Namesake

Hello, readers here my blog sumitted to Department of  English Maharaja KruashnKumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Introduction:-

• Having been born of educated middle class Bengali parents in London and grown up in Rhodes Island, Lahiri authentically and beautifully represent her diasporic experience in novel : The Namesake.

• In this novel Lahiri's experiences of growing up as a child of  immigrants resemble through the protagonist, Gogol Ganguly.

• " Lahiri belongs to the second generation of Indian diaspora whose ongoing quest for identity never seems to end. They feel sandwiched between the country of their parents and the country of their birth".

• Lahiri finds herself quite a stranger to both of the countries in India she is an America and in America she is an India.

1. Gogol's identity crisis:-

• Through Gogal, Lahiri presents identity crisis which she herself has faced. She contradicts the idiom "when in a name?" Rather she is obessed with " it's everything that matters in a name. Namesake signifies the first identity.

• Jumpa Lahiri was born as Nilansana sudeshna, but he one pet name , jumpha which was easy to pronounce by her teacher and she become jumba Lahiri. She felt embarrassed whenever she was called  as she struggled a lot to make herself feel an American but she found just a half way feeling. The same feeling she put into gogol who never likes to be called by this name.

"The agony felt by Gogal is the agony of Jhumpa Lahiri".

• Gogal's name is one of the chief causes which make him feel alienated. His loneliness starts from the moment he enters the world. After the birth of Gogal, selecting a name becomes a problem for his parents. The difference between the naming process in India and American cultures pushes him into a chaos. Ashima wants her grandmother to suggest a name but the name is not received.

• The hospital authorities do not allow them to leave the hospital without naming the new born baby. Ashok names him Gogol after the name of his beloved Russian author, Nikolai Gogol, thinking of it as a pet name only. The book of this author help's him save his life. So Ashok has great reverence for this author and his name. For him Gogol signifies a beginning and a survival.

• The name fills him with joy and indicates a new life. But this name creates problem of identity crisis. When his parents take him to school to start his schooling , they have a new name 'Nikhil' for him. But this time it was Gogal himself which does not respond to Nikhil it was his first attempted rejecta dual identity.

• This rejection left him alone his old name Gogol, Gogol does not understand the emotional significance of the name. He does not like to be known by a name which is neither Indian, nor American nor even first name.

2. Effort at Blending in Leading now here.

• Gogol desires to blend in the American society. He was to live unnoticed. But he is not viewed as an American by of Americans, even though he is a native born bitizen . He tries to put a wall between his past and present but it is not easy. He adopt the name Nikhil but the ghost of Gogol cling on his mind. He tries to become an entirely different person from what really he is .

• 'Gogal struggles to carry the burden of two nmaes. Nikhil resembles American names, yet 'Goga' and his past follow him everywhere. He experience a feeling of being in between. He is considered an 'ABCD' Americaborn confused Desi but he considers himself an American. American society. Says, "But you're Indian".

3. living in between condition:-

• This living'in between condition is very painful and marginalizing for the diasporas. There is yearning for "home" , to go back to "the lostorigin" and 'imaginary homelonds' created from the fragmentary and partial memories of the homelands .

4. A Chronicler of Diaspora / Jhuma Lahir's style of writing:-

• Among others Jhumpa Lahiri isfamous as the acclaimed chronider of the Bengali immigrant experience. The majority of her stories are aboutexile, about people living far from home and moving to New world. Both 'Interpreare of maladies'and'the name explore the ideas of isolation and identity , not only person but also cultural.

5. Frustration of being Different from other:-

• Thought Gogol and his sister Sonia are born and raised in the U.S. they feel the frustration of being Different from most of the kids they know. Some moels their names and find them full when his high school class reads 'The overcoat' , a short story written by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, Gogal is extremely ashamed of his name.

6. Gogal5 affairs:-

• Gogal's second affair is with Maxine, an Anglo-Saxon American, member of a liberal and very wealthy family He starts to live with her family and gets closer to her family and moves away from his own. Although they love each other they breav up. After his break up with makine Ashima  talks to Gogol on starting a relationship with moushomi particularly due to their shared cultural background. They get marry. How when moushumi starts having a sexual affair with her old love Dimitri.

To sum up the question, we can say that:-

• The death of Gogal's father brings great change in him. He learns that he cannot abandon or diminish the importance of either culture but must learn to mesh the two together. He realizes that his identity is embellished by both cultures and comes to know.

"Identity as a production ; which is never complete, always in process and always constituted within, not outside representation."

• As locations change ideantity can also change one must not be excessively obsessed with one's cultural lagacy, because it is not some meaningless, it is deep rooted one's collective psyche.

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