Cultural Shocks As Seen in Nahid Rachlin’s “FORGET ME” Psychological Study

BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR

Nahid Rachlin, born in Iran, came to the United States to attend college and stayed. Among her publications are a memoir, Persian Girls (Penguin), four novels, Jumping Over Fire (City Lights), Foreigner (W.W. Norton), Married To A Stranger (E.P.Dutton), The Heart's Desire (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, Veils (City Lights). Her work has been published in Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Farsi, Arabic. All her published books are currently in print in paperback editions and are available at chain stores as well as independent ones. They are also widely used in college courses.

 

Her individual short stories have appeared in more than fifty magazines, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Redbook, Shenandoah, and New Letters. They have been reprinted in several anthologies, including, Literature, The Human Experience, St. Martin's Press. Her essays have been published in Natural History Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series and in an anthology, How I Learned to Cook and other writings On Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships, Penguin. She has written reviews for the New York Times and Newsday.

PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH

Psychological approach has a view that psychology (the science or study of mind and its process) can be used to help a literary critic to explain, interpret and evaluate literary works. Also, it can be used to explain the psychology of the author and its impact towards the making of the works. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including issues related to everyday life (e.g. family, education, and employment) and the treatment of mental health problems. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of these functions in individual and social behavior.

In the 1930s, German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin introduced the notion that people are largely influenced by how they perceive the world around them. Lewin proposed that behavior is a unique function of the interaction between a person and his or her environment. Lewin conducted pioneering studies of leadership styles. He also advocated the practical application of social psychology in the workplace, the classroom, and other settings. Today, Lewin is considered by many to be the founder of modern social psychology. Others soon became interested in a broader range of topics, such as affiliation with groups, interpersonal attraction, love, the development of close relationships, and the influences of gender, culture, and evolution on social behavior. (Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009 © 1993-2008)

Social Psychology, as a branch of psychological approach deals with how group of people behave and how individual members are affected by the group to which they belong. It is the scientific study of how people think, feels, and behaves in social situations. This area of specialization draws on two disciplines: sociology, which focuses on groups of people; and psychology, which centers on the individual, how individuals conduct in a society. According to Kurt Lewin which his study emphasizes upon the interrelatedness of different elements in which he called individuals life-space meant that he was sympathetic to those who thought we should study social systems as well as individual processes. Lewin has been interested in the study of perception to the area of social behavior. It found that, psychological is able to analyze the cultural sides, for details it needs a branch of it, namely socio psychology. In brief, the Socio Psychology then touches to the cultural shocks. When individual goes through cultural shocks, it can be analyzed by using psychological approach. How persons behave, feel, and pose those shocks is psychologically analyzed. So thus it is the correlation among psychological, Socio Psychology and cultural shocks that analyzed in this paper. (Kurt Lewin, 1947: 10)

CULTURAL SHOCK THEORY

Self-identity usually depends on culture to such a great extent that immersion in a very different culture—with which a person does not share common ways of life or beliefs—can cause a feeling of confusion and disorientation. Anthropologists refer to this phenomenon as culture shock. In multicultural societies—societies such as the United States into which people come from a diversity of cultures—unshared forms of culture can also lead to tension.
Culture shock refers to the anxiety and feelings (of surprise, disorientation, uncertainty, confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate within a different and unknown cultural or social environment, such as a foreign country. It grows out of the difficulties in assimilating the new culture, causing difficulty in knowing what is appropriate and what is not. This is often combined a dislike for or even disgust (moral or aesthetical) with certain aspects of the new or different culture. The term was firstly introduced in 1954 by Kalervo Oberg.

 

In understanding the cultural shock itself, also, it then allows to recognize four phases related to the cultural chock. Those are as follows:

 

1.   Honeymoon Phase

It describes a condition in which the differences between the old and new culture are seen in a romantic light, wonderful and new. For example, in moving to a new country, people might love the new foods, the pace of life, the buildings, etc.

2.   Negotiation Phase

After some time, differences between old and new culture become apparent and may create anxiety. 

3.   Adjustment Phase

          After some time, one grows accustomed to the new culture and develops routines.

4.   Reverse Culture Shock (Re-entry Shock)

It has something to do with a condition of returning to one’s home culture after growing accustomed to a new one that can produce the same effects as described above, which an affected person often finds more surprising and difficult to deal with as the original culture shock. 

 

ANALYSIS

 

Culture shock refers to the anxiety and feelings (of surprise, disorientation, uncertainty, confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate within a different and unknown cultural or social environment, such as a foreign country.
 It is like what happens in Forget Me as seen in several texts as follows:

• “This isn’t the way I was raised,” she said in her heavily accented English. Only later did I understand what she meant – she had converted to Catholicism to please my father and his family.” (page 1, line 17-19) Through the conversation above, Pari Anjomani, Miriam’s mother, has gone through such identity crisis where she seems to be forced to convert to be catholic. As she thinks of America as democracy nation that guarantees human right, it finds that it is not like she imagined before. So, the conversation depicts such a cultural shock. And this part can be considered as negotiation phase of cultural shock. 
• “It’s strange to see all the women in chadors and rupushes,” Lily says. I don’t know how mom is adjusting to it…” (page 6, line 4-5)
  Again, the cultural shock is represented through Lily’s point of view as she is an American woman who considers uncommon thing that women are wearing chadors and veil in Tehran. This can be called negotiation phase of cultural shock.
• “A young, bearded man wearing a black shirt is standing behind the podium giving a lecture on morals. “Respects your elders, listen to your mullahs, avoid superpowers’ propaganda, leading you astray…Women who don’t observe the hejab will burn in the fires of hell,”
  “It’s a good thing we came when it’s cool or else wearing the head scarf and the rupush would be even more intolerable,” Lily says as we quickly leave the square.” (page 4, line 30-35)
  Both Lily and Miriam have a view it is a rare thing in America that one gives such Islamic instruction to others, especially for young people. Such condition can be considered as negotiation phase of cultural shock. 
• “This is an Islamic country. We’re covered up because we aren’t supposed to be temptations to men. You can get arrested and go to jail if you’re seen with a man who isn’t your husband, brother, or father…” (page 6, line 2 from bottom)
  This is Lily’s thought as she realizes the facts occurring in Iran as an Islamic country. This can be called negotiation phase of cultural shock.
• ·         “Don’t you feel bad about all the restriction here? You were so free in America.”
  “Freedom is a subjective feeling. I was shut out of things there, locked up in a dark box.” (page 9, line 11 from bottom)
  Lily keeps in mind that the condition among two countries, America and Iran, is largely distinctive each others where in Iran there finds a plenty of restrictions but not in America which adopts such a freedom owned by every single man. Such condition is appropriate to call as negotiation phase of cultural shock.
• “What she is telling me sounds particularly vulgar in this Islamic culture and particularly strange since with it she’s brushing off any conversation about our mother.” (page 10, line 10-11 from bottom)
  Miriam gets surprised of a condition where she found that a girl was saying such a vulgar chatting in which it is an opposite thing in Iran that such conversation is restricted. It is such negotiation phase of cultural shock.
• “I remember Mom whispering things to her relatives about religion, a certain concern on their faces at what she said, nervousness on her part. These images and sounds have come to me repeatedly over the years, like a dream; they are so disconnected from my life in Long Island.” (line 3 from bottom of page 3 up to line 1-2 of page 4)
  Miriam is astonished when she heard her mother told uncommon habit happened in her mother’s hometown, it is not the same as she thought before that Tehran has such uncommon culture as like in Long Islands (America). This condition can be considered as negotiation phase of cultural shock.

CONCLUSION

Psychology approach can be applied to help a literary researcher in explaining, interpreting, and evaluating the literary works. Also, it can be used to explain the psychology of the author and its impact towards the making of a literary work.

Culture shock refers to the anxiety and feelings (of surprise, disorientation, uncertainty, confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate within a different and unknown cultural or social environment, such as a foreign country.

From those understanding of cultural shock, then we can seduce that those (cultural shocks) indirectly represent the cultural identity of certain nation as what happens in the story entitled Forget Me by Nahid Rachlin. Fact is the impacts of interracial marriage can be analyzed by means of psychological approach that in the long run uses the branch of it called Socio Psychology that deals with how individual members are affected by the group to which they belong. By using this branch, then this paper attempts to analyze the sides of cultural shocks undergone by the individual.

 

Bibliography

http:\\Cultureshock.htm

http:\\Culture%20shock.htm#Phases_of_culture_shock

http:\\IranianAmericanCultural_files\worldclock.htm

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008

Lewin, Kurt. 1947. Group Decision and Social Change in T.M. New Comb and E.L. Harley (eds), Reading in Social Psychology. NewYork: Holt
Smith, Peter B and Michael Harris Bond. 1993. Psychology Across Culture. Harvest Wheatsheat