Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” is a short story that focuses on the formation of first impressions based on hopes, rather than facts and observances. But the thing I find most interesting about the story is what links the two protagonists’ hopes: the different effects a son has on each other are the sources of both of their hopes. The Das marriage and the Kapasi marriage suffer tension because of a son in each marriage.

Mr. Kapasi has a son who dies of typhoid. That’s friction enough in a marriage, right? Sure, but Kapasi isn’t lucky enough to just have a son die of typhoid. On top of Mr. and Mrs. Kapasi’s marriage being arranged and having a son die early on, Kapasi takes on a job as an interpreter for a doctor. Kapasi acknowledges that his wife is “reminded of the son she’d lost” because of his job and “resented the other lives he helped, in his own small way, to save” (585). Mrs. Kapasi never speaks favorably of Mr. Kapasi’s job. This tension in their marriage, caused in the end by their son, breeds a desperation for validation, for approval, of his occupation and of, ultimately, his own failings in Mr. Kapasi’s heart. So when Mrs. Das says Mr. Kapasi’s job is “a big responsibility” and “romantic” (584), Kapasi leaps at the appearance of, what he believes to be, the solution to all of his emotional deficiencies. Mr. Kapasi automatically applies all of the solutions to his problems to Mrs. Das simply because she has the faintest potential to be the accepting love he’s longed for all this time. He, of course, disregards her apparent romantic disinterest in him because he so desperately needs her to be the fulfillment of his deficiencies.

Mrs. Das does not have a son who dies, but the son of a man other than Mr. Das. Mrs. Das is filled with guilt, though she terms it pain, in having cheated on her husband and having a child other than his. Of course, she has not told him. The birth of her son fills her with guilt, a guilt she’s been carrying for eight years. She claims she has “terrible urges . . . to throw things away” and that she feels “so terrible all the time” (591). This “pain” induces a necessity for forgiveness, for cleansing in Mrs. Das. She goes through the following eight years searching for someone to pour her secret out who will give her the forgiveness and cleansing she needs. When she discovers Mr. Kapasi is an interpreter of maladies, she believes she has found her baptismal fountain at last.