Ashima By Jhumpa Lahiri: Ending Relationships

Ashoke chose the name Gogol, because it was the name of the author whose stories he was reading before the train accident. When Gogol turns 6 months old Ashoke throws him a rice ceremony which is similar to a birthday party. When he turns 1 years old they plan to take a trip to India. Unfortunately the brother of Ashima calls and says that her father had recently passed from a severe heart attack. Late on in the story it tells that her mother has also passed away and now she has to take another trip to Calcutta to plan for her funeral. She learned about the death of both her mother and her father as her brother calls again to tell her bad news. As a result of this Ashima goes to Calcutta six weeks earlier than planned to plan the funeral. Ashima and Ashoke decides to move to Boston in Harvard Square which they finally buy a home in. They move to a new house on Pemberton Road the new neighbors are nothing like the neighbors from Cambridge, Massachusetts who was nice and caring known as the Bengali

“They wept together, for the things they now knew.”(104) The last sentence of the first story in Interpreter of Maladies, reveals the cruelty of the elapsed romance in a marriage. In the two collections, A Temporary Matter and The Third and Final Continent, Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates that a marriage can be either uplifting or discouraging depends on the mindset held by the couple and the strength of human bonding. Lahiri emphasizes the significance of mindset and human bondings through the ending of the two stories. The endings of the two stories are polar opposite : In A Temporary Matter, Shukumar and Shobha weeps for the termination of their relationship; The Third and Final Continent, by contrast, the protagonist(MIT) enjoys a fairytale-like

Regardless of how a child acts towards their parents, all that matters in the end is their unconditional love for them. However, the time it takes for them to express their gratitude will depend on each child. In the novel The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates this, describing the life of a young boy named Gogol and his continually progressing relationship with his mother. It demonstrates that a child is unable to view his or her parents as a human being until the parent figure experiences a traumatic event that allows the child to empathize with their parents.

He doesn’t exactly choose the right people to be with in his life. His love life is a huge component of this struggle. One of the first girls that Gogol goes on a date is not exactly what his parents had in mind for him. The narrator explains this moment when they say “ He cannot imagine coming from such parents, such background, and when he describes his own upbringing it feels bland by comparison.”(Lahiri 111). In this moment, he is attracted to this girl, who’s name is Ruth, and he is attracted to her for her American essence. This makes her seem unique and exotic to him, which he really likes. As time goes on, Gogol becomes more interested in sexual experiences rather than building an actual relationship with a woman and getting married. The outside voice in the story explains this issue when it says “They’ve even gone so far as to point out examples of Bengali men they know who’ve married Americans...It only makes things worse when he says that marriage is the last thing on his mind.”(Lahiri 117). He is young and naive but he is going against normal customs for people of his culture. Gogol really tests his parents wishes with his relationships and sexual encounters. When Gogol does get married, he marries someone who is not really the right girl for him. He finds out that she cheated on him with another man and had an affair. What goes through Gogol’s mind after he finds all of

Therefore, the characterization of Gogol listening to Maxine over Ashima characterizes Gogol as wanting to distance himself from his culture and family in order to try and embrace a new period of independence and Western culture- this is symbolized by Maxine. Furthermore, the fact that Gogol will move into Maxine’s house reinforces the idea that Gogol wants to create distance away from his family because he will completely immerse himself in a family that is not his own. Overall, Lahiri uses situational irony created by characterization of symbolism to illustrate that humans will try and distance themselves from their family in order to try and establish independence- this is shown through Gogol only listening to Maxine. Later on in the novel, Moushumi displays a similar characterization of Gogol in a different way. While Moushumi was still married to Gogol, she started an affair with her the boy to whom she lost her virginity- Dimitri. However, after these dates, she would go back home to Gogol as if nothing happened- hence dramatic irony. The narrator explains this routine, “They begin seeing each other...The meals are ambitious: poached fish; creamy potato gratins; puffed chickens roasted with whole lemons in their cavities. There is always a bottle of wine… drink coffee and cognac and smoke”(263) The narrator then goes into more details about their dates until it is revealed that

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake” examines an immigrant bengali family that has moved from India to America, and tries to hold their bengali culture while trying to accept American lifestyles. Ashima and Gogol each struggle with their cultural identity throughout Lahiri’s novel. The pressure of western society and the crisis of losing one’s culture and identity is demonstrated through the characterization and Gogol and Ashima’s relationships while living in America.

He is bewildered as to why his father named him Gogol as it not Bengali nor a normal American name which leads him to struggle to understand himself and his identity. In Bengali families, "individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared" (28). However, Gogol grows up living in America, where children are often ashamed of their differences from others. As a teenager, Gogol desires to blend in and to live unnoticed. This presents a struggle between two cultures. Ashima and Ashoke want to raise Gogol and his younger sister with Bengali culture and values. On the other hand Gogol grew wanting to belong by relating mostly to peers and the surrounding culture in America. It is only much later in their lives that they begin to truly value their Bengali heritage and that Gogol finds the importance in his name. During high school Gogol struggles to accept his name as he sees it has no real significance not him. When Gogol heads for college he rejects his identity completely and legally changes his name to Nikhil which allows him to somewhat feel a sense of belonging as this name relates to his Bengali roots, even though he had been ashamed of those exact roots in schooling. Gogol dreads having to go visit home and return to a life where he is "Gogol". To him, Gogol is not only his name; it bears all his discomfort and struggles to fit into two different cultures as he grew up. His life at college makes it easy for Gogol to live as

Humanity rests in the hands ever-changing events, where no one has complete control over the circumstances and outcomes of what will transpire. Human beings are at the mercy of forces and powers behind their control, and the uncertainty of the future remains as a mark on life. This applies to the protagonists of “The Secret of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd and “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri. Lily Owens and Gogol Ganguli both are at the mercy of transpiring events occurring in their lives. Lily having to handle the problems brought onto her by the murder of her mother, by her own hands.

Not only is she forced into an arranged marriage, but she has no love for the boy that she is about to marry. From the day that she is arranged into a marriage and thereafter, she must deal with the fact that she will belong to someone else and that she is going to be the property of her husband. Her departure begins when her own family treats her “as if [she] belonged to someone else” (51). This shows the beginning of her departure because it is the start of the trials that she must overcome and deal with to continue with her journey. To make matters worse, Lindo’s family has to leave her because of a flood that wiped out all of her family’s land. Another trial that she faces is to get out her love-less marriage. She must leave safely while also keeping the honor and dignity of her family name intact. In order to overcome these trials, Lindo must transition to the fulfillment stage.

Scene: Ashoke gives Gogol a book, The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol, on his fourteenth birthday. Ashoke begins to explain to Gogol the significance of his namesake. Gogol knows that Nikolai Gogol is Ashoke’s most favorite author, but he is unaware of how his book saved Ashoke’s life years ago in a train accident. Ashoke decides to tell Gogol about this at another time when he would better understand. C. Ashima Ganguli: lonely, nostalgic about going home Ashima Ganguli came to America when she married Ashoke Ganguli who was studying abroad in Boston.

Intergenerational conflicts mainly involves in the process of searching identity in a new country. In The Namesake, it seems like the major part of the book is about Gogol’s identity formation and confusion. In fact, Ashima is also part of the process of forming American identity. One of the significant incident is the name-changing process of Gogol. At first, we can see how Gangulis’ parents Ashima and Ashoke are “still proudly and deeply entrenched in their Indian heritage” (Bhattacharyya 77), when they were asked to name their baby after themselves or one of the ancestors. They think “This tradition doesn’t exist for Bengalis, naming a son after father or grandfather, a daughter after mother or grandmother. This sign of respect in America and Europe, this symbol of heritage and lineage, would be ridiculed in India” (The Namesake 28). But later when Gogol ask to change the name, his parents agrees either because becomes accepting individualism or doesn’t want to explain why they name Gogol at the very first place. This explains how much Gogol wants to possess a new identity beyond his parents’ traditional norms.

He first clings to enchanting white women, hoping to adopt their identities so he can escape the perplexity of his own, but the cultural clashes pervade both relationships. While dating Maxine, a wealthy New Yorker, Gogol notes, “She has the gift of accepting her life…he realizes that she never wished she were anyone other than her herself…This, in his opinion, is the biggest difference between them,” highlighting his personal struggle with accepting his heritage (138). Gogol’s glamorous romance with Maxine is juxtaposed to the humiliation he feels for his family to stress his longing to cast-off his Bengali identity. Judith Ceaser observes, “[Gogol and Maxine’s relationship] is a lovely, expensive, comfortable identity, given to him as a love-token…to him it seems a rejection of [his parents] …He hasn’t yet realized that instead of being an identity imposed on him from outside, they are a part of the pattern of key relationships in his life through which he can define himself,” provoking the idea that Gogol’s stubborn naïveté is the source of his unhappiness (Ceasar). When Maxine’s unwillingness to adapt to Bengali culture drives them apart, Gogol searches for a more ordinary love. Moushimi, the daughter of Bengali family friends, should be mundane and comfortable to Gogol, yet their relationship is plagued by complexities. Both view each other as

Lahiri’s leading man, Gogol Ganguli, participates in multiple, overlapping journeys, starting the moment his parents, Ashima and Ashoke, set foot in the United States: an unfamiliar territory to their Indian roots. Gogol, born soon after their arrival, must then oscillate between American and Indian practices. This causes him to have perplexing identity issues, first emerging when his parents attempt to give him a different name, Nikhil, for

The Ganguli home is often filled with Bengali family and friends, and that provides a support system for Ashoke and Ashima. It makes the Ganguli’s feel like they did when they were in India, surrounded by family. Gogol receives some advice from his aunt before leaving for college. She tells him to have fun, but come home and marry a Bengali woman.

For Ashima, books are carriers of names and records of past connections with friends and family. Later in the novel, Gogol’s wife Moushumi ends up rekindling an old romance with a man named Dimitri in a blatant act of infidelity, after discovering his name on a resume in her colleague’s office and rediscovering his name scrawled inside a book on her shelf at home. Both the resume and book are fraught with meaning as they bear his name and remind her of their previous connection. Literature is central to Lahiri’s depiction of past connections because reading is a method for validating human experience, while teaching empathy for separate human experiences: reading connects people.