Analysis Of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namesake illustrates the assimilation of Gogol as a second generation American immigrant, where Gogol faces the assimilation of becoming an American. Throughout the novel, Gogol has been struggling with his name. From kindergarten to college, Gogol has questioned the reason why he was called Nikhil when he was a child, to the reason why he was called Gogol when he was in college. Having a Russian name, Gogol often encounters questions from people around him, asking the reason of his name. Gogol was not given an Indian name from his Indian family or an American name from the fact that he was born in America, to emphasize that how hard an individual try to assimilate into a different

He first clings to enchanting white women, hoping to adopt their identities so he can escape the perplexity of his own, but the cultural clashes pervade both relationships. While dating Maxine, a wealthy New Yorker, Gogol notes, “She has the gift of accepting her life…he realizes that she never wished she were anyone other than her herself…This, in his opinion, is the biggest difference between them,” highlighting his personal struggle with accepting his heritage (138). Gogol’s glamorous romance with Maxine is juxtaposed to the humiliation he feels for his family to stress his longing to cast-off his Bengali identity. Judith Ceaser observes, “[Gogol and Maxine’s relationship] is a lovely, expensive, comfortable identity, given to him as a love-token…to him it seems a rejection of [his parents] …He hasn’t yet realized that instead of being an identity imposed on him from outside, they are a part of the pattern of key relationships in his life through which he can define himself,” provoking the idea that Gogol’s stubborn naïveté is the source of his unhappiness (Ceasar). When Maxine’s unwillingness to adapt to Bengali culture drives them apart, Gogol searches for a more ordinary love. Moushimi, the daughter of Bengali family friends, should be mundane and comfortable to Gogol, yet their relationship is plagued by complexities. Both view each other as

The Namesake, written by Jhumpa Lahira, a famous Indian writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for her story collection Interpreter of Maladies, brilliantly illustrates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations. In this novel, the main characters Ashima and her husband, Ashoke, were first generation immigrants in the United States from India. The whole story begins with Ashima's pregnancy and her nostalgia of her hometown, and a sense of melancholy revealed from the first chapter. While Ashima felt insecure and worried about her new life in the United States, her husband Ashoke, rather wanted to settle in and struggle for a new life. All of uncertainty and reluctance of this new-coming couple faded way when their son,

As far as relationships go, people believe there is an ideal match somewhere out there in the world that was made for them. Most of the time this conspiracy becomes a reality, but only for few. In the story The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the main character, Nikhil and his ex-fiancé, Moushumi seemed as if they were the kind of couple that would have lasted forever. Unfortunately as we continue to read through the story, we realized that they were not really meant to be. Even though they seemed as a perfect puzzle piece, various factors contributed to the end of their marriage.

The Namesake, by Jumpa Lahiri, is a misfortunate story of an Bengali immigrants who came to live, to give birth, and to raise family in America. Through different themes, Lahiri portrays the struggle and conflict revolving around family and the notion of one's identity. It emphasizes the role of identity asserted on the Gangulis in the story. Unlike others, Lahiri’s uses of food as a central theme to connect and disconnect the Ganguli to the conflict of hybridity. Hybridity involved the Americanisation of the Ganguli’s culture, tradition, and food.

There, I had access to my father’s vast library of books. Reading books and writing poetry have been my chief joys since I was a girl, when my father, Thomas Dudley, educated me. I read Virgil, Homer, Geneva Bible, and countless other literary masterpieces. But in this new place, books are extraordinarily scarce.

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s, The NameSake, the author uses indirect characterization to show the development of Ashima’s character over the course of the text. Ashima has had to adapt to many different living ways. Ashmia, the mother of main character Gogol Ganguli, had to change her Bengali lifestyle while living in America. Ashmia has shown to grow as a person through her experiences with her appearance and her individual conflicts of the Bengali vs. American culture.

People that we care about are very important in our life. They can be the most important thing to any person. Some people find reasons why they like a certain individual, whether it would be in a current situation, personality, or physical attraction. In the book The Namesake Gogol is a first generation of immigrant parents trying to adapt to their new life in the U.S. Since his parents are immigrants, they practice unique tradition that the average American are not used to. Throughout his life he has a few relationships that have been very important to him and changed him. Each of these relationships shows his views on Bengali tradition. Through the use of Gogol’s relationships, Lahiri shows Gogol’s feelings towards

The Namesake, by Jumpa Lahiri, is a story of misfortune that strikes a family of Bengali immigrants who came to live, to give birth, and to raise a family in America. Through different themes, Lahiri portrays the struggle and conflict revolving around family and the notion of one's identity. It is these themes that are use to emphasizes the role of identity asserted on the Gangulis. In this story, Lahiri’s uses food as a central theme to shows the Gangulis' conflict of hybridity. Hybridity refers to the Americanization and improvisation of the Ganguli’s Bengali culture, tradition, and food.

Is it Gogol or Nikhil? Making changes for the sole purpose to improve is most commonly known as reinvention. Reinventing can happen in numerous different ways. Gogol in The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, experiences a demoralizing childhood with finding success in reinventing himself by changing his name. By giving himself a new sense of self-confidence Lahiri demonstrates that reinventing oneself can be immensely simple.

Yet the thought of this eventual demise provies no sense of victory, no solace. It provices no solace at all.” We as the readers learns that Gogol’s identiy is closely tied to gis name. By the end of the novel, with Ashoke passed away, Gogol’s mother Ashima moving back to India and his sister Sonia getting married, the idea that there might be a time where no family members will be around to call him “Gogol” saddens him, and as the readers, we empathise with Gogol. Perharps Gogol likes that name a bit more than he awares of, not because of how it sounds, but because of who calls him that.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri symbolizes the environment of love, marriage, and divorce. All of those key points show on three different and intimate view of Gogol’s relationship. Gogol uses and shows love as another means of past and working so hard to form his identity and the women he is drawn at different points of time in the novel matches his attitude toward the past.

In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity. Everyone's aspirations, values and habits influence their identity, however a quality one can not change nor ignore is their cultural background. Our culture consists of our behaviors and beliefs, making it our most impressionable factor throughout our development. Culture gives meaning to the word identity and may even distinguish groups. Jhumpa Lahiri explores the effects of a cultural clash in her novel The Namesake, in which Ashima Ganguli is torn between her origins as a Bengali women and the American Culture she is forced to adapt to. This forced change compromises her character, leaving her identity up to the culture she choses.

Nair attempts to interpret and relocate the characters from their succinct semantic images on paper and re-cast them as believable entities embodying social, economic and psychological baggage in an essentially postmodern world order. In Lahiri’s novel, a world order presents itself where people like Ashoke and Ashima are subconsciously put on the fringes of the mainstream American society, in part by their attitude and approach to the new, almost alien societal and cultural experiences and circumstances and in part by the reaction to their reaction by the world around them. And this is essentially a conflicting world order where there is an intent to adapt to this bewildering newness around while there is equally strong a yearning for the familiar and much cherished roots. The two characters (Ashima more visibly so) are torn, as it were, between the two worlds, and struggling to conform to either! Into this palpable melee comes the son. The second-generation of Indian immigrants and a first-born American citizen of Bengali origin who is bestowed with a name borrowed from a Russian writer of repute, Gogol Ganguly endeavours to be efficaciously functional in a space that might be essentially regarded as an interstice or gap between the American ‘public’ sphere as Nikhil, truncated or anglicised to the convenient ‘Nick’, and the Indian ‘home’ sphere as Gogol, while trying to make peace or strike a middle path with his baffling name and social, national, cultural and ethnic

Imagine two trains, each from opposite ends of the country, stopping at the same station right in the middle of the country, and the passengers of the trains being exchanged, as they are vacationing. No vivid imagination is needed here, as this is a real-life situation. People come and go, and one may even have taken part in such an experience, without giving much thought to it. It seems to be such a simple idea, and broadening it seems too difficult to even try, much less make it successful. After all, what use would this concept even be to people? Why would people care about trains? Of course, literal perception always finds its way to cloud judgement of any thoughts, from the simplest thoughts of a train to complex ideas even scientists have trouble understanding, such as spirituality. However, accomplishing all of this arrives an author, Jhumpa Lahiri, from one of the trains mentioned, vacationing, exploring her ride, delivering a beautiful novel, The Namesake, as a guide to a new perception of the world, like putting in contacts. Placing literal different settings for readers’ quick comprehension and creating a drama for symbolic purposes while delivering a message, the theme, she intended to present to her audiences, Lahiri outdoes herself. Using these elements of setting, symbolism, and theme to her advantage, Lahiri molds beautiful effects on her characters, ultimately affecting the readers of her novel, The Namesake.