Setting

The events described in the short story “The Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri take place on three continents. 

Some of the events take place in Asia, in Calcutta, India where the narrator grew up and gets married. Her appears to have had a traditional Indian upbringing where he was expected to take care of his elderly, sick mother, pursue an education and a good job, and enter into an arranged marriage. This is also what eventually makes him go abroad.

Other events take place in Europe, in London, where the narrator studies and works. While in London, the narrator lives in a modest house with other Bengali immigrants: “We lived three or four to a room, shared a single, icy toilet, and took turns cooking pots of egg curry, which we ate with our hands on a...