47 pages • 1 hour read
Jhumpa LahiriThe Lowland
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Lowland
The lowland, a stretch of marshland in Tollygunge, is an important location throughout the novel. The two ponds in the marshland that come together in heavy rainfall symbolize the relationship between Udayan and Subhash. When physical distance or different ideological paths separate the brothers, the ponds separate as well. During times of closeness, the ponds come together.
The story begins in the lowland, a place where the inseparable brothers spent many days during their childhood. It represents a place of nostalgia and happiness, until Udayan attempts to hide in the lowlands to evade police—a detail that hearkens back to an earlier description of lowland creatures who “survived by burying themselves in mud, simulating death, waiting for the return of rain” (3)—however, Udayan does not survive and is shot dead. His memorial stands in the marshland where the water flows. Udayan’s mother continues to visit the lowland every day to bring flowers. At the end of the story, the lowland has been drained: “That sparsely populated tract was now indistinguishable from the rest of the neighborhood, and on it more homes had been built” (320), bringing an eternal end to the relationship between Udayan and Subhash.
Education/University
Subhash’s parents value education and are proud of their sons for both getting into highly esteemed universities. However, it is at the university where Udayan becomes involved in the Naxalite movement and drifts away from Subhash. Udayan meets Gauri at the university, and they share books and ideas with each other throughout their courtship. Gauri is an intellectual who values her independence and ability to pursue higher education; she lives for her studies.
Subhash breaks away from his family when he pursues a PhD in Rhode Island and finds freedom through his education. Ironically, it is also at this university where Gauri rediscovers her passion for education and abandons her family. When she feels lost in motherhood and grieves over her husband, it is education that breathes new life into her.
Bela receives an undergraduate degree, but she believes that graduate studies are a waste of time: “She didn’t want to cut herself off that way” (221). Subhash sees this strong conviction as evidence that Bela is Udayan’s child. Udayan had once said that “a degree has become meaningless in this country” (55), but he finished his education out of duty to his parents. Udayan believed that “[t]he education system was […] an outdated pedagogy, at odds with India’s reality. It taught the young to ignore the needs of common people” (26).
Time
While the narrative is linear, there are constant flashbacks, and the same story is told from the perspective of different characters. Through this technique, Lahiri develops each character in a new light and brings depth to different circumstances.
Gauri is obsessive about her interest with the past, present, and future: “The present was a speck that kept blinking, brightening and diminishing, something neither alive nor dead […] The future haunted but kept her alive” (151). Gauri was referred to a doctoral program “after writing a comparison of Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s concepts of circular time […]” (165). She pursues a PhD in philosophy where she studies and writes about time for her career, which leads her to spending long hours shut away in her study. Her obsession with time is what distances her from the present and her role as a mother.
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