Abstract:
This article is an attempt to explore the two worlds experienced by the major
characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s (2013) The Lowland. The fiction depicts two
paradoxical worlds and the characters cannot help embracing them for social,
cultural, political, and ideological reasons. Subhash and Gauri are the major
characters in the novel who experience the paradoxicalities in their lives because of
their existence in two different countries: India and America. The paradoxicalities are
portrayed in terms of geography, culture, personal relationships, and diaspora. Hence,
what results is an unavoidable tension that springs from the oppositional experiences
lived by them. Moreover, the third major character, Udayan, also attributes a
substantial degree of tension to the making up of the plot. This article focuses on the
nature of these two worlds and the tensions they create in Subhash, Gauri and
Udayan in The Lowland.
