Simple Recipe Interpretation
Through the text ‘Simple Recipe’, Madeleine Thien is trying to explore the cultural conflict in a family while making a transition from one society to another. The plot of the simple Recipe reveals that the narrator father dislikes her brother because of him forgetting to speak Malaysian language. And the narrator brother disliking the father because of his emphasis on relating to his cultural roots. The emotion of not relating to cultural roots can be so strong that it can take the shape of violence and wreak havoc in the family. Here, we could clearly see that there were two different forces in play . The force that was making the father to stay close to his social and cultural roots and the force that was making the narrator brother to adapt to the new social and cultural environment. And as we see, because these forces were lying in the opposite ends of the spectrum, this resulted in having tension in the family relationships.
Symbolization of Fish
The fish presents as a symbol of turbulence in the family relationships which eventually culminates into dividing the family apart. Like the fish that was confined to the plastic bag, this family is confined and gasping for breath and going about helplessly and hopelessly. Eventually the fish gets killed, which implies that family is going to get divided. This also goes along with the narrator, when we hear from her saying, “I want to stay where i'm facing the wall. I'm afraid if i turn around and go to him, i will be complicit, accepting a portion of the guilt, no matter how small that piece. I do not know how to prevent this from happening again, though now i know it will break us apart.” (p18) This fictious story of Madeleine Thien runs parallel and is reflective of many multicultural immigrant families in Canada. Most of the families want their sons and daughter to embrace their cultural and social roots of their origin but don’t succeed and there is vicious rebellion between both the forces in which case some succeeds while the others don’t and this ultimately results in breaking the family apart. Through the text simple recipe the Madeleine Thien is trying to show that the relationship in the various multicultural immigrant families isn’t as simple as like the “simple Recipe” of rice making. In other words it’s not black and white. There is ambiguities within the family and it's not easy to draw the border line.
