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“The Namesake” is a novel by American author Jhumpa Lahiri. The novel travels through numerous locations in the world, examining the nuances involved with being caught between two conflicting cultures with highly distinct religious, social, and ideological differences. It explores and communicates ideas and attitudes through the many themes in a complex story in which conflicts between characters and their own are often illustrated. The ideas cited throughout the books are explored by themes such as Name and Identity and Alienation. The author depicts the relationships and thoughts of the characters and from there, attitudes are explored and communicated throughout the book using characters’ conflicts and emotions.
A theme is a universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature. In the novel, Name and Identity is a major theme since at its core, as the title suggests, The Namesake tackles the question of forming one’s own identity and explores the power that a name can carry by the character Gogol/Nikhil. Gogol grows up perplexed by his pet name, at the age of fourteen, Gogol has come to hate his name and resents being asked about it. The main tension that drives his identity confusion is the divide between his family’s Indian heritage and his desire for an independent, modern American lifestyle. In the book, his character’s development reveals a constant striving for a clear identity, which is difficult in the divided world he grew up in. His attitude towards the name Gogol when being asked “I hate the name Gogol,” “I’ve always hated it.” First-person and repetition techniques were used to depict the hateful attitude of Gogol towards his given name and emphasize his resentment. After changing his official name in court from Gogol to Nikhil in chapter 5, the use of accumulation appeared when he realized “There is only one complication: he doesn’t feel like Nikhil. Not yet. Part of the problem is that the people who now know him as Nikhil have no idea that he used to be Gogol. They know him only in the present, not at all in the past. But after eighteen years of Gogol, two months of Nikhil feel scant, inconsequential. At times he feels as if he’s cast himself in a play, acting the part of twins, indistinguishable to the naked eye yet fundamentally different.” This reveals that he was confused and uncertain about the new identity that his new official name gives him after being so familiar with the name Gogol and about why his father gave him the name Gogol in the first place. “Gogol” changes his name to help change how he sees himself, to stop his self-confusion, and to contribute to his transformation and growth, not knowing that this is a name that had indirectly saved his father’s life and for that, his father has always appreciated this name and is grateful to it. When he’s in a relationship with Maxine, mainly as Nikhil, his identity is different, he lives as a true American, and instead of visiting his own, he chooses to go with Maxine’s family and embed in their rituals. As the book gradually process, he gradually begins to give acceptance to his name, shifting from hating and confusing attitudes towards the name to the end when he finally reads the book his father gifted, suggesting a consenting attitude about his past and allowing him to truly realize his identity. The theme of Name and Identity also communicated ideas about one’s name, of how a name represents one’s identity. Names are much more than indicators of one’s self. They are, perhaps more than anything, indicators of how one is perceived by other people, for his parents and sister, Gogol is a name of family intimacy and love. For friends at school, Gogol is fun to say as it is an uncommon name.
Furthermore, alienation is another big theme in the book as it reveals the idea of being a stranger in a foreign land and the desire for individuals to belong to a community or a group is a significant part of a human being. The character’s development in adapting to the culture of America offers a glimpse of life as an Indian immigrant to the United States, further exploring the lack of belonging of the character Ashima as being an immigrant. Throughout her pregnancy, which was the most difficult time for Ashima, she was afraid to raise her child in America “a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare”. The use of emotive language through the words ‘tentative’ and ‘spare’ and repetition of the word ‘where’ describes the place being so strange and unfamiliar to Ashima as she is separated from her family and those she loves. It creates an isolated atmosphere in the text, assisting to illustrate and emphasize the confusion and uncertain attitude of Ashima towards America, further exploring the feelings of distance and estrangement. Later in the text, when Gogol is born, Ashima gets upset when her close family is not around him and finds that it is a disadvantage for Gogol “I don’t want to raise Gogol alone in this country. It’s not right. I want to go back”. The high modality in the sentence ‘it’s not right’ creates a sense of angst and anger in the words she says. Ashima affirms that living in the place she feels belongs to, where she can seek help and able to feel a connection with other people will benefit her children which was the life that she used to live before getting married. The author explores the theme of alienation to tie it to loneliness in Chapter 7, about Ashima. One example of this is shown through the image of Ashima living alone in the house on Pemberton Road “feels too old to learn such a skill. She hates returning in the evenings to a dark, empty house, going to sleep on one side of the bed and waking up on another”. The use of listing the activities that Ashima repeats every day, with a tone of weariness, reflects a life of insipidity and tastelessness of Ashima as she is living in a place that she does not feel belongs. These details depicted by the author helped the text demonstrate the idea of isolation and provided insight into migrant experiences. The text also explored this idea to guide us to understand Ashima’s emotions and attitudes about her life which she considers lonely and isolated at the beginning when she first moved to the United States and when her husband passed away.
‘The Namesake’ explores and communicates ideas and attitudes throughout the text by using numerous themes and techniques to describe the thoughts of different characters, giving us a deeper look into their feelings and emotions, of their inner-self battle while providing us with ideas about various aspects in the character’s life as first and second generation immigrants.
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