Namesake Essay - Grade: A PDF

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Essay on the meaning of the Namesake ...

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Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, recounts the story of Gogol Ganguli, the American-born Russian-named son of Bengali immigrant parents. Lahiri details the struggles that all the characters in the novel face in varying degrees in their search for identity and a place where they can truly feel at “home”. Gogol in particular experiences perpetual tension between the influence of his parents’ traditional Bengali upbringing and his desire for acceptance growing up in American society. The uniqueness of his name Gogol exemplifies the cultural displacement that characterizes his life. The fact that Gogol is given a Russian name when his world is comprised of Bengali and American influences symbolizes a sort of spiritual exile from which he must find his way home. Although Gogol renounces his Bengali heritage for much of the novel, he cannot deny that it is an integral part of him and gradually returns to it, embracing his namesake. The quote by Italo Calvino: “A classic [is a book] that has never finished saying what it has to say”: applies very well to Gogol’s story in that Gogol must learn not only to accept but celebrate the uniqueness of his identity as a gift. The lessons about identity and family and culture are relevant but not the final word; they are being developed and written and revised for future generations according to the background and context of the one who reads it. Lahiri’s effectively depicts Gogol’s ongoing struggle with his identity. Growing up under traditional Bengali parents in mainstream America, Gogol is perpetually caught between the influence of the two cultures. The fact that his name is not Bengali or American but of Russian origin suggests his cultural displacement. From his earliest days, Gogol seems destined for an uncertain future. This is demonstrated in the fact that even his own mother Ashima feels that his birth, “like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half true… she can’t help but pity him. She has never known of a person entering the world so alone, so deprived” (24-25). Ashima imposes her own sense of alienation on Gogol the moment that he is

born. In a culture where names are “sacred, inviolable” (28), Gogol’s maternal grandmother-whose responsibility it is to name the child--sends a letter disclosing the name, but it never arrives. This fateful event strongly suggests instability and estrangement in Gogol’s future in that he is deprived of the one thing that would distinguish him from everyone else. In the annaprasan —a ceremony in which the six-month-old Gogol is supposed to determine his future by which object he touches—the narrator states: “Most children will grab at one of them, sometimes all of them, but Gogol touches nothing” (40). The fact that he “shows no interest” (40) in predicting his future life at the rice ceremony foreshadows the uncertainty of both his future and his identity. Lahiri has written The Namesake, in a style that reminds us “that [it] has never finished saying what it has to say”. The fact that the book is written in the present tense lends a striking immediacy to Gogol’s experience, even as each chapter unfailingly shows the passage of time by recording the year in which the action of the chapter takes place. The novel has not finished saying what it has to say in that all recorded events have relevance in the development of Gogol’s character and identity, even the ones after the last chapter of the book that the reader will never know about. By recounting the events of Gogol’s life in the here and now, Lahiri suggests that the end of the book is merely the end of the recorded facts; presumably the reading of his namesake’s book of short stories will be another important step in Gogol accepting the uniqueness of his identity. The present tense allows the reader to “witness” firsthand the course of events and helps to develop the mind and nature of the characters in a far more intimate way. By the end of the book, the narrative switches to the future tense: “In a few minutes his mother will come upstairs to find him. ‘Gogol,’ she will say, opening the door without knocking, ‘where is the camera? What’s taking so long? This is no time for books,’ she will scold” (290). Writing the events in the future implies again that the themes of the novel are progressive. The

idea that the classic novel never finishes what it has to say is exemplified in the scene when Gogol “turns to the first story, ‘The Overcoat’” (290). The reader knows, though Gogol does not, the significance of this story to his personal history. But Lahiri does not tell us Gogol’s reaction to what he reads or if he embraces his name wholeheartedly without being “afflicted by the embarrassment of his name” (289). She leaves his future unresolved such that the lessons of Gogol’s story can instruct future generations. Gogol’s immigrant background as well as the internal turmoil he experiences create much conflict throughout his life. Having a name that is neither American nor Bengali, he continuously seeks to undermine aspects of himself that are essential to who he really is but realizes that doing so leaves him unsatisfied and unfulfilled. By presenting Gogol’s story as one which presents the necessity of coming to peace with oneself by embracing all the particulars of who one is, Lahiri has brought forth a novel that will “never finish saying what it has to say.”...