Time The Depiction of the Setting in The Management of Grief
Kusum says that we can‟t escape our fate. She says that all those people– our husbands, my boys, her girl with the nightingale voice, all those
Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Parsis, and atheists on that plane –
were fated to die together off this beautiful bay. She learned this from a swam in Toronto.
The above quotation show that all of people cannot escape from their fate. The fate does not come to a certain person. The fate comes to all of people
without choosing which one race, religion, culture, or nation to be in a grief. In that place, they can meet people who have the same condition. They do
not see the diversity. The thing what they need is having a relative. Besides, some of them rebuild their power facing the grief.
The term of relative is mentioned in the story, it is when two widows and four widowers who have the same experience of loss spend their day in the
hospital room and scan the photographs of the dead. Mukherjee ‟s TMoG
1988: 184 said that “Six of us “relatives”–two widows and four widowers– choose to spend the day today by the waters instead of sitting in a hospital
room and scanning photographs of the dead. That‟s what they call us now: relatives.”
By seeing that condition, Bhave and Kusum meet Dr. Ranganathan who is also in a grief, meet in a bay when Bhave and Kusum knee-deep in water to
remind Bhave‟s son who likes swimming. Dr. Ranganathan comes to share his grief to them. The way Dr. Ranganathan remembers about his wife is
bring roses. It is because his wife likes pink roses. This way is to show how he loves his wife and regret not to say before his wife died.
They attempts to come back to the nature in order to remember their family. It is because they think what happened in this world will be back to the
nature. By reflecting the chronology, they realize what they have are only from
God. Kusum as the holy person who is always advised by her swami reminding that the depression they feel is only a sign of their selfishness.
Mukherjee ‟s TMoG 1988: 185 mentioned that “I tell myself I have no right
to grieve. They are in a better place than we are. My swami says depression is a sign of our selfishness.”
Another part that they attempt to bring their grief back to the nature is when Bhave floats her family‟s things into the water. It is stated that
But I have other things to float: Vinod‟s pocket calculator; a half-painted model B-
52 for my Mithun. They‟d want them on their island. And for my husband? For him I let fall into the calm, glassy waters a poem I wrote in
the hospital yester day. Finally he‟ll know my feelings for him.
Mukherjee ‟s TMoG, 1988: 187.
In the recovery condition, she has a travel with her family to the beach resorts. Mukherjee‟s TMoG 1988: 190 said that
Courting aphasia, we travel. We travel with our phalanx of servants and poor relatives. To hill stations and to beach resorts. We play contract
bridge in dusty gymkhana clubs. We ride stubby ponies up crumbly mountain trails. At tea dances, we let ourselves be twirled twice round the
ballroom. We hit the holy spo
ts we hadn‟t made time for before. In Varanasi, Kalighat, Rishikesh, Haridwar, astrologers and palmists seek me
out and for a fee offer me cosmic consolations. From the quotation, it shows that her voyage is the effort to reconstruct
their new life by finding and meeting a new bride. After the days she has PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
experienced with her family, she returns to Toronto. She attempts to assess her life and think about the plan she can do to continue her life.
In that place, they try to rebuild their power to have a new life without forgeting them. They try to think positive towards the accident. Besides, they
can meet people who have the same condition whoever they are. They do not see the diversity. The thing what they need is having a relative.
Bhave is in a tiny Himalayan village when she feels her husband comes to meet her. Mukherjee
‟s TMoG 1988: 190 said that Then, on the third day of the sixth month into this odyssey, in an
abandoned temple in a tiny Himalayan village, as I make my offering of flowers and sweetness to the god of a tribe of animists, my husband
descends to me. He is squatting next to a scrawny sadhu in moth-eaten robes. Vikram wears the vanilla suit he wore the last time I hugged him.
The sadhu toses petals on a butter-fed flame, reciting Sanskrit mantras and sweeps his face of flies. My husband takes my hands in his.
You’re beautiful, he starts. Then, What are you doing? Shall I saty? I ask. He only smiles, but already the image is fading. You
must finish alone what we started together. No seaweed wreathes his mouth. He speaks too fast just as he used to when we were an envied
family in our pink spilt-level. He is gone.
It pictures that her husband attempts to give the spirit to Bhave to continue her life even though she has to continue it by herself. Then, she feels her
husband supports her. It means that her husband wants to give a positive suggestion to Bhave. It is because a life still continues. Besides, Bhave,
herself attempts to suggest herself by positive thinking that the life must go on.
Bhave can feel the arrival of her husband who has died, but another person as her mother cannot feel the arrival.
Mukherjee‟s TMoG 1988: 191 said that
When we come out of the temple, my mother says, “Did you feel
something weird in there?” My mother has no patience with ghosts, prophetic dreams, holy men, and
cults.
It shows that she recovers from the grief by starting the positive way. Besides, she comes to a tiny Himalayan village to worship to the god of a
tribe of animists.