He does not think he can bear being so far away from his mother for so long. During the dinner party at the home of Astrid and Donald, Gogol becomes nostalgic for when he and Moushumi were first dating, and they spent an entire afternoon designing their ideal house. The tension of life versus death is apparent to Gogol as he gets ready for his wedding. She just feels exhausted and overwhelmed without her husband. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. Print Word PDF. Who doesn't know him." She "feels too old to learn such a skill. The important theme of name and identity is introduced at the very beginning of Chapter 1, when Ashima calls out for her husband from the bathroom. He feels the impulse to connect with another Indian after having embraced his childhood memories with Moushumi. The Namesake Themes. everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Namesake. Gogol’s decision to change his name to Nikhil before leaving home for college demonstrates his desire to take control over his own identity. Gogol begins to feel more and more nostalgic as his marriage with Moushumi progresses. Only close family uses the pet name in the privacy of the home, while the "good" name is used in formal situations like work. She remembers when Gogol and Sonia were little, helping her prepare the food for these parties: "Gogol's hand wrapped around the can of crumbs, Sonia always wanting to eat the croquettes before they'd been breaded and fried." The experiences of the Ganguli family in America—a country that for some of them is an intensely foreign environment—offer a glimpse of life as an Indian immigrant to the United States. • The Namesake explores the themes of isolation, identity, clash of cultures and the immigrant experience. Copyright © 1999 - 2020 GradeSaver LLC. As the novel progresses, the characters begin to feel more and more nostalgic about earlier times in their lives. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Don Quixote Fahrenheit 451 Frankenstein Great Expectations Lord of the Flies If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. Lahiri tracks, through The Namesake, the changes that occur to the Ganguli family. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. As Gogol drives Ashoke's rental car to the rental office of his apartment building, he wonders if a man outside the building mistakes him for his father. The Bengali tradition of naming includes the development of a daknam, a pet name or nickname, and a bhalonam, a good name, used in public life and on official documents. Moushumi, too, is wrapped up in an identity that is “French,” continental, and intellectual. As the Ganguli children grow up as Americans, their parents give in to certain American traditions. Remember, this site is not for essay writing as such. She doesn't use his name when she calls for him, since "it's not the type of thing Bengali wives do." (including. However, Gogol feels that the strange name makes him stick out like sore thumb. In contrast, Ashima and Ashoke grow closer together as time goes on. Cloudflare Ray ID: 5e71d4f0aa8bcf3c But the context, and the location, in which these desires are fulfilled does. She does not feel motivated to be in Calcutta with the family she left over thirty years before, nor does she feel excited about being in the United States with her children and potential grandchildren. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. She thinks, "Fortunately they have not considered it their duty to stay married, as the Bengalis of Ashoke and Ashima's generation do." This shows that, although the family’s circumstances shift as the years go by, certain truths remain apparent for each of them. She does not understand his identity as linked to his name. They learn about these deaths by phone calls. • This Study Guide consists of approximately 41 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - It's the way he is used to feeling around her extended family and friends in New Hampshire. The thought is comforting to him. The identity she forms with Gogol, that of husband and wife, chafes with her, and she seeks to abandon it. Gogol’s story is grounded in the marriage of his parents, Ashoke and Ashima, whose conception of love is founded in their shared past in India. After she has been given a bed, Ashima looks for her husband, but he has stepped behind the curtain around her bed. Throughout her pregnancy, which was difficult, Ashima was afraid about raising a child in "a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare." However, Gogol feels as though his name only makes this worse. The theme of alienation, of being a stranger in a foreign land, is prominent throughout the novel. Although Ashima occasionally longs for life in Calcutta, she realizes she has made a new life, a new home for herself and her family in the United States. Surprisingly, Ashima is pleased with this outcome, as opposed to an unhappy but dutiful marriage for her son. This Study Guide consists of approximately 41 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Namesake. It is a tradition Ashoke and Ashima, who are Mithu and Monu to their families, have kept an… The difference between Bengali and American approaches to marriage is clear in Ashima's evaluation of Gogol's divorce from Moushumi. It is only when Ashoke dies suddenly that Ashima begins to learn a new identity, that of a widow, albeit one surrounded by a loving and supportive family. The Gangulis are a family unit that grows and matures over time. The Namesake is the first novel by author Jhumpa Lahiri, who was born in the UK to Bengali parents and then moved to the USA as a small child.Like her collection of short stories published in 1999, Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake focuses on first-generation Indian immigrants and the issues they and their children face in the United States. Instead, Lahiri carefully orchestrates a sequence of recurring activities, parties, meals, and social events throughout Ashima, Ashoke, and Gogol’s life. The Question and Answer section for The Namesake is a great She still calls him Nikhil like everyone else in his life, but she knows the first name he ever had, and that seems like a secret bond between them. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.”, LitCharts uses cookies to personalize our services. She feels "both impatience and indifference for all the days she still must live." Love them or hate them, everybody has a family in some shape or form. Introduction and Key Themes of Reckoning and The Namesake. As Ashima addresses Christmas cards in Chapter 7, she is wistful that Sonia and Gogol did not come home to celebrate Thanksgiving with her. "They talk about how they are both routinely assumed to be Greek, Egyptian, Mexican - even in this misrendering they are joined." Even after Ashoke dies, as Ashima explains to their friends what happened to him, she refuses, "even in death, to utter her husband's name." He thinks about how "they were already drunk from the book party, lazily sipping their beers, their cold cups of jasmine tea. Struggling with distance learning? The tradition acknowledges that "one is not all things to all people." In fact, it is through change that characters learn who they are, and what parts of themselves remain constant. Gogol feels alienated sometimes in his marriage to Moushumi. It also allows people to use the name that fits the occasion, losing the formality of the good name when appropriate. SparkNotes is brought to you by Barnes & Noble. He now understands the guilt and uselessness his parents had felt when their own parents had passed away across the world, in Calcutta. Your IP: 167.99.15.58 But she does not do so to argue that life is entirely change. Performance & security by Cloudflare, Please complete the security check to access. The language barrier that is to be the source of much struggle for Ashima and Ashoke is evident when they arrive at the hospital for Gogol's birth. At first, it appears that The Namesakeis a novel “about” the Bengali-American experience. Directed by Mira Nair. He says, "At your age I ate tin," to draw attention to how grateful Gogol should be for having the food to eat. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. At first, Gogol is ecstatic at his change of name. Suggestions Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. The novel examines the nature of love and marriage by providing an intimate view into a series of Gogol’s romantic relationships, which are seen alongside the enduring, arranged marriage of his parents. With Kal Penn, Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Jacinda Barrett. The Namesake Themes Relationships between Parents and Children The theme of the relationship between parents and children becomes prominent, as Gogol grows old enough to interact with his parents as a child. When Maxine comes to stay with the Gangulis at the end of the mourning period for Ashoke, Gogol can tell "she feels useless, a bit excluded in this house full of Bengalis." The Namesake study guide contains a biography of Jhumpa Lahiri, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Ashima and Ashoke send them to Bengali language and culture classes every other Saturday, but "it never fails to unsettle them, that their children sound just like Americans, expertly conversing in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.". But, by the end of the novel, it becomes clear that Lahiri’s point is much larger. By his fourteenth birthday, Gogol has come to hate his name and resents being asked about it. Jhumpa Lahiri. The central theme of The Namesake is the importance of names. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Of course, Ashima and Ashoke feel out of place when they move to Cambridge. This offends him because it feels like a betrayal of an intimate detail only she knew to people he doesn't like. Visit BN.com to buy new and used textbooks, and check out our award-winning NOOK tablets and eReaders. And so, for now, Ashoke decides to keep the explanation of his son's name to himself.". This causes Gogol to enjoy it, to cherish it, especially the time they spend in the woods of New Hampshire. Gogol (Nikhil) Ganguli: Character Analysis. As a child, he associates a new name with a new identity. When he finds remnants of her life with Graham around the apartment they now share together, he wonders if "he represents some sort of capitulation or defeat." The theme of alienation is tied to loneliness in Chapter 7, with regard to Ashima. In particular, both texts take an intergenerational approach, which means that they look at how children might struggle to …