The Namesake

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an illustrator in Calcutta. Ashima’s father dies in Chapter 2, as the family is preparing to return to India to visit. His death is very difficult for Ashima, who feels distant from her family. Ashima’s grandmother

After college, Gogol completes a graduate degree at Columbia University and works as an architect in New York City. There, he begins dating a woman named Maxine Ratliff. Although he meets her parents on their very first date, he doesn’t want to bring her to meet his parents. His relationship with Maxine progresses to the point where he moves in with the Ratliffs. When Ashoke accepts a nine-month research appointment in Ohio, Ashima persuades Gogol to visit before his father leaves, and Gogol and Maxine stop by to have lunch with his parents on their way to New Hampshire for a vacation with Maxine’s parents. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and later received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997-1998). As its title indicates, The Namesake is a novel of identities. Gogol grows up perplexed by his pet name. He feels it is not his own, and it is not until college, after he has legally changed it to Nikhil, that his father tells him the story that lies behind it. Gogol realizes that it is one thing to change one’s name officially, but another thing to become a different person. Gogol tries on different identities at different stages of his life: in college, with Ruth, after college, with Maxine, and in his marriage to Moushumi. Immigrant anguish - the toll it takes in settling in an alien country after having bidden adieu to one’s home, family, and culture is what this prize-winning novel is supposed to explore, but it's no more than a superficial complaint about a few signature – and done to death - South Asian issues relating to marriage and paternal expectations: a clichéd immigrant story, I'm afraid to say.

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Gogol continues his life in New York, though he visits his mother and sister in Boston more frequently. Ashima sets Gogol up with Moushumi, a family friend from Pemberton Road, who now studies for a French-literature PhD in New York. Gogol and Moushumi initially resist this blind date, but find that they like and understand one another. They continue dating and soon fall in love. After about a year, they marry in a large Bengali ceremony in New Jersey, near where Moushumi’s parents now live. They rent an apartment together downtown. As he is going home for the summer, Gogol's train is suddenly stopped when a man jumped in front of the train. Ashok, waiting at the train station for Gogol, becomes concerned and upon arriving home, finally explains the true significance of Gogol's name. Gogol is deeply troubled by this. The second important aspect of The Namesake is much like the first: the relationship between names and identities. As the novel’s title implies, the matter of Gogol’s name and his namesake is central to the story. The name “Gogol” complicates Gogol’s childhood identity because it is neither American nor Bengali. Gogol’s rejecting his childhood name in favor of the name “Nikhil” coincides with his attempt to flee everything about his childhood as well. When he calls himself “Nikhil,” Gogol feels like a different person, and he prefers being this other person. Still, the rich history of the name “Gogol” is also part of the heritage Gogol receives from his father—and in the end of the novel, Gogol’s choice to be at peace with his own past is also a choice to begin reading about the original Gogol who changed his father’s life. a b "The Namesake - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 4 August 2015 . Retrieved 23 February 2009.

It was originally a novel published in The New Yorker and was later expanded to a full-length novel. Bengali friends of Ashoke’s and Ashima’s in Cambridge. These three visit the Gangulis in the hospital in Cambridge, after Gogol is born. Alan and Judy Chapters 1 and 2 narrate the story of the Gangulis’ early days in America. Ashoke decided to move to Boston and begin graduate school after barely surviving a catastrophic train accident in India. A few years later, his parents and Ashima’s parents arranged their marriage, and Ashima left Calcutta to join Ashoke in Boston. As the novel begins, the two of them are going to a Boston hospital because Ashima is in labor with their first child.It explores many of the same emotional and cultural themes as her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Gogol’s life, and that of every person related to him in any way, from the day of his birth to his divorce at 30, is documented in a long monotone, like a camera trained on a still scene, without zooming in and out, recording every movement the lens catches, accidentally. A final picture emerges in which nothing in particular stands out; and twists that could have been explored more deeply, on a philosophical and humanistic level, such as Gogol’s disillusionment with his dual identity or the aftermath of (Gogol’s father) Ashoke’s death are touched upon perfunctorily or rushed through. What was the significance of the shirt colour, I wondered? Or him being tall, or his hair being greasy? Book subtitle: I will write down everything I know about a certain family of Bengali immigrants in the United States by Jhumpa Lahiri. Yet, in spite of these fated moments, Lahiri’s novel possesses an atmosphere that is at once graceful and ordinary. The language she chooses has this quiet quality that makes that which she writes all the more realistic. Her most insightful observations into her characters, or the dynamics between them, often occur when she is recounting seemingly mundane scenes: from food preparations and family meals to phone conversations.