Cultural Conflict In The Namesake By Jhumpa Lahiri

time in his life. The theme of name and identity in Lahiri’s novel the Namesake is obvious.

The film, The Namesake, directed by Mira Nair, suggests that everyone has a cultural identity, whether they ignore or embrace it. Gogol Ganguli initially wants to abandon his family’s traditions and adopt American customs since he was born in America. Soon he learns that his name has a very emotional meaning to his father. Because of his new knowledge of the significance of his name, he begins to enter a transformation where he accepts and loves his culture. Throughout the film, Gogol has an internal conflict with himself when, on one side, he has his Indian culture, and on the other, he has the American culture he has always wanted to belong to. Although some people think that cultural identity is destined and final, I claim that cultural identity can change because of how willing people are to welcome it.

After Gogol learns about his two cultures, Gogol's life decisions have really gone with the American customs. But even though he really just follows one, he will always have both close to his heart. The

On Gogol’s first day of school, he gets his first taste of the cultural tension that his name and “good name” generate in

to America with grace and compassion. This story by Jhumpa Lahiri, is an allegory establishing an identity with using symbolic meaning between two cultures that intersect. The themes throughout the story refer to immigrant experiences, the conflict of cultures, the contrast of assimilation and the connection between generations. The Namesake, opens the worlds of emotions Ashima experiences, while straddling her two worlds. This story of identity allows readers to travel with Ashima on an intimate journey through her life as an immigrant.

The makeup of our everyday lives is influenced immensely by the culture we are a part of. In Bengali culture, a person is usually given two names, a pet name and a proper name. Families who move from Calcutta often struggle to assimilate to American life and maintain their cultural heritage. In the novel, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol’s changing of his name along with his romantic relationships with Ruth and Maxine show his initial rejection of Bengali identity and culture. This essay will give an explanation into the ways in which Gogol rejected his culture, first by changing his name, but also through his close relationships with American girls.

Yet Moushumi is the only one who is involved with his family and can fully understand Gogol. He looks for ways to escape the pieces in his life that he dislikes which makes him seem eccentric to the rest of the society he lives in. While Moushumis relationship is imperative with Gogol, Maxine gives him closure, the ability to experience the life he may actually have wanted to grow up in America, while it lasts, ”Quickly, he falls in love with Maxine, the house, and Gerald and Lydia's manner of living, for to know her and love her is to know and love all these things. He loves the mess that surrounds her Maxine, her hundreds of things always covering her floor and her bedside table, her habit when they are alone on the fifth floor, of not shutting the door when she goes to the bathroom. Her unkempt ways, a challenge to his increasingly minimalist taste, charm him”(137). The author utilizes an ample amount of detail in this passage to describe what he loves about his relationship and what lured him to Maxine even more; however, I feel Gogol admires this part about his relationship with Maxine because her lifestyle is not as strict as his or Moushumi’s. This girl had a great amount of freedom and he embraced what he didn’t and couldn’t like he does with her and her family have in his

Before his father’s death, Gogol struggles with his name and being pulled between two cultures, and is at a point in his life where he is least comfortable with himself. Gogol dates

As Gogol grows, he begins to hate his name as Gogol, and requests to change his name to Nikhil. ""What is the reason you want to change your name, Mr. Ganguli?" the judge asks. … "I hate the name Gogol," he says. "I always hated it."" (p.101-102) as Gogol brings up this topic to discuss during dinner befor he changes his name in the summer, Gogol claims that because he is an Indian with a Russian name in America, nobody is taking him seriously, thrust requesting to change his name into Nikhil, even if it makes a huge hassle to change his legal documents. With out the question of his rare name and confusion of the choice, Gogol accepts himself more easier and believes that he has become more Americanized. Gogol sees himself more Americanized as people do while he attends parties and other group activities in his social circle.

In light of Gogol’s parent’s cultural roots and norms it is difficult foreign born Americans to assimilate into a new society. Gogol’s sudden change in “normal” can be traumatic discouraging for him to conform into what is “normal” in America. “The New World offers professional opportunity and financial betterment but also insists on assimilation and acculturation, a rejection of old habits, traditions and conditioning, and a merging with the culture of the new context […] invited to experience the death of the self as he has known it. He is asked to despise home culture which is seen by the New World as inferior, as less

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.

The Namesake, written by Jhumpa Lahira, a famous Indian writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for her story collection Interpreter of Maladies, brilliantly illustrates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations. In this novel, the main characters Ashima and her husband, Ashoke, were first generation immigrants in the United States from India. The whole story begins with Ashima's pregnancy and her nostalgia of her hometown, and a sense of melancholy revealed from the first chapter. While Ashima felt insecure and worried about her new life in the United States, her husband Ashoke, rather wanted to settle in and struggle for a new life. All of uncertainty and reluctance of this new-coming couple faded way when their son,

In the Namesake written by Jhumpa Lahiri, America is often referred to as the land of opportunity despite how foreign immigrants are still being treated as second class citizens such as an outcast. Throughout the novel The Namesake the parents of Gogol, Ashoke Ganguli and Ashima Ganguli brought their family to America to find their opportunity despite their strong beliefs in their Bengali culture. Going against their Bengali belief, Ashok and Ashima settled in america with their baby boy Gogol and their baby girl Sonia. Throughout the novel The Namesake Gogol has been struggling to find himself and make peace. Gradually throughout the story Gogol begins to wonder why his parents made the decision to come to america, Despite their strong Bengali beliefs to stay in india. Gogol’s crisis to finding himself slowly deteriorates when he finds himself come to peace with who he is. The author, Jhumpa Lahiri shows Gogol improving and developing as a mature character intellectually, socially, and emotionally despite all the hardships that Gogol had faced.

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.

The immigrant experience affects families in a unique manner wherein ethnicity, and therefore, identity becomes something continuously negotiated. Jhumpa Lahiri’s contemporary novel, “The Namesake,” beautifully illustrates the complexities of generational culture clashes and the process of self-individualization over the course of this experience. Lahiri challenges the often-one-dimensional approach to ethnic identity by allowing readers an intimate and omnipresent look into the internal struggles of the Gangulis, a first-and-second-generation Bengali family, following their relocation to America. The novel incorporates a heavy presence of reading, and the abundant representation of books and documents throughout it are vital to its