It is no secret that everyone is on a journey at some point in their life to find out who they are. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is about that journey and struggle to find your true identity with the influence of culture and society. The story starts with Ashima and Asoke Ganguli leaving India in hopes of living the American Dream, Ashima gives birth to a son named Gogol. As he gets older, Gogol would not find it so easy to balance being American and being from an Indian heritage and culture. At same time, a question could be asked. Isn’t the American identity essentially one’s journey in balancing their culture and beliefs they have with what is accepted in American society at that time?
One person who found their identity in America was Ashima when she realized “her body’s ability to make life, exactly as her mother and grandmothers had done” (Lahiri 6). Her identity she discovered was being a mother which is not just confined as just being a strictly American identity. It is however, a universally accepted part of someone’s identity. In referring to my previous question concerning the clash of a person’s culture and what is socially accepted in America, motherhood is one of the main traits that helps you fit into American society no matter what cultural background you come from. In continuing discussing Gogol’s American identity crisis, he rejects his birthname in which is was named after a Russian novelist’s last name. He feels the name is a pet name. At first, he rejects this name-change to Nikhil while he is in kindergarten because he “is afraid to be Nikhil” and does not want to be “someone he doesn’t know”, but later (Lahiri 57) he wants to change his name to Nikhil because it is a Bengali name which is of Indian descent (Lahiri 57). Plus, the name Nikhil sounds more pleasing to the hear unlike the name Gogol. This reflects that in American society some people will discriminate you by only what name you have or how it is pronounced, even though our country is full of people from different cultural backgrounds. This is in reference to the American identity that always changing as society’s view of what is accepted changes with every passing day, month, year, etc. For example, …show more content…
In Judith Caesar’s Gogol’s Namesake, she analyzes Moushumi’s importance to her friends named Astrid and Donald. Caesar states that “she (Moushumi) likes the American self she has created through her artsy-academic friends, Astrid and Donald, who also seem to be a predictable set of ideas and behaviors and possessions, nothing more than the material self that they share with thousands of other educated urban upper middle-class Americans. (One wonders about the extent to which Moushumi is to them simply an ethnic accessory to their ready-made yuppie outfits, a Pashmina shawl thrown over their designer name-brand overcoats). There must be more to them than that, and yet this is how they seem to Gogol” (Caesar 115). Caesar’s observation is very interesting to assume some Americans assimilate with other cultures or ethnic groups in order to justify one’s claim to be culturally diverse, but really not care for the individual but only care about the status it gives them. Not to mention, Gogol can recognize this in American society. Yet he still wants to fit
One person who found their identity in America was Ashima when she realized “her body’s ability to make life, exactly as her mother and grandmothers had done” (Lahiri 6). Her identity she discovered was being a mother which is not just confined as just being a strictly American identity. It is however, a universally accepted part of someone’s identity. In referring to my previous question concerning the clash of a person’s culture and what is socially accepted in America, motherhood is one of the main traits that helps you fit into American society no matter what cultural background you come from. In continuing discussing Gogol’s American identity crisis, he rejects his birthname in which is was named after a Russian novelist’s last name. He feels the name is a pet name. At first, he rejects this name-change to Nikhil while he is in kindergarten because he “is afraid to be Nikhil” and does not want to be “someone he doesn’t know”, but later (Lahiri 57) he wants to change his name to Nikhil because it is a Bengali name which is of Indian descent (Lahiri 57). Plus, the name Nikhil sounds more pleasing to the hear unlike the name Gogol. This reflects that in American society some people will discriminate you by only what name you have or how it is pronounced, even though our country is full of people from different cultural backgrounds. This is in reference to the American identity that always changing as society’s view of what is accepted changes with every passing day, month, year, etc. For example, …show more content…
In Judith Caesar’s Gogol’s Namesake, she analyzes Moushumi’s importance to her friends named Astrid and Donald. Caesar states that “she (Moushumi) likes the American self she has created through her artsy-academic friends, Astrid and Donald, who also seem to be a predictable set of ideas and behaviors and possessions, nothing more than the material self that they share with thousands of other educated urban upper middle-class Americans. (One wonders about the extent to which Moushumi is to them simply an ethnic accessory to their ready-made yuppie outfits, a Pashmina shawl thrown over their designer name-brand overcoats). There must be more to them than that, and yet this is how they seem to Gogol” (Caesar 115). Caesar’s observation is very interesting to assume some Americans assimilate with other cultures or ethnic groups in order to justify one’s claim to be culturally diverse, but really not care for the individual but only care about the status it gives them. Not to mention, Gogol can recognize this in American society. Yet he still wants to fit