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The Namesake
The novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri tells of a Bengali couple that leaves Calcutta, India, and settles in Massachusetts in the United States. Their names are Ashoke and Ashima. In Bengali...
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The Namesake
Cultural difference is vitally important to understanding the thematic relevance of Lahiri's work. The fact that cultural difference impacts Ashima and Ashoke is critical. Cultural difference is...
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The Namesake
Gogol finds that he cannot be comfortable as an individual with a stable and acceptable identity while living “in between” cultures, with a Russian first name, with a Bengali family outside of...
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The Namesake
Webster's defines "namesake" as "one who is named after another or for whom another is named." For instance, anyone with Jr. in his name is a namesake of his father.Ashoke and...
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The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri uses a third-person omniscient narrator in The Namesake to provide the widest possible perspective on all the characters and events. Although Nikhil Ganguli, known as Gogol, is the...
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The Namesake
Ashima's address book symbolizes how she deals with her new life in America. Prior to her arrival in the United States, Ashima had only lived in three houses in her whole life. Yet since setting...
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The Namesake
Lahiri sets this up as one of the most important events in the novel. Not only does it help to explain the title, but it also establishes in the most clear of ways the identity crisis that the...
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The Namesake
Moushumi Mazoomdar is a woman whose parents are friends of the Gangulis. She knew Gogol when she was 13, was invited to his party but she thoroughly ignored him and the rest of the kids. When she...
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The Namesake
A similarity between both sets of relationship is that Gogol, himself, never really changes. In both, he is unable to fully embrace a sense of openness and transparency with both women. This is...
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The Namesake
Some of the themes in The Namesake are immigration into another country; assimilation into one's own lifestyle the customs, traditions and attitudes of the new country; marriage; home. Immigration...
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The Namesake
The genre of Bildungsroman is a German genre of eighteenth and nineteenth century novel that traces the psychological development of a young man en-route to maturity and his place in society. In...
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The Namesake
The tags of the question got me to thinking a bit broadly about the connection. I think that a really nice complement to what Lahiri brings out in The Namesake is what Mukherjee attempts to...
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The Namesake
I think that Gogol learns that there are on "quick fixes" in the desire to find some level of solidity in consciousness. Gogol had focused on external attachments as helping to bring about the...
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The Namesake
Space is an important concept both physically and emotionally. The different apartments and houses the characters live in and the huge spaces of the countries all play their part in shaping the...
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The Namesake
Lahiri does a very stellar job in articulating how the generation gap converges with the issue of racial and ethnicity. In some respects, Lahiri shows how each generation experiences a different...
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The Namesake
Marriage is portrayed in a nuanced manner throughout The Namesake. The marriages of two different couples are examined, showing the various themes that repeat themselves from one generation to...
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The Namesake
I think that Gogol's identity changes in large part due to his culture because it represents an aspect of his consciousness that has yet to be fully explored. Gogol is a character that defines...
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The Namesake
This is a very interesting question! Usually in criticism of novels, external conflict is directly plot oriented; while internal conflicts within characters may or may not affect the plot. It is...
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The Namesake
Identity: Gogol struggles throughout the novel with his dual identity - American and Bengali. He changes his name in an effort to do away with any negative connotation there is with the origin of...
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The Namesake
Some literary techniques used by Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namesake include sensory detail, description, imagery. Literary techniques are a category of the two literary devices from which an author...
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The Namesake
Several differences between Bengali and American traditions and customs are mentioned in The Namesake. One is that very often marriages may still be arranged. Like with Ashima's marriage to Ashoke,...
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The Namesake
Gogol, as a child who was born and brought up in America, thinks that the arranged marriage of his parents is something that is oppressive and has resulted in a lack of love between them. When he...
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The Namesake
I think that cultural aspects of identity is extremely important to Gogol's transformation. Cultural identity is what provides the initial impetus for him to run away from in the first part of...
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The Namesake
The protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, Gogol (or Nikhil) Ganguli, is born to Indian parents who moved to the United States shortly before having him. He is an American citizen who grows...
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The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake is a coming-of-age novel about Gogol (Nikhil) Ganguli as he struggles to come to terms with his cultural heritage and his name. This is related to his relationship with...
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The Namesake
I think that one major element of Gogol's characterization is confusion. Gogol is confused about much related to his identity and his sense of being in the world. It is almost to the point where...
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The Namesake
In The Namesake, one comparison between Gogol's relationships with Maxine and Moushimi is in how both relationships lacked emotional depth. One reason why there is a lack of emotional depth in both...
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The Namesake
You could easily argue that "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost relates to every piece of fiction: every novel, every short story. At its heart, the poem is about considering your options in life,...
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The Namesake
Childhood, in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, is portrayed as a conflict between the past and the present. Since Gogol and Sonia maintain they are American first, both have a hard time embracing...
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The Namesake
Gogol's identity is enhanced by the fluid relationship he holds with his family. At first, Gogol's identity is enhanced with distancing himself from his family. This is seen in the choices he...
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The Namesake
Ashoke's death is the catalyst for the transformation with Gogol. Having to retrieve his father's ashes in Ohio causes a change within Gogol. It is at this point where so much that had been...
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The Namesake
Ashima and Ashoke's immigration has a profound impact on their son Gogol. He grows up surrounded by friends and peers who understand and move comfortably in American culture in a way his family...
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The Namesake
The main difference, which is fairly obvious and perhaps overly so to be stated, is that Maxine is not Indian, wheras Moushumi is. This difference, though blatant and obvious, actually plays a...
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The Namesake
In Chapter 4, the narration focuses on the teenage Gogol, from the family party to the scene in which he receives his father's precious book, to the long trip overseas, and on into Gogol's high...
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The Namesake
The only real significance the name "Gogol" has in this book is that when faced with having to give his newborn son a name in order to take him home from the hospital, Ashoke Ganguli used...
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The Namesake
Choosing the character of Gogol to focus on the quest of identity is a good choice indeed. There are two ways to approach this topic with the character of Gogol: his search for cultural identity...
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The Namesake
It means that Gogol feels free from the influence of his overbearing family and their culture from which he has always struggled to distance himself. Gogol spends his adolescence and young...
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The Namesake
Gogul Ganguli is the protagonist in The Namesake. The entire narrative of The Namesake revolves around Gogul's experiences. Gogul's complex and agonizing search for identity is the basis for the...
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The Namesake
Ashima is craving something spicy. Part of this craving might come from her being pregnant. Yet, another part of it might come from the fact that she has left an intense culture and moved into a...
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The Namesake
Gogol was born into a Ukrainian Cossack family in 1809. His family were landowners, so there was money for him to attend boarding school. As a child, he was frequently ill; the Dictionary of World...
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The Namesake
The idea of the concept of "namesake" is to convey a shared connection between names. For Gogol, understanding and coming to accept his own name is of central importance to the novel. The fact...
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The Namesake
A sampling of Lahiri's authorial style and use of literary devices can be gotten from the beginning of Chapter 5 of The Namesake. Lahiri's authorial style employs a bold direct tone that is...
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The Namesake
Hello! In Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Namesake,' Ashoke is Gogol's father. In Chapter 3, we read that he has been hired as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the university. He shares a...
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The Namesake
Names are crucially important in Lahiri's The Namesake, as we can see from the novel's title. The name referred to in the title is Gogol, who is the protagonist of the novel. His parents are from...
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The Namesake
A thematic essay is very different from a summary or critical analysis. Rather than simply recounting what happened in the book, you need to choose a specific theme, issue or idea, that informs a...
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The Namesake
I think that Gogol demonstrates the hybridity of a second generation immigrant in a couple of ways. On one hand, he is intensely "Western" as seen in the start of the narrative. Yet, when his...
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The Namesake
Painful and isolating--over many years she makes friends in the Indian community in Boston, and her children and husband bring her happiness. But when her husband dies and her two children are...
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The Namesake
I think that the opening of the story in which Ashima is trying to make an Indian savoury snack using American ingredients represents much on how Ashima wishes to remake her life in Boston as a...
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The Namesake
There are many examples of exclusion in The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. The story is all about exclusion, in fact. Gogol's parents Ashoke and Ashima have emigrated from Bengal, India, to the United...
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The Namesake
I would think that when Gogol is confronted by the reality that there is a void in his life that cannot be explained through traditional analysis, this would be one of the first moments where the...