...The Namesake Asian American Literature In any story, movie, novel, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, suspense or drama, there are always themes that signify the main elements of that selection. “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri, has many different themes that are brought upon the reader throughout the book and movie. Some themes that are related to this story are Identity, Relationships between children and their parents, Regret, Loneliness, Language, Expectations, Cultural Differences, Immigrant Experience, Values and Beliefs, and Death and Mourning. “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri is a novel that portrays the life of a man named Gogol Ganguli and how he spent his life being born and brought up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At birth, he was given the temporary name “Gogol” since his parents, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, were waiting on Gogol’s grandmother to send them the name that she wanted. This was done in Bengali tradition for many generations. During Gogol’s early childhood, his parents sent him to school notifying the Principal to use his formal name “Nikhil.” Now since he was just a child, he was brought up with the name Gogol and did not want to be called anything else. However, as he entered high school, people started making fun of his name. He slowly started to believe that this name is not the one he wants anymore and that he wants to change it to “Nikhil.” His father told him “In America, anything is possible, so do as you wish.(pg. 100)” The theme of Identity...
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...Bloomed or Doomed? Relationships can be rewarding, yet they can cause frustration and hardship as well. Though there are many types of relationships, each requires a dependency or interaction between counterparts. Many people have a different perspective of what ingredients are needed for a successful relationship or marriage. Some people think they can be compatible only with someone who is very similar to themselves, while others feel that opposites attract. Even though there are many variables to a successful relationship and marriage, there are some crucial elements that need to be constant. If those elements are ignored, the connection may be lost. Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories “A Temporary Matter” and “The Third and Final Continent” demonstrate the need for communication and adaptation between two individuals to have a successful marriage. Communication is mandatory in almost every aspect of life where more than one person is involved. It can mean the difference in any outcome if there is too little or more than enough. Communication can come in many forms such as verbal, non verbal, and physical. As every relationship begins with two strangers who come to know each other better through communication, a lack of communication can cause those who once knew each other to become strangers once more. In Lahiri’s story “A Temporary Matter,” Shukumar and his wife Shoba become very distant from each other after the tragedy of their stillborn child. They create as much space as possible...
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...A Stranger: “Interpreter” of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” exhibit a fine collection of short stories each with own original narrative and Lahiri’s sophisticated way of expression. An interesting point is that all the short stories barely have anything in common: each has a different voice, different main characters, a different setting, and a different kind of conflict. Nonetheless, the stories tie up together so well that they really do form a “collection” under same objectives: the “maladies.” Every story introduces characters with certain trauma and Lahiri shows how the characters cope with their own problems. Among nine stories, I would like to especially focus on two, “A Temporary Matter” and “Interpreter of Maladies,” and discuss what they have in common and how they relates to each other by sharing some fundamental factors. The two stories share numerous similarities: the couples have difficult time dealing with their relationships; it is described in detail how burdensome the life of characters became because of the problematic matters between them; the characters lack enough communication needed for solving their problems; and the children are centered on the incidents. The most significant and thought-provoking similarity is that there exists a figure or event that motivates the characters to confide their secretive and sensitive issue to another. In “A Temporary Matter” the darkness plays the role; in “Interpreter of Maladies,” Mr. Kapasi....
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...Nina Reed Jhumpa Lahiri is a realist writer of today. Her work is inspired by her experience as an Indian growing up in America and never quite fitting in with both her traditional Indian background and her new American community. Lahiri’s stories express her personal encounter with evading her Indian heritage. She involves in her work the everyday struggles of being stuck between two cultures and remaining true to one’s self. The majority of her stories incorporate her main character having an identity crisis. Lahiri herself, as well as some of her close friends, battled with defining her sense of self as well as how it affected her personal relationships. The author’s stories are relatable in a sense that it deals with the everyday struggles finding one’s true self. On July 11, 1967, Nilanjana Sudheshna Lahiri was born in London England to Bengali Indian immigrants. At the age of three, Nilanjana and her family relocated to the West of the Atlantic to Rhode Island. Because her name was difficult to pronounce, her teacher called her by her nickname, Jhumpa. It was only a pet name that her parents called her, but in America, it became the name she was called by her friends and teachers. This event would mark the beginning of her struggle to assimilate in America. Her father was and still is a librarian at the University of Rhode Island, which influenced her love of reading and writing. While growing up, Jhumpa was often conflicted between both American...
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...According to Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova from the Migration Policy Institute, Indian immigrants began to arrive to the United States as early as 1820. As of 2013, more than 2 million Indian immigrants lived in the U.S. , accounting for almost 5 percent of the foreign population.” I. For the “alien” characters immigrating to America in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, it was imperative that they made new friends in order to adapt to the foreign environment. Although some may see friendship as not being the most crucial factor in character development, Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates how the intelligence of characters can risebegins to grow as their relationships with other characters become stronger. Prime examples of characters gaining...
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...persons, uncomfortable in their new abodes. However, in alluding to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s quote in The Custom House, the title of the book suggests that the stories should reveal the opposite—in that transplanting peoples to new soil might be beneficial to their mental, social and financial well-beings, creating a shift in fortune. Nevertheless, as a young child, Jhumpa Lahiri experienced similar feelings to her fictional characters within the literary work, struggling with a divided identity as a product of cross-cultural diffusion. Her knowledge of alienation and variance from the norm, adds depth to the conflict, strengthening the atmosphere and emotions surrounding the eight detailed accounts. Her grave experience as a child is reflected in her character’s frequent oscillation between two antagonistic lifestyles. For juvenile readers, Lahiri’s words describe complexities involving migration patterns, cultural issues, alienation, and generational differences, which is reinforced by use of imagery, numerous point-of-views, conflict, irony and diction. The first story in Unaccustomed Earth identifies the relationships and conflicts surrounding Ruma, a well-educated second-generation immigrant, who lives in Seattle with her American husband, Adam, and her son Akash. Throughout the beginning of the short story, generational and cultural conflicts are revealed as Ruma’s father arrives for a short visit. A widower growing up in Bengali, Ruma believes that her father maintains strong...
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...How Different Cultures Shape up the Psychological Upbringing of Lilia Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” is a beautiful story narrated by Lilia, an Indian American girl who is born and raised in the United States where people are sheltered from foreign affairs. The story has taken from Interpreter of Maladies (1999), Lahiri's debut short story collection. The story is told from the first person perspective of Lilia, primarily in her 10th year, through the eyes of a child. Lilia—our narrator—is telling us all of this as an adult remembering her 10-year-old self. Clearly, Mr. Pirzada made an impression on her back then. In the story, the American culture has its major impacts on Lilia and kept her away from her own culture, Indian culture, until Mr. Pirzada comes. After meeting Mr. Pirzada, she becomes interested in her culture and history. Assimilation of Indians to America is one of the overarching themes in “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine”. Lilia and her parents are on either side of a divide. Identity issues are typically compounded generation to generation. Though Lilia’s parents remember their own experiences in India vividly, Lilia is an American and therefore a step removed from the culture of her parents. Her mother is proud of her being American and she thinks that Lilia has “assured a safe life, an easy life, a fine education, every opportunity.” On the other hand, Lilia’s father is afraid of her isolation from her own culture. Her father asks...
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...“A sense of belonging is closely associated with identity, and names are crucial to identity.” ------------------------------------------------- A sense of belonging is made up of various elements, a secure identity being of them. Lahiri questions where is one’s identity found? Is it in their name, their heritage and culture or in their past or present? The Namesake represents identity as one fluid concept and a sense of belonging is closely associated with identity because it is the meaning of the names that can shape the individual’s identity and the clash of cultures can influence the how the individual searches for identity within their name. When Ashima and Ashoke first move to America as immigrants, it is nothing but a learning curve for them as they try and settle into a foreign country where they are faced with cultural differences; and Gogol being the first born is faced with the difficulty of living almost like a test subject as his parents try to master juggling their Bengali heritage and American culture. “They’ve learned their lesson after Gogol…for their daughter, a good name and pet name are one and the same.” This affects Gogol’s sense of belonging and identity as the lesson Ashima and Ashoke have learned prepared them for the challenges of raising their second child, who finds more success in navigating America as a Bengali leading to her finding a secure identity; while Gogol is left with the initial confusions his parents experienced, causing him to feel...
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...Arielle Blumberg Mr. Pei English 4A 16 October 2014 Acculturation “The Namesake”, by Jhumpa Lahiri is a novel that focuses on how Ashima, a woman from India, is coping with the American ways of life. Ashima struggles to enjoy life in America as a new mother to be without her relatives present. Ashima fails to acculturate as a new mother and fails to be happy because she has no knowledge of what is expected of her in America. Ashima is in the hospital, expecting a baby, and she has a hard time acculturating to her surroundings. She lies on the hospital bed, thinking about her family back home and how she will raise a child without her family. Lahiri describes Ashima’s emotions as Ashima thinks about raising a baby in the U.S. all alone,”She is terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one”(6).Ashima is having a hard time because of her fear to raise a baby in an unknown world. That fear seems to be helping her fail in acculturating into the American lifestyle. Another scenario, where Ashima is alone listening to the American women talk right by the curtains, outside of the room, she also realizes that she feels out of place sleeping alone. Lahiri elaborates to her readers on Ashima’s anxiety,“It is the first time she has slept alone, surrounded by strangers;all her life she has slept either in a room with her parents, or with Ashoke at her side”(3). Ashima, as described here, fails to acculturate because she does not understand the...
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...Gogol, the main character of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, has a crisis of identity that is caused by his mother, Ashima and her rejection of American culture, which Gogol quickly adopts, causing him to never develop his own identity and leaving him without a personality and alone. Gogol’s foil is Ashima, as she is a part of his entire life, from the moment he’s born to the end of the book. At first, she rejects American culture, causing Gogol to obviously be drawn towards it, and the fact that Gogol is born into American culture, to begin with, makes him grow up as an American. Not to mention that Ashima, unlike Gogol, has a definitive personality. She is quiet and reserved usually, though in family settings she is way more outgoing and talkative,...
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...Jumpa Lahiri Jumpa Lahiri was born on July 11, 1967 in London to Bengali parents. She was named Nilanjana Sudeshna by her patents, but she goes by her pet name Jumpa. She moved to South Kingstown, Rhode Island when she was three years old. Jumpa Lahiri learned her Bengali heritage from her mother from a very early age. Jhumpa Lahiri is the daughter of a librarian and school teacher. She has always been inclined to creative writing. She married Alberto Vourvoulias Bush in 2001. They have two children from their marriage Octavio and Noor. Jumpa Lahiri received her B.A in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She went on to earn an M.A. in English, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Boston University. From 1997-98, she held a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center. Right from a very young age she felt very strong ties to her parent’s homeland, India, as well as the United States and England. A sense of homelessness and an inability to feel accepted took place as she grew up with the ties to all three countries. To her it is an inheritance of her parent’s ties to India. “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially so for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously, as is the case for their children.”- Jhumpa Lahiri. She is indeed the storyteller who weaves the lace of love, identity, crisis, lies and...
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...An inability to be at peace with oneself is a defining connection between the central characters of The Namesake and Into the Wild, written and directed respectively in 2003 and 2007 by Jhumpa Lahiri and Sean Penn. The notion of nomenclature as a means of redefinition is something with which we become familiar in The Namesake, as we observe Gogol Ganguli's ongoing struggle to identify with the Bengali culture of his parents, rather than the American culture in which he is immersed. Similarly, in an act of defiance against his family and the materialistic American society, Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild establishes a new identity for himself when he abandons all possessions and changes his name before venturing into the isolation of the Alaskan wilderness. Aided by devices, notably setting, symbolism, narrative technique, juxtaposition of minor characters and imagery, Lahiri and Penn endeavour to demonstrate the effects of culture, childhood and family, in particular, on shaping individuality. Diverse settings are employed by Lahiri and Penn to portray culture and its influence on the personas of the central characters. A ceremonial setting is common to both texts and foreshadows the protagonist's desire to retreat from his traditions. Gogol's 'annaprasan' is a customary Indian rice ritual for newborn children, who 'confront [their] destiny' by selecting a 'clump of soil ... ballpoint pen, [or] ... dollar bill' from a plate, respectively representing 'a landowner, scholar...
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...cultural traditions are lost, assimilating allows for people to gain a new way of understanding the world around them as well as create new traditions. Assimilating allows for a person to experience new things that they otherwise wouldn’t have if they didn’t. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Ashima and Ashoke are exposed to the American life and it changes their view of how different their life is in their Bengali culture compared to the American culture. The change takes on a bigger toll for Ashima as she has to live in a life that she is unprepared for. When Ashima gives birth to Gogol, she realizes how difficult it would be for her to raise her son in an environment that is completely foreign to her. Although she still tries to get accustomed to the new culture, she often finds ways to preserve some of her old Bengali traditions such as when she and Ashoke are deciding a name for Gogol or when they celebrate Gogol’s annaprasan. Gogol’s annaprasan was a way for them to keep their Bengali tradition. Unlike American culture, in Bengali culture there is “no baptism for Bengali babies, no ritualistic naming in the eyes of God. Instead, the first formal ceremony of their lives centers on the consumption of solid food” (Lahiri p.38). During the celebration, she would wish that “her own brother [was there] to feed him” and...
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...settle for less than "their ideal of happiness" has given way to "American common sense." Surprisingly, Ashima is pleased with this outcome, as opposed to an unhappy but dutiful marriage for her son. Ashima feels alienated and alone after showering before the party. She "feels lonely suddenly, horribly, permanently alone, and briefly, turned away from the mirror, she sobs for her husband." She feels "both impatience and indifference for all the days she still must live." She does not feel motivated to be in Calcutta with the family she left over thirty years before, nor does she feel excited about being in the United States with her children and potential grandchildren. She just feels exhausted and overwhelmed without her husband. The relationship between parents and children is prominent as a theme in Chapter 12. Gogol considers what it took for his parents to live in the United States, so far from their own parents, and how he has...
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...Prayushi Amin Professor: Jacqueline landau English 103 14th November 2012 Importance of communication in relationships “Communication is the key to a healthy relationship”. It is a pillar on which every relationship is balanced. Relationships are never stable, but communication has the ability heal every wound. Majority of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work is based on the importance of communication and relationships. Her stories are influenced by relationship problems, and the ups and downs one faces in maintaining relationships. Most of the characters, in her stories have been facing a difficulty in communicating their feelings to the opposite character. Jhumpa Lahiri is an American Indian, who was born in London and brought up in the United states. Through her stories, in the book ‘Interpreter of Maladies’, she communicates her thoughts about relationship problems faced by couples, parents and american indian children. Some of the characters from the book are engaged in an arranged marriage, whereas the others commit in a love marriage.Couples fitting in both the categories have been facing relationship problems due to different reasons. In the story, ‘interpreter of Maladies’, Communication breaks down repeatedly often with hurtful consequences. Mr Kapasi is engaged in an arrange marriage, whereas Mr and Mrs Das are committed in a love marriage. Mr. Kapasi, who is the interpreter of maladies, has lost his ability...
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