-Jhumpa Lahri’s The Namesake is about characters that are in search of their individuality which dwell between Indian and American culture. It’s a story of Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli who leave India for the sake of better opportunities in America and about their children Gogol and Sonia. The immigrants lead a double identity, and, therefore, feel suspicious and fearful towards the new culture in early years of settlement in a new country. Their children are born in the new world but they belong to their native country. They belong to two cultures but in reality not to anyone. They have to put their names in such a way which seem to fit in both the cultures. Thus, my purpose in this paper is to show how the immigrant’s children want to please their parents and also fit themselves in a new world despite their divided identity.
Key words- Cultural conflict, Second Generation, DividedIdentity, Social Invisibility, Name.
A society’s culture defines how its members communicate and cooperate with each other. It’s reflects learned behaviours. The basic elements of culture are social structure, language, communication, religion, and values. Basic to every society is its social structure, the whole background that bounds the roles of individuals within the culture, and individual’sliberty of movement within the society.
The quest for cultural identity arises in Lahiri’s writings. India has no single culture, besides many cultures have crossed and blended here, and produced a hybridity in India which makes it unique. The Indian cultural identity has acquired a diverse structure by modern generation. Culture mirrors learned conduct that is spread from one member of a society to another. Some elements of culture are briefed from one group to a...
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...s and many more things never ends till they are alive.
Works Cited
• Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd., 2007.
• Chaudhary, Sandeep Roy. “A Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of the Second Generation” in 2007 Seattle Reads: The Namesake by JhumpaLahiri.Washington: The Seattle Public Library& Foundation, Nov.3, 2003. http:// www.spl.org/Documents/audiences/adults/Seattle Reads/2007-Namesake_Toolbox.pdf
• 20Wikipedia,%20the%20free%20encyclopedia.htm
• Caesar, Judith. "Gogol's Namesake: Identity and Relationships in Jhumpa Lahiri's TheNamesake." Atenea 27.1 (June 2007): 103-119. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 282. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. http://www.aadl.org/research/browse/books
• http://www.prenhall.com/behindthebook/0131995340/pdf/GriffCh04_printer.pdf.
Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri, an Indian by descent, was born in London in August 1967, to a Bengali immigrant Indian parents. “Jhumpa” is the nickname easier for the teachers remember his name. The Lahiri family moved from England to Rhode Island when Jhumpa was two years old. Her father was a librarian at Rhode Island University and her mother was a school teacher. At age of seven, Lahiri started to embrace writing about what she saw and felt. While growing up, Lahiri lived two lives: An Indian at home and An American outside of the home. Despite of living most of their life in the western world, Lahiri’s parents called “Calcutta” their home unlike Lahiri who thought Rhode Island as her hometown. Lahiri always felt her family had a different li...
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 culture, he is still bonded to his roots as the person he ethnically is.
In the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the main character Gogol struggles with a religious cultural collision. Gogol battled between his parents Indian traditions and the American culture he grows up in this leaves him puzzled. His reaction to the cultural collision is relevant to the novel because every character in this novel struggles with accepting who he is.
Detroit: Gale Books, 2007. Literature Resource Center -. Web. The Web. The Web.
Lahiri, a second-generation immigrant, endures the difficulty of living in the middle of her hyphenated label “Indian-American”, whereas she will never fully feel Indian nor fully American, her identity is the combination of her attributes, everything in between.
To begin with, culture is something that may change evolve within time but culture is something that come with your heritage or your ethnicity the traditions and things that happen that make up your culture like how your parents raised you are culture. In the informational text “ What is cultural identity” by Elise Trumbull and Maria Pacheco, and in the personal essay “Ethnic Hash” by Patricia Williams, there are similarities and differences in how each writer conveys their message about cultural identity. Based upon their research, Trumbull and Pacheco present the idea that culture changes and that it will never stay the same, while Williams uses her personal experience to develop the idea that many things influence cultural inheritage but
The novel, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri has shown me the strength in identity and how it can constrain one’s values to mold themselves to fit their identity. As Vishva said in book club, Gogol has become an independant new person as Nikhil after he changed his name. The nature of the two distinct names led to two well defined personalities. Nikhil was a separate
The culture of a community invariably determines the social structures and the formation of a society. Developed over time, culture is the collection of beliefs and values that a group of people maintain together. Culture is never constant, and thought to be continually renewed over years as new ideas and concepts become mainstream. It ranges from how people live, day to day topics for conversations, religion, and even entertainment. It is analogous to guidelines, or the rulebook of the said group of people. Society, on the other hand, emanates from the social structure of the community. It is the very institutions to which create a regulated and acceptable form of interaction between peoples. Indeed, culture and society are so perversely intertwined in a
Gogol is not completely cut off from his roots and identity. He tries to reject his past, but it makes him stranger to himself. He fears to be discovered. With the rejection of Gogol’s name, Lahiri rejects the immigrant identity maintained by his parents. But this outward change fails to give him inner satisfaction.
[… The] only person who didn’t take Gogol seriously… who tormented him, the only person chronically aware of and afflicted by the embarrassment of his name, the only person who constantly questioned it and wished it were otherwise, was Gogol. (99-100)
Over the course of the novel, The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol is constantly moving, and by the time he is in his late twenties, he has already lived in five different homes, while his mother, Ashima has lived in only five houses her entire life. Each time Gogol moves, he travels farther away from his childhood home on Pemberton Road, symbolizing his search for identity and his desire to further himself from his family and Bengali culture. Alternatively, Ashima’s change of homes happens in order to become closer to family, representing her kinship with Bengali culture. Ashima has always had difficulty with doing things on her own, but by the end of the story she ultimately decides to travel around both India and the States without a real home as a result of the evolution of her independence and the breaking of her boundaries; in contrast, Gogol finally realizes that he has always stayed close to home, despite his yearning for escape, and settles into his newly discovered identity - the one that he possessed all along.
Gogol’s struggle with his identity is the focus for the novel. Jhumpa Lahiri narrates us a story of this young man, Gogol, who is caught between two worlds, through her novel The Namesake. Through the progress of the novel, Gogol comes to terms with his multicultural and complicated identity. Gogol grows up never understanding the significance of his name and grows up hating it. By choosing one name over the other, Gogol decides to define himself under a different self. And last but not least, the narrative depicts Gogol's fractured identity as he tries to disassociate himself from both his family and his cultural heritage to forge his own self. A person’s identity is the most valuable possession one could have.
Bhabha, Homi K. Interview by J. Rutherford. Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. 1990. J. Rutherford. London, Lawrence and Wishart: 207-221
Laurie Lanzen Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1. What is the difference between a. and a. Detroit: Gale Books, 1988. 161-2.
In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, the protagonist, Gogol, struggles with his cultural identity. He is an American-born Bengali struggling to define himself. He wants to fit into the typical American-lifestyle, a lifestyle his parents do not understand. This causes him tension through his adolescence and adult life, he has trouble finding a balance between America and Bengali culture. This is exemplified with his romantic relationships. These relationships directly reflect where he is in his life, what he is going through and his relationship with his parents. Each woman indicates a particular moment in time where he is trying to figure out his cultural identity. Ruth represents an initial break away from Bengali culture; Maxine represents