generation immigrant to America, Shoba’s mother retains her connection to her homeland, unlike Shukumar. Conversely, Shoba is pragmatic and dutiful like her mother, and both women do not embrace sentimentality. In this way, Shoba’s mother functions as a foil to Shukumar’s mother.
Shukumar’s Mother
Shukumar’s mother appears in the story only in the context of a confession shared by Shoba during the second night of darkness. The flashback anecdote of Shukumar’s mother parallels the post-pregnancy visit of Shoba’s mother. Lahiri presents both mothers as foils. Shoba’s second confession is that she skipped a dinner with Shukumar’s mother claiming she had to work late, but she was actually out drinking with a friend. Little is revealed about Shukumar’s mother, beyond the fact that she still struggled to move on from the death of her husband 12 years after he passed: “Each night his mother cooked something his father had liked, but she was too upset to eat the dishes herself, and her eyes would well up as Shoba stroked her hand” (17). Shukumar does not know how to console his mother, and he relies on Shoba’s empathetic nature.
Shukumar’s mother appears in the story primarily to show that grief, especially grief resulting from the loss of a loved one, is not something that one can recover from quickly. As Shoba and Shukumar deal with the first six months of living with the grief of losing their child, the memory of Shukumar’s mother shows the possibility of an undying sense of despair in the lives of those who survive the people they love.
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