When I was putting the collection together, I knew from the beginning that this had to be the title story, because it best expresses, thematically, the predicament at the heart of the book -- the dilemma, the difficulty, and often the impossibility of communicating emotional pain and affliction to others, as well as expressing it to ourselves" ("A Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri," From a Reader's Guide for Interpreter of Maladies, 1999). Cultural miscommunication is a metaphor for romantic miscommunication and vice versa.

Likewise, the title of "The Third Continent" suggests the distance that often exists in relationships, and the fact that for immigrants in a relationship, America can become a third continent, a place to explore their mutual distance in a new context, for better or for ill. According to the Reader's Guide to the collection, "collapse, deterioration, or passing of once-important cultural or spiritual values," marks the tale of...
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