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Literary Devices
Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Shaila and Judith:
In “The Management of Grief,” the white government social worker Judith Templeton acts as a foil to Shaila, meaning that her presence in the story reveals important qualities of Shaila’s character. Specifically, Judith’s bureaucratic and secular approach to supporting grieving people, when juxtaposed with Shaila’s more personal and spiritual approach, reveals that Shaila’s approach (both with other grieving people and with herself) is much more liberatory and humane. While Judith relies on her social work textbooks and the ideas they contain about the proper sequence of the stages of grief, Shaila knows that grieving is a non-linear and deeply individual process, noting to Judith at one point, “We all must grieve in our own way.”
The differences in Judith and Shaila’s approaches to managing (or not managing) grief comes across best at the end of the story, as the two women drive around visiting people in Shaila's Indian-Canadian community who lost family members in the attack:
In the car, Judith says, “You see what I’m up against? I’m sure they’re lovely people, but their stubbornness and ignorance are driving me crazy. They think signing a paper is signing their sons’ death warrants, don’t they?”
I am looking out the window. I want to say, In our culture, it is a parent’s duty to hope.
“Now Shaila, this next woman is a real mess. She cries day and night, and she refuses all medical help. We may have to—”
“—Let me out at the subway,” I say.
Here, Judith demonstrates a distinct lack of compassion when describing an elderly couple’s “stubbornness and ignorance” for not agreeing to sign a document that would allow them to receive financial assistance from the government, followed by her pronouncement that another grieving woman is “a real mess” because she “cries day and night” and refuses medical help. While Judith tries to impose a sort of bureaucratic order on these people’s grieving processes, Shaila offers understanding and care. Not only did she try to connect with the elderly couple in the previous scene with compassion rather than hostility, but here she asks to be let out of the car because she can no longer go along with Judith’s judgmental and harmful approach.
In juxtaposing the two women in this way, Mukherjee communicates to readers that the “right” way to manage grief is not to manage it at all, but to feel it fully and to support others in feeling it fully, not judging or cajoling them for the choices they then make.
Related Themes:
