How Cultural Barriers May Affect Our Self Confidence

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After reading The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri I gained a better understanding of how cultural barriers may affect our self-confidence in the world. Gogol, a young boy who grew up in the United States with parents that were only accustomed to Bengali ways in Calcutta, India, struggled raising a child in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother, Ashima, and father, Ashoke, gave their child a unique name in a sense to honor an author who wrote short-stories that Ashoke had read minutes before a tragic train accident long before their move to the United States. Ashoke had crumbled the paper out of one the short-stories to attract attention for help, these papers that were collected in the short story helped save Ashoke 's life when he was lucky enough to have the strength in his body to move when he was experiencing so much pain. Over time, Ashoke became very fond of the Ukrainian author and it was soon the name to be given to his child. This name impacts his child 's life and throughout the story you see growth within his character. He matures during a class field trip to a cemetery at age eleven, when he stays with the Ratliff 's, and during the event of his father 's passing. At age eleven Gogol takes a class field trip to a cemetery where he begins to realize that there are others who have names so unique like his. Although he doesn 't particularly like his name he is happy to see that there are others out there that he can connect with. This is where he truly begins to
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