Thoughts From The Short Story Of "The Interview"

As we all know, the nation of Indian has a Caste system which divide people into different classes. By reading the story "The Interview", I understand that the Indian family are doing ranking--from the mother to the son, from the sister-in-law to the wife, from the strongest to the weakest respectively. In the story, mother represents the most powerful figure in the family, although sister-in-law replaces her position after mother becomes old. The young man (main character)'s wife is the weakest one unfortunately. From the beginning of this interesting story, through the young man 's description of the relationship with many women in the family, we easily find out that the young man's mother has special privilege which reveal that she is the most powerful person among the households. Then, he introduces his sister-in-law; then, brother; then his wife.

In this short story, the young man's wife had no influence on family affairs. She seldom spoke and explained what she wanted in front of family members. Just like the young man said, she didn't dare to say anything. The only opportunity for her to share her thinking was the bedtime. What cause her to be like that? The story tells us that because she took a piece of cloth from her mother-in-law to make dresses for their baby once, and young man's mother got mad at her. The husband--young man didn't help her out; instead, he hit her across the face. If husband doesn't care about his wife, respect her who else will? We can prove this point through the young man's sister-in-law. She shouted at the young man's wife and makes her do all the most difficult household tasks. The young man's wife stand for everything she suffered, again, she didn't dare to say anything, even to her husband. The only thing she expect was begging her husband to get a good job and took her away to live somewhere alone, where only her husband and their children. She was so weak that she can not stand up and fight for her rights.

The marriage of India society is very feudalistic is this story. The young man's marriage is decided and arranged by his mother and family. There is no love and trust in the marriage. This is an unhappy marriage. Her husband doesn't respect her; although sometimes husband seems like that he cares about her feeling. Her husband changed his mind very quickly. He only cares about his own business. More to the point, as I mention before, her husband hit her across the face to satisfy his mother. We can imagine that the family violence exists between the young man and his wife. She is the victim. His wife and sister-in-law's quarrels, the young man never deal with and find a way to solve the problem. Maybe this is not right, but I would like to say that the young man is a selfish man. He never cares his wife's feeling, never understand wife's difficulties. After he run away from the interview office, he went to eat cakes to avoid facing family's questions. He tried to live in his own world. He didn't dare facing the reality. Took all sorts of excuses as the reason, changed his mind and escaped the interview at last