thirty years in the life of the Ganguli family. The Calcutta-born parents emigrated as young adults to the United States‚ where their children‚ Gogol and Sonia‚ grow up experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap with their parents. A film adaptation of The Namesakewas released in March 2007‚ directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan as his parents. Lahiri herself made a cameo as "Aunt Jhumpa". The present paper explores to what extent
Premium The Namesake Jhumpa Lahiri Identity
struggles of the first-generation immigrants to assert a western identity‚ as well as to maintain rich eastern traditions. It also explores the challenges faced by the children‚ being second-generation immigrants‚ as represented by the main character‚ Gogol‚ who attempts to shed the Bengali identity to fully embody the American status. Yet‚ the journey towards re-invention and self-discovery finally teaches him the value of family‚ one’s roots and cultural pride. This study concludes that this novel reflects
Premium Jhumpa Lahiri The Namesake Immigration to the United States
Genre: Growing Up‚ Family Drama Themes: Identity: In The Namesake‚ everybody is seems lost under various terms . Every character struggles with his or her identity‚ as they feel allured by the different cultures‚ traditions‚ and personal ambition. Gogol‚ in particular‚ is torn between two cultures – the Indian traditions of his parents and the modern American culture in which he grows up. His struggle is the same one that his sister Sonia goes through. It’s also related to the struggle his parents
Premium The Namesake Nikolai Gogol Jhumpa Lahiri
The pages of The Namesake drift across decades effortlessly‚ and suck the reader into the daily lives of two generations: the immigrants: Ashoke and Ashima‚ and their children: Gogol and Sonia. Naturally‚ it is also a chronicle of all their romantic relationships. As we witness their lives unfold before our eyes‚ we see love go right‚ and quite often‚ wrong. This allows for an analysis of the finer details of their personalities‚ their backgrounds‚ and how they affect their endeavors in the new
Premium The Namesake Jhumpa Lahiri Nikolai Gogol
status as a “Bildungsroman”. Sympathy and affection is created for Gogol‚ making the tone of this final passage pensive and sentimental. It delivers the climax where Gogol is finally able to find balance in issues that had been bothering him throughout the novel. One of the key concerns dealt with in this passage is the importance of a name.This is the first time following the death of Ashoke that Lahiri zooms into the thoughts of Gogol. The passage opens with a third person limited perspective “The
Premium Nikolai Gogol The Namesake Short story
There are many factors that affected people to be what they are now. In The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri‚ Gogol‚ the main character‚ developed from a child attached to his family to a teenager that often rejects his parents and their Bengali culture. As a young boy‚ he was very close to his parents‚ especially his mother‚ and would listen to them‚ but as he grew up‚ it eventually changed. He wasn’t as close to his parents as he was when he was at a young age. He rejected his family and his culture because
Premium Nikolai Gogol The Namesake Short story
feel a sense of belonging and not belonging. In the first text The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri which is about the Ganguli family‚ Ashima‚ Ashoke‚ Sonia and Gogol‚ but the story is mainly focused on Ashima and Gogol. In the novel we see the views of Gogol and how he feels about his traditional indian family‚ and we see Ashima’s views of how Gogol chooses to live in a westernised way. The type of audience that the Namesake aims at is young adults to adults‚ people who like reading about the Indian
Premium The Namesake Bend It Like Beckham Nikolai Gogol
The film explores cultural identity and tends to reflect at key turning points in the story on the Russian “pet” name‚ Gogol‚ that Ashoke gave his son in honor of the author of a book he had been reading on a train prior to its crash. The parents cling to their Indian heritage and watch in quiet dismay as their children embrace and favor American culture. Though Gogol embraced his name as a child above his formal name of Nickhal‚ he changed it to Nick in High School after being teased and
Premium Marriage Nikolai Gogol Jhumpa Lahiri
“The Overcoat”and Slavic Folk Beliefs In the nineteenth century‚ much of Eastern Europe had a fascination with Slavic folk beliefs. During this time‚ people questioned the existence of mythological creatures‚ especially those which were believed to be somewhere between dead and alive(3). The word “vampire” was introduced in to the Slavic languages in the late eighteenth century and the term “unclean forces” began to be widely recognized by nineteenth century Russian peasants (1). References to
Premium Nikolai Gogol Paganism Folklore
Even so‚ lower-ranking officials still had arbitrary power to decide local fairs. As a result‚ officials would demand briberies or attributes to both commoners or minor officials to make decisions or facilitate approval. In The Overcoat‚ Nicolai Gogol portrays a poor minor official at the bottom of the bureaucratic hierarchy‚ to criticize the backward‚ corrupted tsarist government and Russian
Premium Russian Empire Bureaucracy Peter I of Russia