The Lowland Themes

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland is, at its heart, an exploration of violence. The 1960s India of the novel’s opening pages is not even two decades removed from the violence of Partition, the 1947 division of British India into India and Pakistan, and it is against this backdrop that brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra grow up. Though nearly inseparable early in life, Subhash feels a rift deepening between himself and his brother as Udayan’s politics…

The Lowland follows the Mitra family through four decades and as many generations, with the fraught relationship between brothers Subhash and Udayan forming the novel’s core. Subhash and Udayan repeatedly question what they owe one another, and, in turn, what they are owed. As they, along with Gauri and Bela, wrestle with their duties to one another, Lahiri explores the tension between competing notions of responsibility and desire, as well as the often selfish…

The Lowland is concerned with the secrets people keep and the deception they engage in as they pursue ideological and personal goals; as they navigate not only politics, revolution, and terrorism, but also marriage, parenthood, and self-delusion. Udayan’s role in a political conspiracy is thrown up against Subhash and Gauri’s plot in the wake of Udayan’s death: when Subhash brings Gauri back to America and promises to raise her and Udayan’s unborn child…

Subhash learns that Udayan has been killed a quarter of the way into The Lowland. The novel, up to that point, has largely been about Subhash navigating his brother’s emotional absence; once Udayan is killed, however, the book becomes about Udayan’s physical absence not just from Subhash’s life, but also from his wife Gauri’s. Udayan becomes, in death, in many ways more present in the lives of those around him. Gauri, in turn…