The Namesake By Jhumpa Lahiri

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,

In the Namesake written by Jhumpa Lahiri, America is often referred to as the land of opportunity despite how foreign immigrants are still being treated as second class citizens such as an outcast. Throughout the novel The Namesake the parents of Gogol, Ashoke Ganguli and Ashima Ganguli brought their family to America to find their opportunity despite their strong beliefs in their Bengali culture. Going against their Bengali belief, Ashok and Ashima settled in america with their baby boy Gogol and their baby girl Sonia. Throughout the novel The Namesake Gogol has been struggling to find himself and make peace. Gradually throughout the story Gogol begins to wonder why his parents made the decision to come to america, Despite their strong Bengali beliefs to stay in india. Gogol’s crisis to finding himself slowly deteriorates when he finds himself come to peace with who he is. The author, Jhumpa Lahiri shows Gogol improving and developing as a mature character intellectually, socially, and emotionally despite all the hardships that Gogol had faced.

(12). Ashima and Gogol are facing the same process of integrating into two totally different cultures but maintain different levels in assimilating and forming American identities.

In Mira Nair’s film, The Namesake, the disparate cultures of India and America affirms to the binary paradigm of “the one” and “the other”, manifesting the dominance of one from the other and its impact to influence and cause cultural and identity issues. The collision of the two cultures forms a process of trying to construct an identity and a destruction of an ethnic identity, with different factors to consider such as space and other sociocultural codes. This film about the Indian American also shows the concept of model-minority image, standards and expectations imposed to Asian Americans. The Namesake embodies the cultural and identity issues of an Asian American, particularly the Indian Americans, exemplifying the experiences of the

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

Gogol grapples with his name throughout the majority of the novel, yet this tension was in the makings even before his birth. Ashoke and Ashima being immigrants set Gogol up to live in two different cultures, American and Bengali. Many children of immigrants may feel like Gogol, having one foot in each world. Gogol framed his struggle with cultural identity through something tangible, his name. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, Gogol’s struggle with cultural identity is exposed most greatly by the name others call him and his reaction to it.

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, Moushumi Mazoomdar is a Bengali-American woman who marries Nikhil Ganguli, a main character. Like Nikhil, she struggles with her cultural identity and the expectations that are associated with each of the cultures that “claim” her. Moushumi is a second generation Bengali-American who feels that her Bengali and American cultures are not reconcilable. Lahiri expresses this tension when first introducing Moushumi: Nikhil’s mother identifies her by discussing her broken engagement to an American man, and as a reaction to this failed relationship, she is set up with Nikhil, another Bengali-American (Lahiri 192). The Moushumi that Nikhil re-connects with, dates, and eventually marries has undergone a significant transformation in her appearance and personality. The Moushumi that Nikhil had encountered in his family’s Bengali social circles was an obedient daughter who took piano lessons, wore lace-collar shirts, and carried extra weight (Lahiri 214). However, through college and adult life, Moushumi forged a separate identity. She became exotic, confident, and daring, with “pleasingly feline features” that reflect the change (Lahiri 193). Moushumi’s need to break from her “the two countries that could claim her” led her to form a new identity characterized by her striving to achieve immersion in another culture, upper-class cosmopolitanism, and romantic success, but Lahiri portrays the rejection of her cultures as a contributor to Moushumi’s

“I’m Nikhil” (Jhumpa Lahiri 96) these are the words that Gogol uttered for the first

Gogol is an Indian-American who striving to accept himself as one along with struggling against his desires in life. His conflicts are first brought upon himself when he struggles between his Bengali heritage and his own desire for an independent, American lifestyle. Gogol makes constant effort to assimilate into American society, but also does feel guilty betraying his roots. For example, while dining with the Ratliffs, his girlfriend’s very rich American family, Gogol becomes “conscious of the fact that his immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal of his own” (Lahiri 141). Despite spending his time engaging in activities that assimilate further

An individual’s identity is reflected in many aspects of their character. On of the aspects which affect a person’s identity is culture; culture plays a major role in the formation of an individual's character. It imposes customs which ultimately manifest through a person’s identity. The clear link between culture and identity suggests that conflict with one’s culture may affect a person’s sense of self. Jhumpa Lahiri explores this type of conflict in the novel The Namesake, in which Gogol Ganguli is stuck between two cultures the Bengali traditions of his parents and the American culture he grows up with. The novel explores Gogol’s conflict with both cultures and how it ultimately impacts the development of his identity.

This book depicts the national and cultural status of the immigrant mother, who is able to preserve the traditions of her Indian heritage that connect her to her homeland. Ensuring a successful future for her American-born children is coordinated with the privilege of being an American citizen. Ashima yearns for her homeland and her family that she left behind when

Change can be painful. This is true especially when it comes to a human’s journey of growing up and forming one’s own identity. In The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, the novel follows the protagonist, Gogol, as he grows up and struggles with balancing his Bengali identity with Western culture. The reader discovers that on his path to developing independence he chooses to push his family away, which ends up having negative effects, but he believes that he is doing the right thing. Therefore, in The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri uses irony to argue that it is human nature to want to separate oneself from one’s family and childhood in order to establish a

The makeup of our everyday lives is influenced immensely by the culture we are a part of. In Bengali culture, a person is usually given two names, a pet name and a proper name. Families who move from Calcutta often struggle to assimilate to American life and maintain their cultural heritage. In the novel, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol’s changing of his name along with his romantic relationships with Ruth and Maxine show his initial rejection of Bengali identity and culture. This essay will give an explanation into the ways in which Gogol rejected his culture, first by changing his name, but also through his close relationships with American girls.

For Ashima, books are carriers of names and records of past connections with friends and family. Later in the novel, Gogol’s wife Moushumi ends up rekindling an old romance with a man named Dimitri in a blatant act of infidelity, after discovering his name on a resume in her colleague’s office and rediscovering his name scrawled inside a book on her shelf at home. Both the resume and book are fraught with meaning as they bear his name and remind her of their previous connection. Literature is central to Lahiri’s depiction of past connections because reading is a method for validating human experience, while teaching empathy for separate human experiences: reading connects people.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.