THE NAMESAKE
By,
Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa
Lahiri is an Indian-American writer. She has born on July 11, 1967 in UK.
Author Jhumpa Lahiri was born Nilanjana Sudheshna but was called by her
nickname “Jhumpa”. Lahiri’s life long mixed feeling about her identity as
represented in her Indian name inspired Gogol’s struggle in The Namesake.
‘The
Namesake’ focuses on first generation Indian immigrants and the issues they and
their children face in the United States. ‘The Namesake’ takes the Ganguli
family from their tradition bound life in Calcutta through their fraught
transformation into Americans. Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Namesake' is the story of a
young American Indian, Gogol. Gogol hates the name given to him by his parents,
his 'good name' as they call it. He particularly hates the comparison to his
namesake, Nikolai Gogol and is embarrassed by it. Gogol grows to be a handsome
young architect, falls in love with an American girl and is happy for a while
living with her and her family. Later, Gogol meets an Indian girl and marries
her but feels lonely in the relationship.
Gogol is not proud of his origins, in fact he has been shown to hate them .He is shown growing more sensitive to his family, particularly his mother as time passes. His reactions to his father's death are especially touching. Jhumpa Lahiri has managed to portray beautifully how Gogol's mother Ashima adjusts to her life in a foreign country, how she evolves from being a homesick housewife to a confident woman comfortable in her surroundings. Jhumpa Lahiri does a wonderful job getting the reader into this character's head and feeling for him as he grows up in a culture entirely new to his parents and their attempts to keep the Indian culture true to their children.
Gogol is not proud of his origins, in fact he has been shown to hate them .He is shown growing more sensitive to his family, particularly his mother as time passes. His reactions to his father's death are especially touching. Jhumpa Lahiri has managed to portray beautifully how Gogol's mother Ashima adjusts to her life in a foreign country, how she evolves from being a homesick housewife to a confident woman comfortable in her surroundings. Jhumpa Lahiri does a wonderful job getting the reader into this character's head and feeling for him as he grows up in a culture entirely new to his parents and their attempts to keep the Indian culture true to their children.
The narrative is simple and lucid; a lot of attention has been paid to the details. The novel manages to highlight the confusion, the homesickness and the loneliness of the first generation Indians in a foreign country. The triumph of the novel is when Ashima, who misses India all her life comes to think of Boston as home.
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