Cultural influences are perhaps the strongest factor contributing to Gogol’s identity crisis. Gogol’s parents are first-generation immigrants, and they are slow to adapt to American culture. He finds himself gravitating toward his classmates and their lives, and resenting parts of his parents’ Bengali ways.

As its title suggests, at its core The Namesake tackles the question of forming one’s own identity, and explores the power that a name can carry. Gogol’s decision to change his name to Nikhil before leaving home for college demonstrates his desire to take control over his own identity.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake demonstrates the fascinating accounts of the diasporic experience. Moving between events in Kolkata, Boston and New York, the novel examines the nuances involved with being caught between two conflicting cultures with their highly distinct religious, social and ideological differences.

The Namesake Themes

• The Indian Immigrant Experience.
• Family, Tradition, and Ritual.
• Independence, Rebellion, and Growing Up.
• Identity and Naming.
• Love and Marriage.

This theme is born out in Gogol’s different romantic relationships. With Maxine, Gogol feels that the Ratliff family is fundamentally different from his own, that he does not understand their “city” lifestyle. This causes Gogol to enjoy it, to cherish it, especially the time they spend in the woods of New Hampshire.

The Namesake

• The Indian Immigrant Experience.
• Family, Tradition, and Ritual.
• Independence, Rebellion, and Growing Up.
• Identity and Naming.
• Love and Marriage.

Whatever the story is behind your name, “The Namesake” teaches the lesson that we should be aware of the meaning behind our names and find pride within them because it is through our names that we find strength and empowerment to be the individuals we are each meant to be. Massie is a member of the class of 2011.

Introduction to the Book Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake deftly demonstrates how the familiar struggles between new and old, assimilation and cultural preservation, striving toward the future and longing for the past, play out in one particular set of foreign-born parents and their American-born children.

The train represents the proximity between Gogol’s mature life and the Bengali-American context in which he was raised. Although his life with Moushumi in New York broadens, and includes people from different cultural circles, the train always connects him to Boston, and to his childhood home on Pemberton Road.

The presence of trains in the novel seems to be a reminder of the constant and inevitable forward motion of life, which advances and accumulates outside of anyone’s control, as Gogol reflects at the end of the novel. It is on a train that Gogol meets Ruth, and on a train that he discovers Moushumi’s affair.

Trains represent how humans experience time even though this is not how time actually works. When we think of time in terms of straight, inevitable lines, we are drawn into a fatalistic view of the universe. Trains are a part of the real world but work differently from the real world.

The novel begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968. Ashima Ganguli, expecting a child, makes a snack for herself in the kitchen of her apartment, which she shares with her husband, Ashoke. The two met in Calcutta, where their marriage was arranged by their parents.

It’s a conflict that those of us who have brought up children in the US have experienced in more or less the same way as Gogol’s parents: Ashoke and Ashima. Throughout the novel, the parents try to “make” their children Bengali while the brother and the sister, Gogol and Sonia, insist that they are Americans.

Conflict (World) The major conflict in the novel is identity.As Ashoke and Ashima struggle to maintain a balance between their Indian roots and their American life, their son Gogol rejects his Indian heritage and seeks American instead.

Climax – Nickhil married Moushumi and accepting his identity as Indian. Falling Action – Moushumi cheated on Nickhil and he divorced her. Resolution – Ashima goes back to India after Christmas dinner and Nickhil finally reads Nikolai Gogol, his father’s favourite author.

Gogol is the center of the novel, and it is his journey from childhood into young adulthood that the narrator tracks most closely. Gogol’s transformation is marked in at least three ways.

Ashoke

12 chapters

The hospital official tells Ashima they have been trying to reach her directly, and that Ashoke has died in the hospital, of a heart attack. The administrator uses the word “expired,” which Ashima’s associates not with death but with the library books she handles at her job.

“Gogol” makes Gogol feel like a child. Thus Gogol changes his name, officially, not to change how the world sees him, but to help change how he sees himself. He changes his name as part of a larger process of personal transformation and growth.

Gogol realizes that Ashima has been the force that gathers them all together for these occasions, and it is Ashima they have relied on to translate American customs, customs that she only knows because of Gogol and Sonia.

Gogol is physically attracted to Moushumi. He “had not expected to enjoy himself, to be attracted to [Moushumi] in the least” (p. 199), but he finds her “stunning” (p. Gogol is attracted to Moushumi because she causes him to reflect on his past and Bengali identity in a new way.

Gogol spends time at the party, taking pictures of Ashima, Sonia, and Ben, setting up the fake tree in the living room for the last time. He realizes it is his opportunity, finally, to connect more fully with his father’s life, and to learn more deeply what the name “Gogol” meant to Ashoke. The novel ends.

Sonali ”Sonia” Ganguli Sonia is Gogol’s younger sister, born five years and nine months after Gogol. Because of their challenges with Gogol’s name, Ashoke and Ashima plan Sonia’s name well in advance of her birth, only giving her a good name and avoiding the pet name that caused them so much trouble with Gogol.

Nikolai Gogol

Ghost tells Ashoke that living abroad is important for any young man. Ghosh himself lived in England until his wife made him return to India. Ghosh tells Ashoke to visit him at his home during the train ride, but Ashoke never has the chance, as Ghosh is killed in the wreck.

Nikhil

Ashima notes that she does not use Ashoke’s given name, because that name, in Bengali, has a special, almost sacred resonance. Both Ashima and Ashoke are lovers of literature, Ashima of English poets, Ashoke of Russian authors, especially Gogol.

It was on that same train that Ashoke met a stranger, who gave him the advice that would change his life: ”Do yourself a favor,” the man said. ”Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it.

When Ashoke thinks of India, he thinks of a place he barely survived, a place he needed to leave in order to learn how to live again. Their child’s birth makes Ashima miss India all the more; for Ashoke, it serves as a fresh reminder of why he chose to move to America.