Bureaucracy Theme Analysis

Judith Templeton’s approach to grief exemplifies a kind of bureaucratic coldness that the story condemns. At the beginning of the story, Judith—a white Canadian woman—enlists Shaila to help her navigate “the complications of culture, language, and customs” that she faces when she meets with grieving families who immigrated from India. Judith seems, on the one hand, aware of her own shortcomings—and, by extension, those of the Canadian government—when communicating with families affected by the tragedy. But she also views cultures, languages, and customs different than her own first and foremost as complications that can be bureaucratically solved.

That perspective, and its deleterious effects, become clear when Shaila accompanies Judith to meet with a Sikh couple who lost their sons in the plane bombing. Judith aims to persuade the couple, with Shaila’s assistance, to sign papers that will ensure they receive benefits from the Canadian government. The couple insists, though, that God will provide for them, not the government, and that their sons, who were killed in the attack, will help them when they return. After Judith and Shaila leave without getting the couple to sign the papers, Judith says to Shaila, “You see what I’m up against? … Their stubbornness and ignorance is driving me crazy.” Shaila thinks of pointing out the shortsightedness of Judith’s approach by telling her, “In our culture, it is a parent’s duty to hope.” She refrains from doing so, though, because it has become futile to try to effectively communicate with Judith. Judith has become rigidly attached to a bureaucratic mode of understanding the world, which organizes grief into predictable stages and sees people grieving the death of their sons as obstacles to be overcome and complications to be untangled, not human beings to be understood.