Melanie Santaella
Durrahs
Honors Literature and Composition
23 November 2016
Research Paper A short story named “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee was mainly about the main character that lost many family members and is now grieving for her loved ones. This short story was published in 1988 and was proudly a winner of the 1988 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The social worker, Judith Templeton, shows that it is certainly possible to manage grief and still live life just like it says in the title of the short story. The author writes about a major problem and affects the Air India Flight 182 had on many women and how they grieved for their loved ones. Shaila and Mukherjee both express their feelings on the Canadian government…show more content… Even though most of the passengers were Canadians just like her husband. She noticed the bias society that Canada had and how their government tried to justify and handle the situation. How they announced that it was an Indian matter just expresses and shows how poor an investigating good they had and how they didn’t care enough to try and dig deeper and find out what really happened. They could have learned more about the plane crash and published that is was a Sikhs terrorist attack instead of just implying it was an Indian issues. In the short story Judith also can't draw a line when talking about Sikhs and Hindus and how they had a rocky past. When Judith asked Shaila to help her because she knew most of the people that were on plane, Shaila only responds with…show more content… The theme of this short story is grief and how many people can overcome grief and carry on with their lives even though they struggle with cultural demands and views. They had the other families and the government’s aid to help them pass the grieving and on to a new stage of grieving. “The Management of Grief” shows the mourning ritual that Indian women have to indore. Shaila is expected to follow mourning traditions after her husband died in the plane crash even though that means that she will have to live the rest of her life ignoring the personal needs she has. She is conflicted because she dosen’t know if she wants to live a life as a actual indian women should mourn or a modernized Canadian women when it came to mourning her husband. “Women are confronted with the problem of mourning; do they need to observe the self-sacrificing mournoing rituals and decorum of “proper” Indian widows, even in the “new world” of Canada?” (Milne 10) At t he new of the story she said her husband came to her and told her that she had to finish what they started together. This quote helps her pass her grieving and let her start a new chapter in her life. Her husband’s death was not her fault so there shouldn’t be a direct way of living and mourning but for her there is and that is what she will struggle with for the rest
