Response to "Once in a Lifetime" by Jhumpa Lahiri

The short story "Once in a Lifetime" is the story of a young girl and her experience as her home is invaded by near strangers. She does not understand them or why they are in her house, and barely remembers them from childhood. She is addressing the reader as "You," referring to the 16 year old son of Dr. Choudhuri and his wife. The story seems to be a simple case of one family taking advantage of another - the Choudhuri's are spoiled compared to Heme's family. They are rich and have no problems with spending their money on frivolous things, yet they take up space in Heme's house, eat their food, and continuously don't help out with any kind of household chores. But then the "You" character (I cannot, for the life of me, remember his name) explains to Heme that his mother has cancer - she only has about a year to live.

The "you" aspect of this story was very interesting to me. The story wasn't "second person," but instead was a third person limited view focused on Heme's experience. Though she said "you" throughout the piece, the story was about her and her experiences, not the intended reader. It's an interesting dynamic that I don't think would have been conveyed if the story had just been a traditional third person telling. Another interesting aspect was the juxtaposition of Heme's family and the Choudhuri's in terms of their "American-ness." Heme's family "stuck it out" as immigrants and kept to the old ways, while You's family returned to India and became more American.

I thought this was a very interesting story, especially with Heme's change from hate to infatuation. I think that maybe the story might have been enhanced by emphasizing the infatuation a bit. We hear a lot about Heme's feelings about everything in the beginning, but by the middle, I didn't really know Heme's character at all. Was that the point?