...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 is playing a major part at this point in...
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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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...Lahiri's use of different principals for different chapters and sections of chapters allows the approach of dramatic irony. Reminiscence is frequent in Chapter 12, as Ashima prepares for the last Christmas party she will ever host at the house on Pemberton Road. She remembers when Gogol and Sonia were little, helping her prepare the food for these parties: "Gogol's hand wrapped around the can of crumbs, Sonia always wanting to eat the croquettes before they'd been breaded and fried." As Sonia, Ben, Gogol, and Ashima assemble the fake Christmas tree together, Gogol remembers decorating the first plastic tree his parents had bought at his demand. The difference between Bengali and American paths to marriage is clear in Ashima's judgment of Gogol's divorce from Moushumi. She thinks, "Fortunately they have not considered it their duty to stay married, as the Bengalis of Ashoke and Ashima's generation do." In her view, the pressure to 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...
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...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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...The year is 1968, and Ashima Ganguli, a Bengali woman who has recently moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts with her new husband, is about to give birth. Her husband, Ashoke, accompanies her to the hospital in a taxi. In the waiting room of the hospital, Ashoke remembers how in 1961, as he was taking the train from Calcutta to Jamshedpur to visit his grandfather and collect the books he was to inherit from him, there was an accident and he had nearly died. On the train, he had been reading a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, a Russian author, when the locomotive engine and seven bogies derailed, causing Ashoke's car to be flung into a nearby field. Rescue workers found Ashoke because of the book page he clutched in his hand. Their baby boy is born in the morning. Ashima and Ashoke want to wait to name him until a letter arrives from Ashima's grandmother with two name options: one for a boy and one for a girl. It is the Bengali tradition to have a respected elder choose the name of a child. However, it is time to leave the hospital and the letter has not arrived, so they decide to make up a pet name that will be used until they can officially name their baby based on his grandmother's wishes. Ashoke chooses Gogol, the name of the author whose stories he was reading when the train crashed years before. Ashima and Ashoke hold a rice ceremony for Gogol when he is six months old. Six months later, the Gangulis are planning a visit to India. Ashima's brother Rana calls with...
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...Gogol's Namesake: Identity and Relationships in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake Author: Judith Caesar Allusions to Nikolai V. Gogol and his short story "The Overcoat" permeate Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake, beginning with Gogol's being the name the protagonist is called through most of the book. Yet few of the reviewers of the novel mentioned Nikolai Gogol at all in their discussions of the novel, except to describe the protagonist Gogol's loathing of his name, or to quote without comment or explanation Dostoevski's famous line, "We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat." So far, no one has looked beyond the surfaces to examine the significance of the allusions to Gogol that are so much a part of the fabric of Lahiri's novel. Without the references to Nikolai Gogol, it is easy to read the novel as simply another account of the difficulties of a first-generation American trying to "find himself," nicely written, but not particularly thought-provoking. It may seem merely unexamined documentation of the confusion of its main character, a confusion which itself has become a bit of a cliché. The conventional wisdom about first generation Asian Americans is that an awareness of two cultures is a kind of curse which makes them unable to understand who they "really" are, as if identity were nothing more than cultural identification. Read with an understanding of the significance of the Gogol story, however, the novel is much more clearly an elucidation of the causes and...
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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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...LIT 4253 Final Paper Identity Crisis in The Namesake: How Cultural Hybridism Shapes Gogol Cultural alienation and the resulting loss of identity is the central issue in The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. The pain of displacement reaches not only the immigrants but also their children who are incapable of belonging to the country of their birth. Alienation is felt as much by the parents as the next generation because the sense of separation is larger in proportion to the sense of affinity with their cultural roots. Ashoke and Ashima find themselves unable to adapt entirely to their adoptive country and its culture; however, their predicament is not as tragic as that of their children. They are half-lost because there is at least one place where they wholly and absolutely belong as opposed to their children, Gogol more so than Sonia, who do not belong anywhere and this makes them nowhere persons. The second-generation migrants grow up in an atmosphere of guilt, only to find themselves not belonging anywhere. Gogol, in particular, is torn between two cultures, the Indian traditions of his parents and the mainstream American culture in which he grows up. His struggle is the same one that his sister Sonia goes through, and his wife Moushumi, however, this identity crisis seems to affect him deeper than his relatives. The novel revolves around the symbol of a name, which is the most integral part of a human identity; Gogol’s name is one of the chief causes that make him feel alienated...
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...The Internal Conflict of Gogol Ganguli An Essay on how a person´s name can affect one´s internal life The story of Gogol Ganguli, the main protagonist in the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, shows the importance of the names and it also speaks to every person, me included, who ever felt unhappy with his or her given name. In Bengali culture “individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared” (Lahiri, 28). According to Bengali tradition two names are given to a person; a “pet” name which is usually used by family and friends and other “good” name which is official. Gogol is given a pet name at birth which becomes his official name. This essay will argue that Gogol Ganguli has an internal conflict with his name throughout his life until he is in his 30ties when he begins to embrace it at last. With regard to his internal conflict the first time we get a glimpse of his future turmoil is when Gogol starts kindergarten and he is told by his parents who finally decided on a good name, that he is to be called “Nikhil” by teachers and other children. Gogol rejects his new name because he is “afraid to be Nikhil, someone he doesn´t know. Who doesn´t know him” (Lahiri, 57). Thus he begins his school years as Gogol, a decision that comes to hunt him internally for many years. Consequently by the time Gogol reaches puberty he starts to feel ashamed of his unusual name. He is used to be the only Indian in a group of his peers however he feels...
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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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...a setting that they are not accustomed to. People who are put into a new environment often want to feel like they are a part of the new culture and not feel alienated. By letting go of some of the old traditions and culture, they are allowing themselves to experience and adapt to a new environment. Even though parts of the old culture are lost, a new cultural experience is being created which helps widens their perspective. Although things like language and 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...
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...The use of Time Perspective Theory in “The Namesake” The Time Perspective Theory states that our perception about the importance of time influences our actions and emotions. As a person gradually comes to terms with his past, the intensity of his past emotions starts to fade away. He embraces new thoughts and feelings as he embarks on new phases of his life. Emotions and thoughts also change with time and people begin to look at things with new perspectives. This theory states that nothing remains constant and everything changes with time. Mira Nair’s “The Namesake” depicts the struggles of Ashoke and Ashima Gangly, who move to New York from Calcutta, India. By a chance of events, their son’s nickname Gogol becomes registered as his official...
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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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...“Eddie Sue’s Child” is “not” what people said when they told others whose child I was, nor was it what I answered with when asked, “Whose child are you?” Eddie Sue’s Child was a catcall my friends started using against me when I became a teenager and when I was high school. They did so, I’m absolutely positively sure, because the name Eddie Sue is as crazy a mixed-up name as any that a parent could name their girl child. Since my friends could not humiliate the bearer of that crazy mixed-up name, why not torment the bearer’s defenseless child? I supposed was there only option. So with that, what is in the name, Eddie Sue? Not much, I’ll say! But it did offer a slick comeback for a few who dared to use Eddie Sue’s Child against me....
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...Being placed in new situations can be challenging for anyone. Depending on how new the situation is, change may require difficult habituation and the overcoming of hardships. “All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” (Keller, 1960) The autobiography The Story of my Life by Helen Keller and the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri reflect this quotation. The life experiences of non-fiction character, Helen Keller, greatly reflect those of fictional character, Ashima Ganguli. Both of these women and their families are faced with the similar challenges of adaptation, overcoming adversity and forming a positive sense of identity throughout their lives. These challenges are overcome using literature and the consistent,...
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