Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Third and Final Continent, extracted from her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, is a short story dealing with the salient theme of a developing diasporic psyche and the protagonist’s settlement in the West. It follows his journey through India and England until, finally, he reaches America, which is the titular last “continent”. It deals with common diasporic themes like alienation and loneliness, identity struggle, and the resilience to carve out a unique identity embodying the multiple-nation experience.
The Third and Final Continent | Summary
In the year 1964, the unnamed narrator sails to England from Calcutta on a ship called the SS Roma. He only has $10 to his name and a degree in Commerce. He describes the conditions of living in a house with many Bengali bachelors, all studying and struggling to get by abroad. In 1969, his marriage was arranged in Calcutta, and he got a job at the Dewey Library at MIT. He flies back to Calcutta to attend his marriage and then flies to America to start his job at the library while his wife, Mala, waits to receive a green card in Calcutta.
The narrator arrives in Boston on the same day as the astronauts land on the moon for the first time, which is July 20. He navigates his world in America by adjusting to the currency change, the road structures, shopping, and food items. He stays at the YMCA to avoid spending a lot of money, but his stay is noisy and very gloomy. When he sees an ad in the newspaper for a room on rent, he decides to check it out. The narrator is not very pleased with the landlady, who proves to be slightly eccentric and very old. She tells him that the rent must come on time, which is every Friday at $8 a week. She has several other rules and insists on the narrator calling the moon landing “splendid”, which annoys the narrator greatly. However, he decides to go ahead with the room since it is nice enough. Chatting with her becomes a part of his daily routine, and when he drops off the rent in her hands with her name marked on the envelope, she is deeply touched.
At the end of the week, Mrs. Croft’s daughter, Helen, who is in her sixties, comes to visit her mother and bring her groceries. She tells the narrator that Mrs. Croft thinks he is a “gentleman” and also reveals that Mrs. Croft is 103 years old. This shocks the narrator, who had thought that the landlady was in her eighties, or at most ninety. Because he now knows her age, he is more sympathetic to her and finds her vulnerable living all alone. He is also amazed by the fact that she was born in 1866 and has seen so much, which is why she has relatively traditional beliefs, like that a woman and a man having a conversation in a room without being married is improper. He says that she was born at a time when society was “filled with women in long black skirts” who held “chaste conversations in private parlors”. When Mala’s green card is approved, he rents an apartment for himself and his wife and moves out of Mrs. Croft’s room. Though she seems indifferent to his departure and he expected nothing else, the narrator is somewhat hurt.
The narrator soon realizes that he and his wife are practically strangers who have nothing in common except that they spent a couple of days together. She is still very much Indian in her attitude, dress, and demeanor, while the narrator has become Americanized. Mala tries hard to make their apartment seem like a home, but they remain strangers. The narrator takes Mala to visit Mrs. Croft when Helen answers the door and tells him to stay with her while she goes out and gets a few things. She is lying on the bed, and he realizes that Mrs. Croft has broken a hip, but her personality is still the same. Though she is stern with Mala, Mrs. Croft pronounces her a “perfect lady”.
It is at this very moment that they look at each other and smile for the first time; the narrator feels that the distance between them has been somewhat bridged. The new couple grows closer and explores Boston, with only each other to rely on emotionally. It is Mala who comforts the narrator when he sees Mrs. Croft’s obituary. The story shifts to thirty years later, when Mala and the narrator are American citizens and their son is a student at Harvard. While they visit Calcutta every year and maintain Indian rituals, they have decided to grow old in America. The narrator worries about his son, who might not speak Bengali and maintain his Indianness once they die. The story closes with the narrator thinking that while the Astronauts spent only a few hours on the moon, the narrator has lived on this third continent for 30 years. He acknowledges that he has not accomplished anything extraordinary, but he is amazed by his successful journey.
The Third and Final Continent: Analysis
Jhumpa Lahiri embodies the diasporic consciousness herself, which is captured in most of her stories, and The Third and Final Continent is no exception. When the story begins, the narrator has traveled to England, where he is living with a community of his own—Bengali bachelors who wish to make it abroad. He attends lectures at the London School of Economics and works at a library to get by. In 1969, he undertakes three adventures together: his marriage, adjusting to a new city on a new continent, and a new job. He does not know his wife; his marriage has been arranged by his brother and brother’s wife to a woman he has not seen or spoken to. The narrator later claims that Mala’s arrival in America was like a season approaching—unavoidable and nothing special.
Lahiri sets the backdrop of the story of the unnamed narrator’s Americanization against Armstrong’s moon landing. This is done to illustrate how they’re both remarkable achievements, which the narrator initially does not realize but eventually does. Much like Mrs. Croft’s being alive is “something of a miracle”, the drudgery and ordinariness in his comprehension of the world around him change, and he realizes towards the end of the story that his journey of inhabiting the “third and final continent” is indeed amazing. The moon landing is remarkable, but so is his journey in America.
Themes central to diasporic texts are salient in the story; the narrator describes in detail his adjustment and the struggle to do the same in American society. He gets used to eating cornflakes, understands with much struggle that “piper” means paper, realizes that Americans drive on the right side of the road, and so on. His immigrant experience is expressed through the fears and struggles of his wife Mala as well; he initially thought she would stunt his own assimilation. When she first presents him with the knitted sweaters, his reaction is not one of gratitude or awe; he picks on their fault, that they are “tight” at the arms. This illustrates how little they know each other; her presence does not warm or comfort him. They both, however, emotionally handle the situation well and create a home of their own.
The titular third and final continent is where he first experiences the struggles of diaspora, while it was his second immigrant experience. In London, he had a community of his own. He lived with Bengali bachelors who wore drawstring pajamas, lounged barefoot, and ate egg curry with their hands. In Boston, however, he has no one to call his own but his wife, and even before her, Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Croft plays a huge part in the narrator’s assimilation into America and helps him in the same. He says later that she was the first person he “admired” in America and the first life he “mourned”. Her approval of Mala meant a great deal to him, which eventually helped them bridge the distance between them after a whole week of being strangers in the same house. The story depicts the complexities associated with every immigrant life: the idea of home, maintaining relations and traditions of the home country while assimilating in the host country, and balancing the alienation of being alone while building another life.
Mrs.Croft insisting on calling the flag on the moon “splendid” comes off as another routine to the narrator initially, but when he realizes how old she is, being on Earth and having seen the evolution of society over a century, a man on the moon must have been impossible for her to think about. This instance breaks the mundanity of the narrator’s struggles, and he also starts viewing himself in a new light. He acknowledges at the end of the story that he has a nice home, a son who is going to venture unguarded into the world soon, and is now an American citizen with his wife. But just as the flag on the moon is just as splendid, his journey of thirty years is just as much an achievement for him.
The Third and Final Continent: Character Sketch
The Narrator
The Narrator is an Indian Bengali man who was born in Calcutta; he is the younger of two brothers whose father died early, and widowhood drove his mother to psychiatric illness. His marriage is arranged at 36, when he is a bachelor in London. The story chronicles his assimilation into America as an American citizen and also as an Indian-American man. His landlady, Mrs. Croft, and his mutual but quiet admiration of each other help him greatly in settling in; hers is the first life in America he felt connected to and eventually mourned. His resilience and struggle to westernize himself come full circle when he realizes how old Mrs. Croft is. It eventually helps him come closer to his wife, closing the story on a happy note where he is an American citizen with a nice home and son.
Mrs. Croft
As the narrator’s elderly landlady, Mrs. Croft is slightly eccentric and has highly traditional beliefs. She thinks it is improper for an unmarried man and woman to have a conversation unchaperoned and hates women wearing skirts above their ankles. Mrs. Croft was born in 1866, in an era when man’s landing on the moon must have seemed not only impossible but absurd. Her insistence on calling it splendid initially annoys and even offends the narrator, but after putting things into perspective, he is amazed at her resilience. Mrs. Croft is just as much an astronaut who has journeyed too far and too long from an era long gone.
Mala
Mala is younger than the unnamed narrator by nine years. She is not conventionally beautiful because of her dark complexion. Her family worried that she might never find a husband, having been unmarried since she was 27. She knows how to knit and brings two bright blue sweaters with her when she first comes to America. Her arrival in America is of no particular importance to the narrator, who calls it the arrival of the seasons, which is unavoidable and very routine. Half of her laugh is open and full of kindness,” and she tries to make the narrator’s house a home by cooking dishes from India and making the environment more homely in general. She follows all the traditions of a new wife, like wearing a bindi on her forehead, indicating bridal modesty by covering her head, etc. The narrator worries about his responsibilities as a husband when Mala comes to America. She is generous, and Mrs. Croft pronounces her a “perfect lady”. This incident brings her and the narrator close for the first time, and they eventually live a happy life together.
Literary Devices
- Parallelism: The moon’s landing is used in parallel to the narrator’s arrival in America. The former is a marvelous achievement of mankind, described as “man’s most awesome achievement”. As the story closes, the unnamed narrator notes that his journey is nothing short of amazing. The symbol of the moon landing is significant because, much like those astronauts who have “traveled farther than anyone in the history of civilization,”, the narrator is also finding his identity and carving out a home in a land as foreign as America. The same can be said of Mrs. Croft, whose journey through time is just as amazing to the narrator. The moon landing is nothing short of “splendid” for someone born in 1866.
- Symbol of food: Food is a unifying image throughout the story, which depicts the schism between the home and host countries. Eating egg curry in England does not make the narrator feel like an immigrant because he is among his people in a familiar environment. In America, he has to get used to a breakfast of cornflakes; however, after Mala comes, she cooks him chicken curry with fresh garlic, creating, step by step, a small home in the host country.
In conclusion, The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri effectively deals with isolation, alienation, and identity struggle in a new country, an unprecedented West, salient themes in literature of the diaspora. Lahiri’s story not only chronicles a man’s Americanization but also celebrates every immigrant experience, which is just as marvelous as the moon’s landing. The loneliness that every character feels—the narrator and his wife assimilating to another culture and Mrs. Croft making her peace with changing times—are both diasporic aspects of their personalities; one makes peace with a new country, the other with time.
