The Namesake

It is fair to say that human life is often controlled thoroughly by romance. Throughout one’s life, most have many romantic relationships. Childhood is filled with crushes, young adulthood with dating, and adulthood, hopefully, with marriage or the like. Often times, through such relationships, one learns a thing or two about life and love. While these lessons are often positives, occasionally relationships dissipate with hurt feelings and hard truths. In the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the protagonist, Gogol, suffers through the termination of three romantic relationships. With each, Gogol’s life mostly becomes consumed by the relationship, and it is clear that this puts strain on himself and his family. Throughout Gogol’s three romances, …show more content…
She is headed to Maine and he to Boston, yet they quickly discover they are both attending the same college, even taking the same classes. Gogol is instantly enamored of her, thinking of nothing else the entire time he is on vacation. Throughout their relationship, Gogol often repeats that she is the only thing on his mind, and he finds himself constantly distracted by her. While home on holiday, he claims that “all he can think of is getting back to New Haven and calling Ruth” (Lahiri 112). When Gogol says this, he’s only met her once, and he’s already completely consumed by thoughts of her. Gogol, for the first time in his life, is completely infatuated with someone. As the word infatuated suggests, however, their romance doesn’t last. When she returns from her exchange trip to England, something has changed and they no longer are able to get along. Even after, her absence haunts him; getting on trains makes him think of the day they met, and this thought chills him to the bone. He’s only known Ruth a year or so, and yet she completely takes over his entire life, before leaving him and destroying everything he had in her wake. When she is gone for only a few months, he is quoted as saying “he is lost… without her” (Lahiri 117). For a very long time Gogol struggles to return to life without Ruth. She loved him immensely, and yet she was …show more content…
Much like his fast-paced relationship with Ruth, this romance also sparks extremely quickly. He and Maxine meet at a party, where he deems her beautiful and intriguing. After only a few dates, he moves in with her, living upstairs in her parent’s extravagant apartment. He throws himself full force into his relationship with Maxine, taking on an almost married-like status from the very beginning. While being with Maxine makes Gogol immensely happy, he begins to alienate his own family in preference of Maxine’s. He no longer listens to his mother’s messages on his answering machine and neglects calling his father. Soon even visiting his family for a few hours becomes an impossible chore, and he goes as far as to say “he is conscious of the fact that his immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal of his own” (Lahiri 141). Gogol completely abandons his family for Maxine’s, deeply hurting his parents. Because of this betrayal, Gogol even misses the passing of his father without a word to him in months. While he is deeply in love with Maxine, the death of Ashoke makes him realize that she has jeopardized his relationship with his mother, and possibly caused irreparable damage within his family, something that pains Gogol deeply. Maxine tore him from his family, creating a negative impact on Gogol’s life and hurting him