“a Man's Journey to the Moon”

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“A Man's Journey to the Moon” Throughout “The Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri, traveling to another country to begin a new life can be an accomplishment that can occur to some people in their lives to better themselves in a situation they are in, despite the cultural challenges they have to face. The narrator expresses at the end of the story how he wanted to educate and establish himself abroad in the United States and the determination which he demonstrated and resulted in many positive outcomes in his life. The story begins with the narrator's move from India to England with the pursuit to educate and establish himself abroad. Eventually he moves to the United States for a job opportunity to work for MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lahiri's intention with the story is to capture the relation between the reader and the narrator based on how each individual has to go out to create and find our own destiny. The narrator's positive notion of the immigrant experience in America is reflected by the narrator's ability to adapt to a new home and keeping one's cultural identity intact, the historical event that occurred in 1969 which was the first manned mission to the moon by the U.S., and the powerful symbolism, of not naming the narrator to be more relatable to the reader. In the beginning of the story, we learn that it is advantageous for the narrator to easily ease himself into a new life rather than abruptly throwing the narrator into the deep end. He has moved from India to England to establish himself and eventually adapted to the British way of life. His time in England is the first occasion that Lahiri shows the reader that by actively keeping one's cultural identity intact one can make any place their home. For example: He makes a constant reference to “egg curry” in the story. The narrator, wherever he goes, he can keep the

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