Page 318 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes Twinkle’s bath to announce that he is going to throw away the lawn statue of the Virgin Mary. She
tells him in a peevish, childish way that she hates him, throwing a tantrum.
Clearly desire has no mature significance for her. She takes no satisfaction in the treasures she had
already found, and in the end the bust of Christ from the attic replaces the novelty from the Virgin
Mary statue in her attention. As we would expect, Twinkle’s language equivocates and demonstrates
the erosion of meaningful distinction. She gives her reasoning for not throwing away the little relics:
“It would feel, I don’t know, sacrilegious or something.”
Her comment downgrades sacrilege into an indistinct negative feeling, interchangeable with any
other negative feeling. If camp serves only as a distraction, what might be the way out? Living in
society entails exposure to media, and we cannot control completely how our actions and material
objects will signify to others. Neither can we avoid consumption in a way that does not extract us
from society and (on a much more basic, biological level) life completely. Rather, the solution comes
into focus as we identify a commonality between consumerist society and the camp style.
Jhumpa Lahiri presents her characters with incoherent and contradictory forces of society that they,
and we, must navigate. Her writing also positions ordinary desires and longings as points of cultural
conflict. These cultural conflicts can sometimes manifest the constraints imposed by the socioeconomic
organization of a society. When those constraints are derived from commoditization, exchangeability
pervades our use of signs in ways that make self-conception problematic. This problem ultimately
brings about a crisis of identity and desire as exchangeability reduces cultural difference to its most
basic, consumable parts. Camp as a style is merely another mode of consuming images that recognizes
distinction only in terms of an audience. In reflecting on the nature of our real desires, we must
silence that audience if we ever hope to find wisdom.

What did Twinkle find along with a bottle of the Vinegar?

Character Analysis of Twinkle
Twinkle is a very pretty, young Indian woman, who likes to get dressed up and look good. Her face
was very girlish looking and had untroubled eyes. Her name in itself shows shw’s a fun girl. In the
story it states she loved to wear high heels, some that were three inches and leopard print. This
shows that she’s fun and likes to be seen. It also said that she wore someblack stirrup pants and a
yellow chenille sweater. So she can still look cute dressing down too. It also says that she had an
appointment for a manicure and pedicure before the party so she doesn’t like to just dress good, but
look good all the way around What she wears to the party is also described as very elegant and
classy, but fun at the same time. Twinkle definitely has a sense of style.
“Guess what I found”, was the first thing Twinkle said in the story. By this first statement, it proved
to me that she was a fun girl, not wanting to just tell Sanjeev what it is she found, but to play a game
with him to figure it out. When she says, “I would feel terrible throwing them away”, shows that she
is also a very caring person. Even to people she doesn’t know. Twinkle also made compromises with
Sanjeev by telling him she would hide her new “treasures” behind the door or out of the wayin the
lawn. Twinkle also did not have the same taste in music as Sanjeev did because when he was listening
to his music she told him to turn it off because it was putting her to sleep. Twinkle also proved that
she doesn’t care what people think by constantly asking Sanjeev why he always cares what people
think because clearly she doesn’t care. I also noticed that Twinkle is very outgoing and definitely a
people person. She knows how to start a conversation and to keep guests entertained with different
stories she would tell and what not.
Twinkle definitely likes to smoke. She’s constantly smoking throughout the story. Usually, smoking
is a release of stress and other things. So I assume her smoking was a way of just letting her troubles

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