The Namesake Lahiri Analysis

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

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

This book depicts the national and cultural status of the immigrant mother, who is able to preserve the traditions of her Indian heritage that connect her to her homeland. Ensuring a successful future for her American-born children is coordinated with the privilege of being an American citizen. Ashima yearns for her homeland and her family that she left behind when

On this extensive journey it allowed for an emotional journey to take part between immigrants, shown by the metaphor “silence fell from it’s shackles” showing readers that they were finally able to talk about their past experiences and emotions, which allowed for emotional release. The lengthy journey also allowed for Skrzynecki to allude back to his past life remembering both good and bad memories.

Immigration is building block to the United States culture. For decades, the United States was viewed as a land of opportunity, a land of hope for those seeking a better life. In the ethnography Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives written by Jon Hertzman describes the Nuer’s journey and acclimation to the United States. In the preface of his ethnography, Hertzman recognizes that the immigration of these peoples took place over decades and as an anthropologist he studies how the Nuer adapt to the way of life in the United States. Throughout Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives, Hertzman encounters the concepts of Marriage, Family, and Kinship and Gender as they are outlined in Essential of Cultural Anthropology.

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

Two hundred forty-one years. In that small amount of time America forged its self into a vast landscape of different cultures. A combination of numerous cultures mongrelized together to form “We the people” in America today. Due to all the mixing in the pot, an uncertainty about the countries identity arose. For all the beauty that the melting pot brought, it also created a darker side, as aspects of each cultures fought for superiority in the nation. This fight emerges throughout American history and as a new era of deporis rises, the issues are becoming more relevant. In American Dreamer by Bharati Mukherjee, she shares her own experiences as an immigrant and the fight she partook in to have her own American identity seen. Mukherjee’s fight mirrors hundreds of naturalized American citizens who are trying to realize their identity, however it also shines light on native-born Americas struggling as well. The need for a unified American identity produces a nationwide identity crisis.

Forming a new identity in a foreign country is not an easy task. Immigrants usually face challenges to identify themselves. Identity formation is the development of one’s distinctive personality due to particular reasons such as new environment, new culture and conflicts. During the process, some characters from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake either create or deny the bond with their own culture; some undergo conflicts among generations. Those processes reflect significantly in Ashima and Gogol throughout the book. The degree of assimilations determines to what extent the characters have formed the new identity in the new culture.

In Mira Nair’s film, The Namesake, the disparate cultures of India and America affirms to the binary paradigm of “the one” and “the other”, manifesting the dominance of one from the other and its impact to influence and cause cultural and identity issues. The collision of the two cultures forms a process of trying to construct an identity and a destruction of an ethnic identity, with different factors to consider such as space and other sociocultural codes. This film about the Indian American also shows the concept of model-minority image, standards and expectations imposed to Asian Americans. The Namesake embodies the cultural and identity issues of an Asian American, particularly the Indian Americans, exemplifying the experiences of the

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 Dinaw Mengestu’s essay “Home at Last,” Mengestu uses his feelings of separation from his heritage as an incentive to find a new origin. He also creates a tone that goes from a sense of loneliness to belonging. He reflects his thoughts through narration:

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri Living in America, the Ganguli’s have the difficult choice of choosing between two dramatically different cultures. As a second generation Indian American, Gogol Ganguli is expected to preserve the ideals of his traditionally Indian parents while still successfully assimilating into mainstream American culture. In “The Namesake,” Jhumpa Lahiri reveals the stark contrasts between the perceptions of Ashima, Ashoke and Gogol in relation to

Jhumpa Lahiri is a famous literary figure in the Indian writings in English. One of her more popular works the ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ deals with one of the most dominant issues plaguing the modern man-the issue of identity crisis. We have attempted, in this paper, how Jhumpa Lahiri weaves her characters around her immigrant experiences and the cultural divide between America and India. Attempts have also been made here how she brings some characters into the plot who undergo pain and suffering for their double identity.

The film, The Namesake was created after a very popular book that dives into the obscurities internal and externality of immigrates and the first generations Americans. It gives a very accurate and honest approach of difficulties to understand and accept the new culture for the parents who migrate. The film also shows the constraint and