Clothes by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - Essay Example

Section/# “Clothes” Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni chapter en d, “Clothes” relates the heartwarming, yet at the same time heart wrenching story, of a child bride, Mita, that comes to the United States in order to fulfill her obligation as a wife of an Indian/American entrepreneur based in California. The story opens with the child-like wonder, apprehension, hope, and dreams of a young girl that wishes for a sense of normalcy, adventure, and happiness as a new bride in a far of world that she little knows or understands.

Like the story of so many American immigrants, hers is a story that typifies the sense of wonder and hope that they believe will embody their American experience. As a function of this, the author relates a curious tale of how life’s twists and unexpected turns end up exhibiting a situation far from what was initially expected within Mita’s wildest dreams. Although many aspects of the story are expected and even gratuitous, a particular sentence of the author’s analysis near the end of the story stands out as a jolting representing of the reality that grips Mita as a function of the lost dreams and expectations that now explain her life.

Says the author, “Someone came into the store last night. He took all the money, even the little rolls of the pennies I had helped Somesh to make up. Before he left he empted the bullets from his gun into my husband’s chest” (Chita 7). As stated, one of the primal reasons why the above quote stands out in such stark contrast to the story that had thus far been related is due to the fact that no matter how expectation had previously differed from reality, Mita had sensed that everything would still be alright.

Although she imaged a life far different from splitting working the grave-yard shifts with her new husband, the thrill of emancipation, the ability to dress in sexy lingerie, wear American styles of clothing, and enjoy the simple things in life such as falling asleep to the sounds of MTV in her own apartment, Mita is jarred back to the realities of a truly different world by having the only thing that she has grown truly accustomed to her, her husband and her love for him, jerked from underneath her.

In this way, the above sentence, which is being analyzed, helps to pull the reader’s attention back from the ethereal and other worldly wanderings of a young woman lost in love and promise to the harsh and cold realities of a violent world in which she has been brought. The inclusion of such a sentence within the story, told in the voice and manner in which it was related, helps to emphasize the level of shock and disjuncture that such an immigrant must have necessarily felt; seeming abandoned by everyone and everything she knew in a world that no longer made much if any sense.

In such a way, the author helps to acquaint the reader with the true level of shock and worldview consideration that the character must have felt with relation to the great and terrible misfortune that has befallen her. Work Cited Divakaruni, Chita B. Woodside High School. N.p., 15 Jan. 2011. Web. 12 Feb. 2013. .