Part 2 of The Namesake seemed to be the transition from following Ashima and Ashoke's lives to primarily narrating about Gogol.
As the readers get to know Gogol better and as Gogol's romantic life progresses, we learn more and more about Maxine. To me, Gogol's relationship with Maxine was all part of his continued resentment of his Bengali heritage. Maxine's family took Gogol under their wing, letting him eat with the family, live with the family, and vacation with the family. They even call Gogol/Nikhil Nick, an American spin on a Bengali name. This welcome attitude plus her family's typical American traditions appeal to Gogol not only to escape from his Bengali roots, but because Ashima/Ashoke were less open towards newcomers than Maxine's family. Ashima and Ashoke constantly brought Gogol and his sister over the houses of family friends, but ALL of them were Bengali. Towards American families, the couple tended to be more reserved. Gogol likes the idea that a real American family is finally "adopting" him into their culture.
Gogol truly shows his resentment towards his namesake/culture while on vacation in New Hampshire with Maxine's family. His family tries to get in touch with him as best they can, but he has gone out of his way to make sure he will be alone with Maxine's family. On the rare occasion he does speak with them, his tone is cold and blunt. Vacation with Maxine is a good escape for Gogol because her family does not seem even a little curious about Gogol's family roots. The ONLY time Gogol's race comes up, on page 157, Maxine proves that she knows very little about Gogol. In fact, she says "[You] were born here. . .weren't you?" which proves that she has no idea about Gogol's citizenship situation even though the two have been dating for a considerable amount of time.
There is one segment of The Namesake part 2 that I know is symbolic but I cannot quite understand. On page 143, Maxine and Gogol are alone in Maxine's Chelsea house and the amount of mosquitoes in the bedroom force Gogol to need something he only uses in Calcutta: a mosquito net. Gogol's encounters with the mosquitoes make him an insomniac. His attempts to kill them are in vain, and the tiny creatures "engorged with his blood" are "too high up to kill." Could this symbolize him trying to "kill" his namesake/roots but not being able to, because he needs Calcutta traditions (the mosquito net?) Are there any other thoughts/opinions about this quote?
As the story goes on, Gogol slowly grows into the man that he would become. The first step in this process was dealing with the past, in order to face the future. With that said, Gogol decided to legally change his name to Nikhil, as he felt that the name Nikhil would better suit his new lifestyle. After changing his name, Gogol has a sense of freedom, which is represented in the quotes "he wonderers if this is how it feels for an obese person to become thin, for a prisoner to walk free," showing his satisfaction with his new name.
With a new name and a new sense of freedom, Nikhil was well prepared to start his college career, a fresh start at Yale, as Nikhil. At first, Gogol has a bit of trouble adjusting to all of the new people that he encounters, mainly because they know nothing of his past as Gogol, but he greatly appreciates the fact that, to all of these new people, he is just Nikhil.
One day while taking the train back home for thanksgiving, Gogol meets a girl named Ruth. They converse the entire ride, exchange numbers, and agree to meet when they both got back to school. Over time the two fell in love, spending most of their college together, until Ruth decided to go abroad to Oxford University, which marked the beggining of the end of their relationship.
This was not the end of Gogol's romantic life. A few years later while attending Columbia, Gogol met a girl named Maxine. He immediately fell in love with not only Maxine, but als o with her parents, and their families way of living. The two became very close, Gogol even went as far as moving into Maxine's families house, until something terrible happened. Gogol's father. Ashoke, died of a sudden heart attack, forcing the entire Ganguli family into a sort of depression, which in turn ended the relationship between Maxine and Gogol.
Once again, Gogol did not wait to long to start seeing other women. Gogol's mother set him up on a date with a childhood acquaintance named Moushimi. Gogol remembers little of her, and does not think that the first date will lead anywhere, but surprisingly he takes a great interest in her. Ironically, the two Bengalis who used to attend eachothers birthdays, barely knowing one another, fell in love, despite there unofficial vows to not be with a Bengali, as their parents had desperately hoped.
To answer Alex's question on the mosquito net, I also had some difficulty understanding the symbolism of the passage. Clearly, there is symbolism following the pesky mosquitoes and Gogol's inability to slaughter them. While reading part two, I felt that Gogol's anger towards the insects was very surprising and unexpected. Originally, it was his sudden anger and insomnia that made me realize this passage is symbolic.
I agree with Alex's notion that the Gogol is symbolically trying to "kill" his namesake and roots but cannot because of his attachment/need for Calcutta, which is represented by the mosquito net. As an inference from the very title of the story, it is apparent that Gogol/Nikhil is internally conflicted with the idea of his namesake. This confusion is only further deepened by his relationship between his "American" self and his heritage from Calcutta. Symbolically, it would be a very rational leap for Lahiri (the author) to create a symbolic message through the mosquito net (which he remarked he had only ever needed in Calcutta) used by Gogol in America.
To bring the underlying message a step further, I also had a thought on the concept of how a mosquito draws blood from its victim. Literally removing blood from of a human vessel is a surprisingly vile and sacred act. Gogol remarked that the mosquitoes were “engorged with his blood”, meaning they had drawn a fair amount of blood from his body. This fact offers the conclusion that though Gogol was using the mosquito net, it was not really protecting him to a very large extent. Perhaps the net AND the mosquitoes can represent Calcutta? Genetically, (through the blood/his heritage) Gogol was almost “related” to Calcutta. He may not have enjoyed that information, or even celebrated it ever. But, he needed Calcutta to survive (the mosquito net), explaining his continuous internal conflict over his name and his past. So technically, I suppose one way to look at it is that Gogol was extremely bothered by his internal conflict, but he needed it to lead his life.
I liked reading this second part better, because Ashima and Ashoke's lives were pretty interesting, but I like how their son Gogol is different. In this section, Gogol tries to completely disassociate himself from his family. What I think he is doing is what every kid does, tries to rebel in order to get more attention. I think Gogol enjoys having an Indian heritage, but he really loves the American life. I think that he wants to fit in with the culture around him and fears that if he embraces his true Indian culture, Americans will reject him. In his mind, in order to be considered fully American, he has to cut his ties with his family. In all honesty, I think that is the worst thing that Gogol could possibly want to do. If something bad were to ever happen, family is usually the only thing someone really has in the end.
Two more big mistakes that Gogol makes in this part is one, giving himself a public name. I think he should just keep his name, it makes him unique from everyone else. And he should just own up to his heritage. And the second mistake, he should definitely not have moved in with Maxine so quickly. Now that he is so distant with his family, of course his father dies and then he becomes distant with Maxine. It is a vicious cycle of bad choices for Gogol.
Getting deeper into the book, Gogol becomes independent and obtains his freedom. I wondered a lot why Gogol distanced himself from his family. He seemed like he didn't really care too much about his past like Ashima did in the first part of the book. We get to see how much Gogol has grown into the man he became and also we see his love life develop. Gogol deciding to change his name to Nikhil was a big decision and an extreme change to his life, showing his independence. Why does the name Gogol bother him so much still?
I found the relationship between him and Maxine somewhat strange because he was constantly with her and her family and they knew nothing about Gogol's family. Although Gogol knew that his family probably would not accept nor care about him dating someone who doesn't share the same traditions as them. This shows that Gogol was more assimilated to how Ratliff's lived being that they were American and he wanted to live differently. I also wondered why in the beginning Ashima kept saying that her and Ashoke never really showed or said they loved eachother. I thought it was very odd. Maybe Gogol spent most of his time with Maxine because he wanted to show his love for her unlike his parents had done.
When Ashoke dies, I feel sorry for Ashima because she relied on him and loved him. I think Gogol's biggest mistake was ignoring his family over a extended amount of time. You never know what you have until it's gone and I suspect Gogol realized that after his father passed away which is why he detaches from Maxine. "He thinks of the last time he had seen his father, three months ago: the image of him waving good-bye as he and Maxine pulled out of the drive way on their way to New Hampshire. He cannot remember the last time he and his father had spoken. Two weeks ago? Four?" (p 177).
I would like to agree with Alfonse’s point made in part one of The Namesake because I feel as though it carries over into part two. Alfonse mentioned that it was quite clear how miserable Ashima was in America. But, when she gave birth to Gogol and his sister Sonia, “Ashima found a new sense of meaning in life, replacing days of crying and missing her old country.” In part two of The Namesake, Gogol and Sonia grow up and once again, Ashima is alone with Ashoke. Now that she has time on her hands and is alone, she returns to keeping herself bust picking up food and doing laundry. Another sign that Ashima’s children are growing up is the relationships that Gogol has. His relationships with Ruth and Maxine were both consummated which shows that Gogol is a man. It is almost as if Lahiri uses Gogol’s relationships as indicators of how much time has passed.
Of course, the death of Ashoke Ganguli is devastating not only because it is around the holidays but mostly because the audience feels sympathetic toward Ashima. Her children have grown and now she is even more upset having lost her husband. It seems as though Ashoke’s death was rubbing salt in Ashima’s wound so to speak. Ashoke’s death accelerated certain expectations. Ashima wants Gogol to be settled with children. Her want brings along Moushumi, a friend of the family’s. it will be interesting to see if Gogol’s relationship with her lasts and perhaps turns into marriage.
Seeing as though the symbolism of the mosquito net seems to be the topic of discussion I would like to also try to answer Alex’s question. I think that the mosquitoes that surround Gogol are symbolic of the problems that he faces and will continue to face, and that is why he cannot kill them. For example, Gogol has not been successful on his quest to find love, that’s one mosquito. Another would be his mother wanting and begging him to come home for the holidays, or Ashima’s concern about Maxine addressing Ashima as well…Ashima (unaware of the Indian culture).
I agree with Alex when she says for part two there is a shift in the direction of the story. Because in the beginning you get the sense of Ashima’s and Ashoke’s hardships. Now there’s a transition and we begin to see Gogol’s hardships rather than his parents.
The action of Gogol changing his birth name to Nikhil illustrates the strong strength of hatred he truly holds for his Bengali heritage. By him covering up his original name he is covering up his family and their culture. Since Gogol now started college at Yale this is his chance for him to create a name for himself and that’s literally what he did. No one knows him nor where he had come from. And Gogol would be glad to keep it that way. On his journey of becoming an American he meets Maxine which in my opinion is not only someone he is attracted to. Yet, she is a symbol of his getaway from escaping who he really is and becoming someone who he thinks he wants to be.
When Gogol introduces Maxine to his family he gets an reaction he does not expect. His mother Ashima tries to explain to Gogol that she is not right for him. She tells him as if Maxine will not be in his life for a very long time. I think this is also a major thing that drives Gogol away from his family and leans more towards Maxine’s family. Now when she introduces Gogol to his family it is a complete opposite reaction than his family gave to Maxine. Again this is where we see the difference in the two different ethnicities. Maxine’s family is very fond of Gogol. By them being so excepting this allows Gogol to feel as if he belongs. Because his parents wants him to be engaged with his culture. Since he is not this might make him feel as if he is an outsider. Now with welcoming parents of Maxine’s comforts Gogol as a “true American”.
Now a tragic incident occurs where Ashoke experience a dreadful heart attack. Sadly he is unable to recover from it and he dies leaving his family behind. Now suffrage overcomes his whole family.
Gogol goes to Ohio to gather his father’s belongings. It is then when he and Maxine goes in their separate direction. Since I mention earlier that Maxine was a symbol of Gogol wanting to be an American, he no longer holds that passion. This is why he let Maxine go, and becoming an “true American” fade along with her.
Gogol grows up and we see that he tries to increase the distance between himself and his family and his roots more and more. He refuses to date within the Bengali culture, he has few Bengali friends, he doesn't go home from college very often. Gogol is rebelling against his family, against where he comes from, and through this he is also rebelling against himself.
I found that I liked Maxine's character in the beginning, but when it became apparent that she knew nothing of Gogol, as Alex Mazarakis touched on, my liking for her evaporated. It was as though she didn't care to know anything about Gogol, as if he was just some exotic accessory for her cushy life. It made me wonder why Lahiri chose to portray Maxine like this. Perhaps Lahiri has a slight prejudice against upper-class Americans? It was like the message she was trying to convey was that people of that background rarely care about others and just assume that whatever they have is better than what others may have, and thus others will always convery willingly to their cushier life style. And the way Lahiri made Gogol react to this reflects this theory. Then, as Gogol's liking for Maxine fades and he becomes more in tune with his Bengali heritage again, it is almost like Lahiri was saying that the American culture (or other cultures in general) is great entertainment for a while, but that sooner or later people realize -- as Gogol seemed to realize -- that our original roots are something we should never neglect.
To respond to what Alex Mazarakis said about the mosquito net and symbolism, I'd like to say that I think the mosquitoes could represent Gogol's roots that he was trying to squash and leave behind. Yet they were "engorged with is blood"; they were connected to him too much for him to squash completely. They always keep coming back.
The mosquito net might symbolize how Gogol is finally beginning to realize that he needs his Bengali culture, both for comfort and for survival.
I absolutely loved how Moushumi and Gogol broke up, as odd as that sounds. I think it really shows another theme of the book: that you must keep going. There will always be obstacles in life, big and small, but you must continue to strive for life. Ashoke had his train crash, yet he survived, recovered, and moved to America to fulfill a dream. Ashima had the burden of living so far from her family, yet she survived and made friends, helped to build and nurture a family, and she even found a part time job at the library that she really loved. Gogol and Sonia both had the obstacles of living in and trying to fit into two worlds - an American world and a Bengali world. Yet both survived and thrived. This theme is very important for many people to learn, and I love how Lahiri portrayed it -- it was like the message was hidden in little pockets throughout the fabric of the story, and we readers had to look deep to find it for ourselves.
In this section I found it very interesting how it was mainly about Gogol's love interests and how almost all of them were doomed to fail. (sorry this will probably be more than one post too)
1. Ruth - This was a physical attraction if I have ever read one. All Gogol can think about after he meets her is "their faces flushed from the heat of the compartment, their bodies cramped in the same way" (p.112) Now to me this sounds a lot like sex (maybe how to read like a professor rubbed off on me). When else would two bodies be cramped in the same way and faces flushed? So Gogol only wanted Ruth for the physical aspect. To make this relationship even more doomed, on page 115, Gogol admits how he cannot picture Ruth in his house on Pemberton Road; basically he cannot picture her with his family, immersed in his culture, a part of his other life. Thus, when this relationship ended, it did not surprise me.
2. Maxine -She is the complete opposite of Gogol. She was raised privileged, remains that way, and is sure of her upbringing. To Gogol, she probably seems like the perfect escape from his parents because she and her family were everything her parents are not. The lifestyle the Ratliffs lead is foreign but not unwelcomed to Gogol. Still this relationship is doomed for a few reasons. One, he cannot see his parents sitting with the Ratliffs, being a part of this extended family. Personally, I believe for Gogol to have any happiness he needs to reconcile his differences between his two halves: Gogol and Nikhil. Therefore, since he cannot picture his family and, inadvertently, his life as Gogol being accepted by the Ratliffs, this relationship will not work. Second, (and I think Alex Maz might appreciate this insight) are the mosquitoes. They only target Gogol and not Max, because e does not belong there. The mosquitoes, by biting him are almost leaving him a message: you are not welcomed here so don't get comfortable. Max is left unharmed because it is her home, her lifestyle. Gogol is just not supposed to be part of her world. And lastly, the Garden of Eden. Page 155 "nothing is locked...the Ratliffs own the moon...and the sun and the clouds." Here, the Ratliffs almost sound like God in their summer escape. They own everything, much like how God owns the world because according to the Bible, he created it. And our Adam and Eve for this Garden of Eden? Gogol and Max. Adam and Eve, who went naked and had no shame about it before Eve ate the forbidden fruit, are being channeled by Gogol and Max who too go around naked on the beach and go skinny dipping. Though just as this couple ended tragically with Eve committing the sin, Gogol's relationship ends tragically with his father's death and his own emotional withdrawal.
I’ve come to find that Jhumpa Lahiri’s trademark is not straying from the main subject at hand, so she avoids using “flowery” words or “fluffing up” her writing. However, on certain, rare occasions, her sense of humor appears on the page, which is a welcome relief for me. One example of this is when Lahiri writes, “Plenty of people changed their names: actors, writers, revolutionaries, transvestites” (97). Though Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing is very aware and solemn, she can also be witty, which helps prevent this work from becoming too stuffy or sentimental.
I’m surprised that Gogol changes his name. Even though he disliked it, it seems unlike him to actually go through with it. Gogol seems too grounded and traditional to go through with the decision. During his teen years, he stayed quite close to his parents’ expectations of him, maintaining good grades and being accepted into a respectable school. The only instance in which he rebelled, albeit to a small degree, was when he went to a college party with his friends before taking the SAT, but that wouldn’t follow him for the rest of his adult life, and only his friends knew he was disobeying. As well, the fact that he attended a party isn’t something that will be immediately made apparent to anyone who met him. Changing his name is something that will redefine who he is. Granted, in a way, he will always be “Gogol” because he will have the same personality traits and will retain his memories of the past. However, the fact that he changed his name to “Nikhil” seems to have tarnished his original name. Even if he ever went back to it, it’s as if he lost faith in it, gave up on it. The alternating between the two names gives me the impression that Gogol is lost, as though he has no true identity. He believes that a name has the power to relieve him of the pressures and obligations of his family.
I feel conflicted as to why Gogol changes his name. Though Alex Maz commented that Gogol harbors resentment towards his “namesake/culture”, the two are not one and the same. Gogol’s namesake is Nikolai Gogol, a Russian author. His culture is Indian-American. Why would Gogol’s hatred of his first name extend to his Indian heritage? Perhaps the name “Gogol” is too exotic-sounding in comparison to “Tom” or “Sam”, and it made him feel like a foreigner in his own country. However, it is not an Indian name, so why detest aspects of Indian culture?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Gogol hates his Indian culture. He is just refusing to fit himself into the stereotypical Indian mold. It only makes sense for Gogol and Sonia to lean towards the American ideals because they were raised that way. Gogol and Sonia weren’t raised in India-they were raised in America, alongside other American kids and the American ideals that permeated the atmosphere. Ashima and Ashoke shouldn’t place blame on themselves or feel depressed about the direction their children’s lives are taking. The ideals that people hold onto upon entering adulthood are often influenced by their surroundings. In the Ganguli family’s case, Gogol and Sonia have been bombarded by the ideals and images of what a typical American holds to high esteem ever since early childhood. Whether it be on the playground or on television, the values and ethics of the masses are presented for others to acknowledge, accept, and incorporate into their own lives. The earliest example of this is kindergarten, when Gogol is taught by his teacher that his own desires are independent of his parents and he had the opportunity to do as he pleased and keep his name. Upon entering college, he doesn’t study engineering, place great emphasis on finding himself an Indian wife, or stay completely obedient to his family’s wishes and expectations. Some might argue that because Gogol doesn’t openly acknowledge his Indian heritage, or possess some of the basic expectations of Indian culture, he is denying it. I disagree. Just because someone doesn’t embrace a facet of their identity, or the identity that others dictate for them, doesn’t mean he or she is rejecting it. A person can be an American and never have sung the Star Spangled Banner or light fireworks on the Fourth of July. Does that mean the person is rejecting the American identity? Certainly not. They’re just not willing to take part in expressing any attitude towards that ideal. This reminds me of some of the issues African-Americans face today. Some people label African-Americans who they believe do not fit the stereotypical qualities they’ve come to identify with their race as not being “black enough.” However, even though certain ideals are possessed by some people of a certain background or persuasion doesn’t mean all people of that background or persuasion are the same way.
Honestly, thinking about his entire predicament, I wonder why Gogol holds such deep negative sentiment for his family, avoiding them as often as he can. His parents may have named him, but there was thought and good intentions behind it. Perhaps his alteration of his name is just a rebellion against his parents’ authority, as many teens do.
It’s unfortunate that Gogol ignores his own family in exchange for spending time with his girlfriend, Maxine’s family. No one can ever replace family, but Gogol is avoiding his own like the plague. He views them like ants at a picnic, as though they’re intruding on his fun. However, when you think about it, what harm did Ashima and Ashoke cause to Gogol? They were loving and affectionate parents, and they weren’t abusive towards him. Gogol must dislike them for their Indian heritage, for all of the expectations they have for him and the obligations he must endure as a part of his culture. This explains why he is so drawn to Maxine’s parents. The American culture doesn’t hold obedience to one’s parents to a high priority, so children have more leeway to do as they wish. They don’t have to think about the impact the decisions they make will have on the family’s welfare. Maxine’s parents don’t know him to the capacity in which his own parents know him. As hospitable to Gogol they may be, they view him as their daughter’s boyfriend, and it’s unlikely that they would hold him to as high of a standard as they might do with a relative.
One of the most heartbreaking parts of the book is when Ashima is attempting to persuade Gogol to see his father off at the airport when he leaves to direct research work in Ohio. Instead of complying with this small request his mother makes of him, he responds by asking “Why do I have to see him off?” (144). Hearing this response from Gogol makes me imagine him as a small child in the supermarket aisle, whining and moaning to his mother. He’s still remarkably immature as an adult, not yet having grasped the concept of loyalty and love for one’s family. Gogol doesn’t even have the decency to congratulate his father on this accomplishment, admitting that he “knows vaguely of his father’s plans” (144). Gogol seems to harbor this cold indifference to his mother’s request, preferring instead to go on his vacation with Maxine.
I wonder if Gogol thought that his “vacation” was worth missing his father’s last moments for?
Following Ashoke’s death, Ashima has to become independent and self-sufficient. It feels very unnatural seeing her in that light, as I associate her too much with Ashoke. How will she rebuild her life and her self-esteem? How will her husband’s death affect her approach to life? Hopefully, after a traumatic experience like death, she wouldn’t have to deal with other negativities. I imagine she might become more protective of Gogol and Sonia, out of fear of losing them prematurely as well.
The fact that the last opportunity Gogol had to see his father was one in which he was unwilling is tragic. That’s a terrible memory of yourself to keep.
3. Bridget There isn't really any symbolic reason for this one. It was simply that Gogol wasn't with her for a long term relationship.
As for themes for this section?
A. The Importance of Trains -Ever since the first section, I felt like trains were a big thing for this book, though i couldn't put my finger on it. Clearly it changed Ashoke's life since he was reborn on a train (Remember he didn't plan on leaving India until he met Ghosh, then he nearly died in that train wreck only to emerge as a man who would not even let his family keep him in India much longer. Sounds like a rebirth to me.) However, Gogol meets Ruth on a train as well, his first love. Also, while Gogol is on a train someone commits suicide in front of it. Lastly, Gogol takes a train past the cape and it teeters dangerously on its tracks with two curves. What I believe that Lahiri is trying to say is that Gogol (and on a larger scale people in general) is like a train. Sometimes, he is on track, other times he teeters dangerously, and then he stops altogether even getting off track. When Gogol's father dies of a heart attack, Gogol temporarily loses his tracks, the person that guided him and gave him direction. He lost his way and can only seem to get back on track by accepting his family,his heritage, his name and the legacy that comes with it.
B.The World keeps Spinning -A bit on the morbid side but still present. When Gogol changes his name, it is the turning point of his life. he can finally be who he has dreamed of being, though even he can realize that something so life changing for him, goes unnoticed in the world. "the procedure is entirely unmomentous..." (pg. 102) Also, when Ashoke dies, Gogol didn't even realize it was happening: he was at a party, getting drunk with Max. (171) In addition, when Gogol goes to the place where his father was living he is unsettled. "The relentless uniformity of it upsets him..." To think that his father was living just like everyone else, that he was just another apartment, upsets him. Lahiri is emphasizing how, despite how all consuming our lives seem to be, even things that may put us on hold for a few years, means nothing to the world around us.
Gogol undergoes an enormous transformation in chapters five through eight. At the start of these chapters he sets out to change his name. After having done so he feels to have lost his identity. He begins to feel as though he is living another person's life, as though he is not his parents' child. Even though he told them to do so, he gets upset when his parents refer to him as Nikhil. It reminds him that he has created a distance between them. Three months into his freshman year at Yale, Gogol refers to his dorm room as his home, when speaking to his parents. Ashima is immediately hurt by this and explains that she has never once considered America her home, and she has been living there for twenty years. Gogol and his parents grow further and further apart as time goes on. When he moves to New York, he creates his own identity. He knows that such a place is foreign and scary to his parents.
Throughout his college career Gogol experiences romantic relationships, his first being with a woman named Ruth. Her different background draws his attention. Gogol does not feel the need to tell his parents of Ruth, and they find out about her a year later. As time goes by, Ruth and Gogol end their relationship and eventually he meets a woman named Maxine. She is awkwardly forward, but in an honest confident kind of way. To me, she is beautiful. Gogol enjoys Maxine's lifestyle, especially how different it is from the way his parents live. He begins to notice all of the things his parents would refuse to take part in. Gogol tells his parents about Maxine after six months of dating.
The distance between Gogol and his parents is so easily maintained because of different cultural identities. Gogol enjoys being isolated and living an American life. In an attempt to reconnect with his son, Ashoke tells Gogol the truth behind his name. (This happens before he has met Maxine). This only makes Gogol feel as though his father is a stranger. He is upset that he was lied to for such a long time. Maybe he would have kept his name if he had known a long time ago.
As Gogol grows up to be a man he realizes how much he enjoys being away from his family, and their way of living. Even Sonia has escaped to California. Ashoke moves to Cleveland for a while and Ashima adjusts to living on her own. As first it was hard for her but she managed to find ways to occupy herself. To everyone's surprise, Ashoke suffers a heart attack and dies. Already distant from his father, I expected Gogol to handle the situation a little differently than he had. Just before the death of her husband, Ashima struggled to understand why her children needed to be so distant from her. Upon Ashoke's death she realized that he had gone away as a way to teach her how to live on her own. Gogol may have gone back home to Maxine's house, but he will never be the same man that once lived there.
As I read on from chapters 5 through 8, I grew progressively melancholy, a certain heaviness setting itself upon me, this subconscious burden growing with the turn of each page. This portion of the book begins with Gogol’s “transformation,” so a few people who posted before me have called it, consisting of the changing of his name (from “Gogol” to “Nikhil”) and the metamorphosis of his personality that follows. This particular event—a definite “baptism,” in the eyes of any who have read How to Read Literature Like a Professor—suggests the superficiality that coincides with being young; the face that there is even room for such a transformation as this is because Gogol views his name as the deciding factor of his identity, the one aspect of him that makes him the person he is. This thought, to the more mature, less insecure part of the rest of the world, is incredibly naïve. Therefore, in conclusion, this name-changing not only signals a new start, a step upward as well as outward, for Gogol—now Nikil—but also reveals to us just how much there was that needed to change in order for him to grow, to step foot in the real world.
From his name-change on, we observe Gogol’s love life, the coming and going of a few women, their affect on him, the significant events that took place around the time of each relationship all having lasting effects. Ruth, the first woman we, as an audience, see Gogol grow seriously interested in, appears near perfect. The end of their relationship is abrupt and unexpected (Lahiri mentions the breakup in passing, on page 119, in the introduction of a new part of the chapter) catching the audience offguard, and making a very sudden switch from a positive to negative atmosphere. Her purpose for such a sudden end, however, could support this theme of the inevitable destinies of man, an all-powerful fate that so many others have posted about, suggesting that no matter how perfect a scenario may seem, it can very easily and very quickly fall apart.
Gogol’s relationship with Maxine could also serve as support for these ideas of man’s predestined future and its inevitability. Lahiri makes it very clear to the audience that Maxine and her way of life are “foreign” to Gogol, her parents “unlike his parents,” her house far more “beautiful,” and even countless more differences in their displays of affection, meal customs, etc. (138). The author likely makes note of all of these differences so to deeper emphasize the failure of Gogol’s attempts to live a life aside from the one his mother wants for him, to escape this predetermined fate his parents have set out for him. Additionally, I believe the death of Ashoke was the author’s way of waking Gogol up from this fantasy, showing him that he cannot simply ignore such significant parts of his life—his family, his heritage, his birth name, etc.—with the death of his father also almost like a punishment, of sorts, for his attempts to do so.
All that considered, Gogol’s building a relationship with Moushumi fits into this idea of a fate-focus perfectly. The one woman he actually ends up fully committing to—through marriage—is the epitome of his parents’ hopes and expectations for his wife: a Bengali woman, whose family they are already close to, who shares their customs and beliefs—or so they believe she does. While the fact that Gogol ends up choosing the path his parents laid out for him after trying so desperately to avoid it for so long may come as a shock to the audience, this event in itself was, to some extent, expected. Upon [adult] Moushumi’s entering the story, the tone brightens, and we are noticeably freed from the miserable rut that we were caught in in the text following the death of Ashoke. Furthermore, Lahiri foreshadowed her presence in Gogol’s life by paying special attention to her character [as a child] earlier in the book. Ultimately, the wedding of Gogol and Moushumi sends the message that we cannot change who we are, we can merely accept it, discovery how to properly handle ourselves in the real world; it claims that there is such a thing as the inevitable.
Gogol’s decision to legally change his name to Nikhil shows his attempts at a rebirth. His reconstruction comes at a perfect time. He’s going to Brown, finally living away from his parents. There he falls in love for the first time, with a girl named Ruth who is in some ways similar to Nikhil. The allure of falling in love with an American girl (not a Bengali one like his parents wish for him to find) is another step in his rebellion from his parents. This impulse to rebel is likely a consequence of his parents’ (especially Ashima’s) deep devotion to their native Bengali culture. The way his parents live sets them apart from the Americans around him, and as a shy and insecure college bound student, the last thing Gogol wants to do is stand out.
So, Gogol becomes Nikhil and he “revamps” himself a bit. The relationship with Ruth was a stepping stone for a more serious relationship, this time with Maxine, a rich friend of a friend with a lifestyle far more luxurious and open than what Nikhil is used to. Maxine provides for him something that even his new life at Brown could not do for him. She is so vastly different from anything he has ever been used to that it’s easy for Nikhil to simply immerse himself in her lifestyle. The reader begins to notice him drinking wine every night, preparing meals with Maxine and her parents, attending parties with Maxine and her friends, and staying at her summer home rather than visiting his family on Pemberton road.
I really like what Alex had to say about trains in regards to this story. Trains seem to have a symbolic presence throughout the lives of the Ganguli’s. When I think of trains, I think of something being on a one track route to their destination. You can get off and on at certain stops, but the train is always going to be going the same way. I think this can help describe Nikhil’s life. He tries many different things to make his life unlike his parents. He lives away at Brown, becomes involved with Ruth, goes onto graduate school, meets Maxine and becomes part of her lifestyle. These are all of the different stops on the train of Nikhil’s life, yet he always has to get back on the cart at some point when one thing ends or no longer works. As a reader, I’m not yet sure where the final destination of Nikhil’s train is, but I’m sure the last third of the book will be laden with more stops before the end is reached.
As the Namesake continues Gogol becomes a man, or should i say Nikhil. He almost gets to start a new life entirely and forget about his past. In doing so he starts to forget his mother and father and their traditions. This part of the book shifts to Gogol's life, which is the main purpose of the story. I would have to agree with Alex that Gogol's relationship with Maxine was partly from his resentment toward his culutre. He was attracted to the entire family and their ways of living, not just hers. When Gogol took Maxine to meet his family he was already embarassed before even getting there. I don't think Gogol cares if he hurts his family. Even though he is a man now he still is not aware by how much his parents went through to give him and Sonia the life they have. I kind of find it rude that Maxine and her family never really ask Gogol about his life or his culture, only untill they are away in NH and a neighbor who knows nothing about Gogol brings it up. All his life Gogol was trying to move out of his parent's house and start his own life, yet he moves in with Maxine in her parents house. This just shows Gogol had enough of his culture and the Bengali traditions. He was settling for anything different that wouldn't remind him of his real name or real life.
In Chapters 5-8 of The Namesake, we are seeing the shift in the story from being primarily about Ashoke and Ashima's experiences and Gogol's childhood to Nikhil's independent and romantic adult life.
First off, Gogol legally changes his name to Nikhil, a move that I felt shows his rebellion against the Indian culture that his parents tried to instill in him and an increased acceptance of the American culture that he was born into (Gogol was born in America).
As the story goes on, we see the different relationships that Nikhil has, first with Ruth, then with Maxine, and finally with Moushimi, though I felt that his relationship with Maxine was where he really tried to distance himself from his heritage. On p.158, it says "here at Maxine's side, in this cloistered wilderness, he is free". This quote shows Nkhil's resentment toward the Indian culture and new acceptance of the American culture which he truly enjoys alot more.
Towards the end of Part 2, we see the Nikhil-Maxine relationship end with the death of Ashoke and Gogol going into depression. However, we also see a new relationship, a Bengali relationship form between Gogol and Moushimi, exactly what Ashima has been hoping for.
For some reason, my interest in Part Two was slightly lowered. Perhaps it was the plot lacking pages or repetitive family problems. By the time Ashoke’s death was reached, it was a tad harder to be inspired.
But let’s not be negative. A few people commented on how they didn’t like Maxine, but I thought she was absolutely lovely. Everyone seemed to hate the fact that she didn’t care about Gogol’s past, but why would she? And why is that a problem? In my opinion, someone’s past doesn’t define them at all, but maybe that’s just me. It goes along with the way she was raised, a rich, independent Manhattan girl. It’s also part of what Gogol loves about her, that she has “the gift of accepting her life.” (138). It’s the biggest difference between them, but leaves Gogol with “no sense of obligation.” It’s no surprise he’s detached from his family, as he’s already about 26 (because later he celebrates what I believe was his 27th birthday with Maxine) and graduated from Columbia for grad school.
But then there is a major shift. The perspective switches to Ashima’s, and soon Ashoke dies. It immediately changes Gogol; suddenly, he seems awful for forsaking his family for all this time. It’s an odd conflict, because while as a reader I don’t necessarily blame him, he stills seems awful. It’s a no win situation. It’s quite a reality check for him that grounds him closer to his family. There’s a definite tone of guilt the reader strongly feels.
While there is definitely a culture gap between the two generations, I don’t think it defines their relations. As a reader, I felt the struggle among generations overshadowed Gogol’s struggle with his previous culture, which is more just neatly tucked behind him. Looking at this book as the “immigrant experience” (a term everyone seemed to love in the Part 1 blogs that I am now stealing), is the conflict really between the cultures or the generations? Or both? You could easily say the parents represent one culture and Gogol represents another. At times the fact that it’s Bengali culture is irrelevant; it could be any culture really. The point is, is that Gogol has learns a separate set of values from his parents, one that causes him to not feel much attachment to them. An example being, his independence getting annoyed by his mother’s irritating calls home.
While Ashima would probably be happy back in Calcutta, especially now that Ashoke is dead, the idea isn’t even debated. To her, leaving her family would be awful. But it Gogol did it and Sonia did it, easily. It’s just where the flow of life took them. So much time passes in this novel that in reality so little happens in so much time. A lot is left out. While for us the seemingly fast pace makes Gogol seem bad for ignoring his family, in reality he’s just going with the flow of his life. He finished college, goes to grad school, gets a job, etc. It’s not so much a deliberate running away from his family so much as a unwillingness to stop his life for them.
As the story progresses Gogol starts to become independent and drift away from his family. Gogol decides to be rebellious and change his name to Nikhil which was also originally his good name as a child. With the change of his name it was like a slap in the face to his parents especially to his father because that name had a strong meaning for Ashoke. Overtime Gogol gets involved with some serious relationships with non Bengali women. The fact that he doesn't even want to consider marrying a Bengali woman shows Gogol's resentment towards his culture. At first he meets a girl named Ruth but their relationship does not last long after she moves abroad. When Gogol has a relationship with Maxine it shows how much he resents his own culture and tries to be like her family, while they don't even seem a bit curious about his Indian roots. He moves in with the Ratliffs and completely abandons his own family. When Gogol asks his mother "Why do I have to see him [Ashoke] off?" (144) shows how much he cares about his own family. Gogol would rather spend all of his time with the Ratliffs than a minute with his own family therefore he makes seeing his father before leaving for Cleveland such a hassle. When Ashoke dies unexpectedly, this is when Gogol regrets his shameful behavior towards his parents but by then it is too late. In The Namesake Part 2 Gogol's actions and his animosity towards his own culture disgusts me because he tries so hard to be something he is not. Gogol's relationship with Moushimi (an old childhood friend) seems a bit rushed. It was also ironic because when his dating phase began he did not seem the lease bit interested in Indian women. I think what connected them together was the similar experience they shared. In my opinion I didn't think their marriage would have lasted and it didn't.
The beginning of the second part is so different from how it ends. The beginning is Gogol or Nikhil trying to separate himself from his past but after his father’s death its not a complete 180 but a pretty hard 90 degree turn. He becomes more willing to bend to old Indian traditions because it links him to his parents.
At the beginning he tried to almost severe the ties but it was evident that he did not truly want to separate himself completely. Though he did see being with Maxine as “[him being] free,” meaning he that he was far from his parent’s hold, it does not explain why when he changed his name he chose Nikhil, a name his parents had chosen (158). This change in name is from a Russian name to a Indian name, becoming closer with his heritage and his parents, whom he weirdly avoids. He describes his lifestyle with the Ratcliff’s as a form of “betrayal” to his own parents, the connotation this holds makes him the bad guy in his own eyes (141). But I think its his fear of not being accepted that keeps him back from expressing his self as it becomes “a relief to be back in her world” a world more accepted by the culture of America or as what he sees it as; this moment is very similar to the moment when he changes his name when he realizes that it is him that has a problem with his name and not others (102). It’s ironic how he is trying to fit in in America, America the melting pot.
After his father’s death Gogol starts to embrace his culture as he sees it as the only way to connect to his deceased father. Through out the second part there are drawn comparisons of the two families, on pages 137-138 the descriptions of the family are back to back giving the reader the full understanding of how opposite these two groups are. The whole time it seems he has embraced the Ratcliff’s way of living until page 182 when he makes this comment about how “this time he doesn’t care how the house, how the piles of guest’s shoes…might appear to her eyes,” he is finally embracing who he is rather than shield it from his girlfriend (182). Gogol was so quick to embrace Maxine’s lifestyle and escape from his own that he realizes that he has not shared his own in fear that she would not accept him. This same fear has haunted him since grade school but now he seems to care less as he sees that one cannot live in fear because life is too short. This is seen in the scene when eating a “mourner’s diet” and the memory at the end, Gogol tries to become closer to Ashoke by finally following the Indian culture and his father’s teachings, something that is never too late (180, 187).
This part really shows Gogol accepting his cultural background, though it was too get closer to his deceased father, it means that he is growing closer to his family and growing as a person as he is able to accept himself.
Part 2 of The Namesake focuses on Gogol's development in identifying himself. He does this through having a relationship, moving away from his parents, and changing his name. Lahiri develops much symbolism throughout part 2. In this section, Gogol has sex (p.114), which symbolizes his new enlightenment (read "How to Read Lit.."), and he chooses architecture as his major, which is taboo in the eyes of his Bengali parents who want him to become a doctor, teacher, or an engineer. Gogol also distances himself from his family and culture, even rejecting an invitation to join the Indian Association at his school (p.119), and keeping his shoes on when he visits his parents (146).
It is clear that, at first, Gogol isn't fully comfortable with his new lifestyle. He is ashamed to tell his parents about his relationship with Ruth, being unable to "imagine being with her in the house where he is still called Gogol."(Lahiri 115)
Later in the section, Gogol has his relationship with Maxine and becomes accustomed to living with an American family. (137) Gogol has now completely lost touch with his family, symbolizing how he is "free." (p.158)
Although Gogol claims to be free and happy, his tranquility doesn't last. Lahiri uses the death of his father to bring Gogol back to his family/culture. As she implies later in the novel, it is the events in one's life that shapes their person. Gogol's relationships and traveling have fueled his independence, however, he must be brought back to his roots.
In response to Alex Maz's mosquito comments, I agree and this is why Maxine is "unbothered and unbitten"(p.143) by the mosquitoes, because she is not fighting off her roots; on the contrary, she cannot leave them (still living with her parents). This is a lesson which must and will be taught to Gogol.
I found the section where Gogol was reading about name changes glamorized the American culture. The celebrities had renamed themselves and the article states, “it was a right belonging to every American citizen” (99). Gogol thinks of his own name, he wants to change it to Nikhil. This is where Gogol accepts being American and in a way, his parents accept being American. His father tells him that, “In America anything is possible. Do as you wish”(100). This is also one of the first times Gogol has had control over his own life. This symbolizes his growth from an adolescent to an adult. Gogol accepts this readily, he desperately wants to leave the Indian culture behind.
It was ironic when Gogol left the courthouse as Nikhil. There is a striking similarity between Gogol and his own mother. Gogol stepped out of the courthouse alone with no one to congratulate him (102). His mother gave birth in a country where she knew few. She felt pity for her own son, who was born into a world so alone. At Gogol’s birth and his rebirth, he still carries the same feeling of loneliness.
I was not surprised that Gogol faced an identity crisis. It was inevitable. He tried to move away from the Bengali culture, he tried to distance himself from his family, but in the end he identified as Gogol.
Gogol created a person who had no past, Nikhil. However, as the story progressed, he feels as if “he’s cast himself in a play” (105). The past creates a person, and a person can make shape himself in the present. Gogol did not know who he wanted to be, he only knew that he wanted to get away from his family and his culture. People look into their past to see who they are, but Nikhil was unable to fully understand who he was unless he reverted back to being Gogol.
This section is more focused on how Gogol accepts his own name and culture. When Gogol first hears the story behind his name, I was angry that he did not do anything about his name. Well, Lahiri does not give any information about what happened after the talk in the car. She forwards onto Gogol’s, I mean Nikhil’s life in New York.
I was mad when Gogol thought “That here at Maxine’s side, in this cloistered wilderness, he is free.”(158). Now, that is a little ironic. He feels trapped as Nikhil, but he also feels free because he is away from his family?
It is not until the death of Ashoke does Gogol finally accept his culture. He learned that family and culture are very important. His relationship with Maxine allowed him to develop these thoughts, because of the stark difference between her family and his. His family was run by the rules of the Bengali, while her family, well, they were free, and living the American dream. Gogol realized he couldn’t run away from his past, he could not live the rest of his life as Nikhil, because, then, he would be discarding his background. I agree with Jeri, Gogol is coming into terms with himself. He might not be the American born confused deshi anymore.
In part 2 of The Namesake we see Gongol growing we'll hes isn't "Gongol" anymore he's become Nikhil. After he legally changes his name he seems to just try to forget who Gongol was and just become a new person as Nikhil. I agree with how most believe thant Gongol changing his name was kind of a stab in the back to his Bengali heritage. He semes to want to have nothing to do with it he just wants to push it away, Ashima and Ashoke's fear. I agree with Gabbys comment about how Gongol spent a lot of time with Maxine's family and how they didn't know much about Gongol's background. Even Maxine didn't know a lot of the details of his heritage. I feel like being with Maxine was another way for Gongol to bash his heritage by dating someone that he knew his parents wouldn't approve of since she wasn't Bengali. These chapters seemed so much more emotionally heavy then part one of the book. We have Gongol's name change, "dating"(seemed more physical attration to me) Ruth, his college life, his time with axine and her family of rebellion to his heritage, Ashoke's death This was like a shock to me. I didn't expect for something this heavy. When I read about his death the first thing I thought was great now Ashoke died and he's died while not being close to his son. Then poor Ashima has to learn to live on her on. I felt like these chapters were filled with different emotions. I felt more of a closeness in the book because there were so many different emotion to feel. I felt most connected to Ashima needing to learn to live on her own. She went from her home, to living with Ashoke having kids and now for the first time is all alone. Husband dead and childrfen moved away.(Sonia then moves in with her after) The last topics that hit my attention was after the death of Ashoke Maxine and Gongol's realationship ended we move to his mother who now wants him to be with Moushumi. I love the relationship that they havew. How neither of them were ready for this and Gongol had no want to even meet her and in they end they end up getting married I find it so bitttersweet.
After his first relationship we now see Gogol in a more serious relationship with Maxine. I was really surprised by how welcoming her and her family was. It was either pure ignorance or sound judgment that they trust Gogol so much without even knowing about his past. I still wonder why they didn’t because you would think that a rich family like hers would be very cautious about people. This maybe bit of a stretch, but maybe the author is marking a point about American living with a false sense of security. Also that the money they have puts them in a position in which they only care about living the American dream and forgetting about other things. I think the point of this section was to compare the life Gogol family lives and the one Maxine’s family. It’s safe to say that Gogol likes how the Maxine’s family conducts their lives as opposed to his family.
Most people at this point are jumping to the conclusion that he hates his heritage and how his family lives. This is not completely false, but to some degree you can’t blame him since he grew up in America unlike his parents so he expects them to act like the people he grew up with. On the other hand at this point he should be old enough to understand that his parent unlike him did not grow up in America so expecting them to change or distancing himself from them shows how immature he still is. On a deeper level it’s not that he hates his culture or his parent’s practices rather I think he wanted to spend more time with his family as family. For example on special occasions there are so many guests that there is no time to celebrate these occasions as a family. I think Gogol should have told his parents because I am sure they would done something. Besides I did not expect his family to be as flexible as they are. I thought that they would make sure that he followed their traditions and chosen the career path they thought was appropriate for him. There flexibility shows how American they became which Gogol does not see because his only worrying about himself.
In fact his parents never forced him to do anything he did not want do. Although they were disappointed by his career path they still respect his choices and did what they could to help. I think his being ungrateful and ignorant to what his parents went through to raise him. They may not be like Maxine’s family, but they still did their best to adjust the American lifestyle to a certain point. The process of adapting to new places can be painful because you realize you are changing and although some changes are good in doing so you are also betraying what you grew up know and live with so you hold on to whatever you can like Ashima. Gogol at this point has not realized this because he too focused on himself to pay attention to other people’s feelings. Still I think Gogol no matter where he goes will never live too far from his home because as different he wants it to be there will only be one home for him and that home is where his family is because in end that’s what really matters
Despite their obvious influence over the person that Gogol becomes, I think Gogol’s girlfriends are probably the least interesting characters in this novel – and not accidentally. Both Ruth and Maxine sort of fit the manic pixie dream girl trope (though Maxine is a bit more fleshed out). They are essential to the person Gogol becomes, but they are not important in the grand scheme of things – basically, they are only important in terms of Gogol, which is reflected in Maxine’s carelessness toward Gogol’s culture – she is interested in it, sure, but at the end of the day she is still Maxine from Manhattan who goes to New Hampshire in the summers. Maxine represents more than a relationship to Gogol – she represents everything he has never had, and we see this in his direct comparisons between Maxine’s family and his own (138, 155). Unlike his own parents, Maxine’s entertain by being entertaining, not by being servants in their own home. Similarly, Maxine’s parents retreat to a quiet and serene vacation home in New Hampshire each summer – not to Calcutta, which, as has often been noted, is never quite quiet. I find it interesting that Alfonse noted Gogol’s acceptance of the past as a sign of his maturity, because I don’t think Gogol has accepted the past. He still wishes he’d grown up differently, gotten to experience everything Maxine did growing up – and that’s why he changed his name. The name “Gogol” just represents the past, and Gogol hates his past. He loves Maxine because she doesn’t care about his past, which we see even when he explains his name to her – Lahiri even describes Gogol’s name as an “essential fact about his life” that Maxine lets “slip from her mind as so many others did” (156).
Despite this obvious desire for something so vastly different from the world he grew up in, Gogol’s desire for a mosquito net (as Alex and Rachael mentioned) definitely betrays a deep(ly hidden) desire for his cultural roots – and even, in some ways, foreshadows his future return to his culture (though not necessarily permanently). After all, we do not have mosquito nets here; they are a strictly foreign form of protection. Interestingly, Lahiri still calls Gogol “Gogol,” as does his family (150), which to me sort of symbolized Gogol’s eventual acceptance – if not of the name itself, then definitely of his family (because only your immediate family calls you by your name). Essentially, even as Gogol rejects his parents’ culture, he finds it impossible to fall completely away from it – especially when his father tells him about his name (114) and dies only a few years later (169). Knowing that the name “Gogol” literally meant everything to Ashoke will, I think, factor into Gogol’s upcoming decision – does he call himself Gogol? Or Nikhil? After all, Nikhil is (quite obviously) a rejection of his parents – his name makes it easier to “ignore his parents, to turn out their concerns and pleas” (105).
Notably, Lahiri emphasizes the train Gogol takes to get his name changed. This would probably be just another form of transportation of Lahiri didn’t use trains almost every time any of her characters was going on any sort of emotional journey; of course, in this section, the only character we really see using a train is Gogol because the only character whose life we see in any detail (aside from Ashima’s toward the end) is Gogol. After all, Gogol takes the train to get his name changed and comes back an entirely different person, one who will one day grow up to be the man his family probably does not want him to be (97); he meets his first real girlfriend, Ruth, on the train, a symbol of sorts that to me, represents the growing rift between himself and his family (110); he also takes the train after they’ve broken up, unable to travel without thinking about her – but the nature of this train ride, not nearly as friendly as the one he’d taken when he met Ruth, emphasizes his desire to distance himself from her as well (120). Of course, this is also the train ride that is disturbed by a man’s suicide – what do you guys think about this? Does it represent a more figurative suicide (i.e. that of Gogol in his current incarnation, the version that had the capacity to love someone like Ruth, or maybe Gogol in the incarnation that still visits his parents fairly often)?
And then, finally, we have Gogol on the train after his father’s death. And at one point, “the whole train threatens, ever so slightly, to topple over.” For the most part, passengers do not notice – but it “never fails to rouse Gogol from his nap” (185), thus indicating that trains – despite being relatively mundane, every day modes of transportation, are ridiculously meaningful to Gogol Ganguli (and, by extension, his family). I think the threat of the train toppling could also, in this case, be representative of Gogol’s emotions – he is on the verge of literally breaking down, and we see from his lack of any emotional attachment to the woman he’d once been so in love with that he may actually have “toppled.” I can’t tell if this emphasis on trains is Lahiri gearing up for some intense train-age in the rest of the book, or if she’s just emphasizing the similarities between Gogol and his parents despite their diverging upbringings and beliefs. I said it in my last comment and I’ll say it again – despite everything, Gogol really is his father’s son.
One other thing – Though people seem to continue to focus on Gogol being very distant from his Bengali roots, I find it more interesting that his sister has moved even farther away – both figuratively and literally. After all, while Gogol never goes further than a few hours by car from his parents’ Massachusetts home (first to New Haven and then to New York), Sonia moves all the way to San Francisco (166) – literally the opposite side of the country. Similarly, Sonia goes to dances and parties in high school (107), while Gogol, though always resentful, is pretty consistently his parents’ son (until/except for that one party at the end of chapter four). Interestingly, this seems to make Sonia less resentful of her parents than Gogol; he not only changes his name, but also refuses to visit his parents, choosing his girlfriend over them time and time again. This is not necessarily essential to the plot – I just find it interesting that Gogol’s parents’ insistence that he stay as Bengali as possible led to his resentment of them instead of, as they’d obviously hoped, gratitude and acceptance.
I agree with Brittany that this section focuses on the transformation of Gogol, but I wouldn’t describe it as a single, definite “metamorphosis.” I feel like although he undergoes this transformation when he changes his name to Nikhil, the act was marked by a desperate need to escape his culture’s influence. However, towards the end of the novel, we see him reconciling with those cultural roots, a behavior triggered by his father’s death. His traditional Indian marriage to a childhood friend was really symbolic of his newfound acceptance for his culture. So, with that said, I feel like his name change transformed him, but he definitely went through other transformations afterwards.
I feel like Gogol’s love life matches his confusion and this desperation I described earlier. All of his relationships are described by Lahiri with this sense of uneasiness, and the reader knows that Gogol in one way or another doesn’t fit in with his partners. All of his relationships seemed to have an expiration date, and I wasn’t surprised when they broke off, except for the one with Moushumi. The marriage that symbolized cultural acceptance was broken, but it also makes a powerful statement. There is a contrast between Gogol’s and Ashima’s marriage. One is at the beginning of the book, the other is towards the end. Though the ceremony was composed of the same rituals, Moushumi was never the traditional Bengali woman Mashima was. This is the way of Lahiri capitalizing on the different identities a person with a different ethnic background is able to form in another country. Another connection I made is that Ashima was the mastermind if this marriage, the coupling was almost arranged, like Indian marriages often are. Gogol’s marriage symbolizes a rekindling with his mother, and the divorce shows that Gogol’s identity doesn’t solely belong to his mother’s culture.
My thoughts on his relationship with Maxine: I agree with Terenzi that the fact that she didn’t care about his past was exactly what he liked about her. There he was, America’s child, college graduate, architect, in contact with society’s upper class. Her behavior towards him is what really validated his identity change from Gogol to Nikhil, and that is why he was so entranced with her. Now, where my thinking differs from Terenzi’s is that I think that as the relationship progresses, he subconsciously realizes that a significant part of him is absent and he begins to be emotionally distant. This is caused directly by his father’s death, which I said before, leads him to rethink his views on his culture.
On a more informal note, if anyone really enjoyed this book, I highly recommend Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. It’s a fantastic read. :)
Part two of The Namesake focused more on Gogol’s life and his decent away from his family. He constantly is trying to hide his old life, and make himself his own person as much as possible. I think, and as other do too from the previous comments above, that one of the reasons that he didn’t go to MIT, other than his parents being so close, is that he wanted to do his own thing. Make his own way. I think that his relationship with Maxine is a symbol of his new life. Everything about her family is almost the opposite of his own family. The freer environment, Maxine’s parents being more accepting to what Maxine wants, and even the relationship Maxine has with them. The book says she chooses to be faithful to them due to the fact that they often don’t push her into doing things of their tradition. I also thought it was a tad humorous when Maxine’s family walks into their vacation home and say, “welcome to paradise”, as it was quite the opposite in its looks in the eyes of Gogol.
I also feel really bad for Gogol’s mother, as I feel like most things don’t go her way. She never really wanted to stay in America, but yet she’s lived there for a few decades now. She lives alone now since her husband had moved to Cleveland, and then died. Her daughter is in California, and her son doesn’t enjoy her company or letting her know his business (which also is because of his wanting of a new identity). I just don’t feel like she deserves any of it. She has given a lot up for her children and her husband, so they could go after their own dreams while she’s still in a foreign land to her.
Something else that kind of surprised me was that speaker never refers to Gogol as Nikhil after he changes his name. It stays as Gogol. I’m not sure if this means anything or not, but I thought I would bring it up to see if anyone has any thoughts on it perhaps?
Truly, I believe that the plot does actually thickens because the narrator is in fact shifting from the parents (mostly Ashima) to Gogol. With this jump there is a jump of age and perspective, Gogol is now 14, a teenager. Lahiri does this, I believe, because she wants to show different time frames --some longer than others--for effectiveness. I think the readers got the hint , through Gogols childhood, of his hardships as a Bengali- American child. We got it for the most part. SO what happens when that little child grows up, who now has bigger difficulties of balancing his Bengali culture with his American culture. Simultaneously, my question is being slowly answered. THE NAMESAKE!. Gogol, Gogol, Gogol. It hits me hard on page 76, some evidence. This is because before I had a guess, but now its as solid as gold. And the winner is Ashokes favorite author Nikolai Gogol(which is present in the prompt for the first response, the beginning of the novel before it even starts, and with more depth later on in the novel) Why? Good question. Sadly on pages 77-78 the answer is not brought up to the surface and Gogol doesn’t get to know the answer. The reader may know but Gogol doesn’t (hint: Ashokes past, on the train)
Even in Mr. Lawson’s class Gogol’s name haunts him. Unsurprisingly, Gogol tries to runaway from his name, and he’s going to continue running away until he becomes comfortable. Gogol is running away from his identity . Most people probably don’t realize the impact of their name. A name defines some one, to a certain extent, whether they like is or not. I get the feeling, that just because the name is odd and is uncommon, and just because it originated from the roots of his parents belief, that Gogol feels suffocated by it. He is not only resisting his name but a big chunk of his family, of his culture, of his country. To me Gogol is a dog on a leash that he wants to tear from, and run away. To escape, he has to depart from his pet name into transitioning to Nikhil like on page 96. Finally, Gogol, or should I say Nikhil takes action, and changes his name just before going to college. New name, new personality, new school, new state, new life. The life of Nikhil Ganguli. How does this “new life” treat Nikhil? Well he is “free” for the most part ,as some of my peers have been saying. Until his mother comes to visit, when mother calls, or until he has to go back home this remains true. I say mother because she is the one making the most effort trying to keep the family grounded with their culture. Also, he has more luck with woman such as his first love Ruth, and further along with Maxine. At last, Nikhil gets a revelation about his former name Gogol. Nikhil’s life just becomes less and less simple with the aspects of love, getting a job going to school. It goes to show that as one grows older problems get greater, and things just become just simply COMPLICATED, no matter what ones roots are.
That's a key observation Alex - the one regarding trains. I suppose it's a motif that merely carried over from the first part of the book. Since trains were emphasized to have been of such importance to his father, considering he almost died on one, train cameos appearing in Gogol's life is not out of the ordinary. However, I viewed the significant of trains to be slightly different. I don't think Gogol himself is the train himself per se - rather, the train is symbolic of old yet traditional values. I say that because in modern America today we use mostly cars, subways, airplanes, and have forsaken conventional trains, evidenced by abandoned railway tracks seen even in our own city. Still, the train in this book is important. It's destination is a return traditional values and as you say, he eventually ends up learning to accept his heritage, his name, and the legacy it bears.
When Gogol and Moushima move in together, they start baking a chicken. But due to their insistence on fooling around with each other rather than keeping an eye on the food being cooked, the chicken gets "irreparably scorched, so much so that the pan itself has to be thrown away" (211). At first I thought nothing of it other than it being a comical sign of negligence on their part. But then, when Moushima apparently starts becoming unsatisfied with Gogol and begins an affair with someone else, they have a divorce. Maybe that chicken was important after all; a foreshadowing for the eventual fate of their relationship. Scorched, charred, burned in flames. Incinerated, obliterated, annihilated. Absolutely ruined. Divorce. Ouch, man. That hurts.
If I learned anything from Gogol it would probably be not to forsake my origins. An apt comparison might be that for people like Gogol, as well as myself, in other words those who are born into America but have parents that hail from another land entirely, we are trees. Trees, you say? Yes, trees. We are bound to the roots that tie us, our origins, our backgrounds, our heritage. Trying to uproot ourselves causes us to lose our source of nutrients, our identity. You can't get far as a tree that uprooted itself and walked miles away from its original location. So might as well keep myself there, but extend my branches to reach the things I want to see. In other words...people like us should always keep our past and our origins in mind, but be able to experience new things without forgetting the part of us that will always be there.
This part of the book isn’t about Gogol. It’s about Nikhil. Changing his name to Nikhil is a quest (oh Foster…). It seems like just a trip to the courtroom to get a name change legalized; the entire court proceedings take only about ten short minutes and “tens of thousands of Americans had their names changed each year” (99). Gogol even realizes how far from monumental the event is since it is unnoticed by anyone. Yet he can feel the difference, and “he doesn’t feel like Nikhil” (105). At first he is excited by the new name, the new him, and he creates a whole new image, a separate, almost rebellious image of the old Gogol. It’s pretty saddening to see this change. What is almost a relief for the reader is when Nikhil meets Ruth. It seems he starts to embrace his culture rather than shunning it, especially because she is interested and he can easily talk to her about it. But it just didn’t work out. Maxine was different. I don’t like her as much, but that relationship didn’t last long either.
I was so touched by the talk Ashoke and Gogol had in the car. They finally connect and Gogol finally understands his name, where it came from, the significance of it. It’s not so much of a coincidence that the train he was on had trouble just before their talk because had the train not been late, had his father not been worried for over two hours alone in the cold and thinking the worst, he wouldn’t have told Gogol the reason behind his namesake just yet. What is kind of a coincidence though is that before he learns about it, Gogol decides he doesn’t mind his pet name anymore after hearing his father call him by it.
Chapter 7 was so sad and depressing with the sudden death of Ashoke and the way Gogol must deal with the pain and the loss and the guilt that he feels, but then chapter 8 was so beautiful. It’s so amazing that after all their time avoiding not only each other, but practically anything Bengali in America, Moushumi and Gogol end up falling in love. What’s more, they were brought together by their parents’ arrangement. It’s very ironic and completely unexpected, but also so perfect. Now after so many failed relationships, Gogol finally has someone that really loves him and that can make him happy.
Ashoke said to Gogol that “In America anything is possible. Do as you wish (100).” This quote reflects to the freedom that anyone can live up to the American Dream. In contrast to the lifestyle in Calcutta, freedom and equality maybe restricted to adult male. But, this is probably the part when Gogol begins to abandon his Bengalian lifestyle to strive for American lifestyle. This is the reason why he chose to attend college out of state instead of following his father’s path to MIT. Moreover, Lahiri decides to put in two American girls that Gogol had relationship with after choosing the American way of life. The complications that Gogol undergoes [Ashima’s disapproval, Ashoke’s heart attack], probably means that he have to return to his Bengalian life with his family. He cannot simply live alone without a family.
When it only took Gogol ten minutes to change his name, while the parents stressed for years on Gogol's name, it shows how different American culture is compared to India. Throughout the first part of the book, the author stressed so much on the idea of a formal name and a name used at home yet it only took ten minutes to change from Gogol to Nikhil. Nikhil was Gogol's way of escaping from his parents' roots. I think Nikhil completely lost his self was when he was with Maxine. With Maxine, Gogol was adopted into the relaxed American culture with vacations and parents who did not care if they walked around naked. However, I think Nikhil is stupid to not realize that Maxine could care less about him, he was just another figure in the house. She never really cared or appreciated Nikhil's culture. On the other hand, the ones who truly love Nikhil, his parents, were ignored and treated harshly. Nikhil needs to realize that his parents choose to stay in America and work hard because of him. They have struggled and tried so hard to fit into the American culture to create a happier life for Gogol yet he ignores them. When Ashima wants Gogol to see Ashoke off at the airport,an important part of Indian culture, he acts annoyed. Ashoke's death was a wakeup call for Gogol to realize what was truly important in his life. It was sweet how united the family was after Ashoke's death. When they were eating dinner, it reminded me of the idea of communion as mentioned in How To Read.. because although Ashoke was no longer there, his death reminded them the value of family.
Two words to describe part deux of “Namesake”? Fast Trains and Faster Woman.
Part two of the novel definitely focuses around the aspect of the reinvention of rebirth of Gogol Ganguli to Nikhil. His first romantic encounter was exactly what it was, sweet, innocent, young, and inevitable doomed to fail. It was young love, and Gogol had just begun teasing with the idea of a whole new persona. Ruth was just the appetizer. Although I think I have to disagree with Alex on the whole “cramped in the train” as a metaphor for sex. I think the fact that they met on a train was more symbolic and overrides that comparison. Ruth is reflective of Gogol’s lust. His lust for a new life, new name, new beginning in college. And like many who experience lust, the fire usually dies in time.
And now we move on to Maxine. Ruth was different than Gogol, yes. But Maxine, Maxine is like white and Gogol is black. They are the epitome of the whole ‘opposites attract’ saying. Although I do not think that Gogol really loved Maxine for who she was, he loved her for what she embodied. The lavish lifestyle, and the care freeness of it all was a stark contrast to the rigid, structured, and cautious life of his parents who would travel to New York not to tour but to go to Indian restaurants and buy groceries. Maxine was FUN, she was JUBELENT. In a way, Gogol’s union with Maxine was like a big slap in the face for his homelife with his parents. It was a subtle act of rebellion. Of course the theme of rebellion is rampant in the second part of the novel. Gogol adopts a taste for rich, white foods like pasta and whatnot. He lives with a woman, wearing dependent on her, sleeping in HER bed, which is probably counter the Indian social caste system which subjugates woman. That is why Ashoke is never acknowledged by his first name by Ashima, out of respect for the man. So by taking shelter with Maxine, he kind of shrugged off his culture. I thought when they went to the boathouse and they went for the midnight skinny dip was symbolic of him stripping away Gogol and submersing himself in Maxine (literally as they had sex on the beach..)
The next significant event in the novel would be the death of Ashoke. I was heartbroken, and it came as such a shock for Lahiri had put so much effort in Ashima’s careful construction of holiday cards, everything seemed so cute and sweet, then BOOM, Ashoke has died. His death signified a new chapter in Gogol’s life. He could no longer live out his rebellious and carefree life, so his new perspective clashed with Maxine’s easiness and ended their relationship. I feel as though Gogol took the death as a sign that he has to accept. Accept his name. Accept his family. Accept his culture, the reality of his life. WAKE UP CALL. The frequent visits to Ashima and his little sister are indicative of the new role that he feels he needs to fill in the absence of his father, I felt like his acceptance came with no other choice.
As we go on with the book, we get to know Gogol even better. Although, during the second part, i think we see more of "Nick's" personality rather than Gogol's. Once he attends Columbia, his romantic life also starts to progress.
He is becoming more accustomed to the American life and has a totally different attitude toward American traditions. His family had always brought him up to celebrate his culture but during this section of the book, it is clear that he has sort of a resentment to his culture. Although during the first part, he resented using the name "Nikhil", now that he has entered a new "world" per say, he has adapted new way of living. Maxine's family has taught him about American culture.
During his time in college, he met a girl named Ruth on the train. They grew very close to each other and we could see Nikhil's relationships growing. Now that he was Nikhil and not Gogol, he was able to become a completely different person and experience romance, friendships, and American culture. Unfortunately, just as it seems as if it were going great, Ruth moved away to another college and Nikhil had his heart broken.
I think that if Gogol had kept his name, he would have been more culturally attached to his heritage and family, but because he has changed his name to Nikhil, and even Nick, the more americanized version of his name, its as if he has to change who he is because he changed his name. With him name changed, he is not unique anymore. He is just another American who has lost their culture. I can relate to this because i have adapted to much to America that i have forgotten a lot about Albanian culture. My family does not celebrate our culture as much anymore and we have totally lost touch with our country. Celebrating another culture is such a special thing to have and people don't realize it until they've lost it all.
This section was my favorite of the three because i really enjoyed the perspective and changes that happened with Gogol. Also, i liked how the book shifted from talking about Ashima and Ashoke's life to being all about Gogol/Nikhil/Nick.
In part two of the Namesake the reader witness a major shift in topics within the novel, one in particular: the shift in focus transitons from the early life of Ashima and Ashoke in America, to the life of first born Gogol. As the book progress's the readers grow with Gogol; the ritual saturday visist to other Bengali/American families, the two seperate birthday celebrations (one for American school friends, one for Bengalis). As Gogol ages, he begins to posses this strong distaste for Bengali culture, and for specificly his name. The reader never can truly connect with Gogol, with this resentment toward his name because we ironically know what Gogol does not; the meaning, and power behind the name he wears. With age Gogol, now Nikhil leans more and more toward the American culture, attending regular parties at neighboring University's (him attending Yale at the time), experiencing sexual intercourse with girls like Rose and Maxine whom he seeks his first real realationships with. As Nikhil grows with age, so do his parents whom seem to slowly intergrate into the American lifestyle, but never to the exent of there children. ALthough at first it appeared to me that the struggles of immigration had been the main topic of interest within the book, that all seems to fade into a larger idea as the book progresses. After Nikhil see's the demise of his Father, the end of once passionate realationships, I feel as though he finally begins to realize what it was like to live as if father had years before his exsistence. Nikhil has never felt the power of lonlines; he is ignorant to how it feels to feel distant from those whom he loves. And as the novel comes to an end, i feel as though that is the underlying message. Nikhil always ignorant of his fathers culture, his emotions, and the meaning behind there exsitence as a middle class family in America has gone ignored untill it had finally disengrated; and now Nikhil was experiencing what his father once had felt: reality. Nikhil reflects on what his father had once told him " Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where ther was nowhere left to go"; and now he knows, even if it was just to a empty beach just miles shy of his home in Massachusettes, atleast he was not traveling it alone(187).
"I hate the name Gogol" he says. "I've always hated it" (102)
I could never imagine changing my first name. Your name is very much your identifier, when someones says your name it carries pictures and thoughts. It is a word that sums up your very essence. It makes my think of Native Americans and how they would wait to give their children names the reflected the child's very nature. I think it is best that we are named by those before us for two reasons. To name yourself I feel you must know yourself. Through this book Gogol goes on a journey to find out who he is, American? Indian? Husband? I also believe that he is also blind to the flaws he carries. I think a huge mistakes Gogol makes in the story is he chooses a name which he wants to live up to rather than a name that defines himself.
This site will be the summer resource for students in Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Clapp's AP Literature courses. You'll come here to discuss summer reading, college searches and applications, and literary topics in general.
46 comments:
Part 2 of The Namesake seemed to be the transition from following Ashima and Ashoke's lives to primarily narrating about Gogol.
As the readers get to know Gogol better and as Gogol's romantic life progresses, we learn more and more about Maxine. To me, Gogol's relationship with Maxine was all part of his continued resentment of his Bengali heritage. Maxine's family took Gogol under their wing, letting him eat with the family, live with the family, and vacation with the family. They even call Gogol/Nikhil Nick, an American spin on a Bengali name. This welcome attitude plus her family's typical American traditions appeal to Gogol not only to escape from his Bengali roots, but because Ashima/Ashoke were less open towards newcomers than Maxine's family. Ashima and Ashoke constantly brought Gogol and his sister over the houses of family friends, but ALL of them were Bengali. Towards American families, the couple tended to be more reserved. Gogol likes the idea that a real American family is finally "adopting" him into their culture.
Gogol truly shows his resentment towards his namesake/culture while on vacation in New Hampshire with Maxine's family. His family tries to get in touch with him as best they can, but he has gone out of his way to make sure he will be alone with Maxine's family. On the rare occasion he does speak with them, his tone is cold and blunt. Vacation with Maxine is a good escape for Gogol because her family does not seem even a little curious about Gogol's family roots. The ONLY time Gogol's race comes up, on page 157, Maxine proves that she knows very little about Gogol. In fact, she says "[You] were born here. . .weren't you?" which proves that she has no idea about Gogol's citizenship situation even though the two have been dating for a considerable amount of time.
There is one segment of The Namesake part 2 that I know is symbolic but I cannot quite understand. On page 143, Maxine and Gogol are alone in Maxine's Chelsea house and the amount of mosquitoes in the bedroom force Gogol to need something he only uses in Calcutta: a mosquito net. Gogol's encounters with the mosquitoes make him an insomniac. His attempts to kill them are in vain, and the tiny creatures "engorged with his blood" are "too high up to kill." Could this symbolize him trying to "kill" his namesake/roots but not being able to, because he needs Calcutta traditions (the mosquito net?) Are there any other thoughts/opinions about this quote?
As the story goes on, Gogol slowly grows into the man that he would become. The first step in this process was dealing with the past, in order to face the future. With that said, Gogol decided to legally change his name to Nikhil, as he felt that the name Nikhil would better suit his new lifestyle. After changing his name, Gogol has a sense of freedom, which is represented in the quotes "he wonderers if this is how it feels for an obese person to become thin, for a prisoner to walk free," showing his satisfaction with his new name.
With a new name and a new sense of freedom, Nikhil was well prepared to start his college career, a fresh start at Yale, as Nikhil. At first, Gogol has a bit of trouble adjusting to all of the new people that he encounters, mainly because they know nothing of his past as Gogol, but he greatly appreciates the fact that, to all of these new people, he is just Nikhil.
One day while taking the train back home for thanksgiving, Gogol meets a girl named Ruth. They converse the entire ride, exchange numbers, and agree to meet when they both got back to school. Over time the two fell in love, spending most of their college together, until Ruth decided to go abroad to Oxford University, which marked the beggining of the end of their relationship.
This was not the end of Gogol's romantic life. A few years later while attending Columbia, Gogol met a girl named Maxine. He immediately fell in love with not only Maxine, but als
o with her parents, and their families way of living. The two became very close, Gogol even went as far as moving into Maxine's families house, until something terrible happened. Gogol's father. Ashoke, died of a sudden heart attack, forcing the entire Ganguli family into a sort of depression, which in turn ended the relationship between Maxine and Gogol.
Once again, Gogol did not wait to long to start seeing other women. Gogol's mother set him up on a date with a childhood acquaintance named Moushimi. Gogol remembers little of her, and does not think that the first date will lead anywhere, but surprisingly he takes a great interest in her. Ironically, the two Bengalis who used to attend eachothers birthdays, barely knowing one another, fell in love, despite there unofficial vows to not be with a Bengali, as their parents had desperately hoped.
To answer Alex's question on the mosquito net, I also had some difficulty understanding the symbolism of the passage. Clearly, there is symbolism following the pesky mosquitoes and Gogol's inability to slaughter them. While reading part two, I felt that Gogol's anger towards the insects was very surprising and unexpected. Originally, it was his sudden anger and insomnia that made me realize this passage is symbolic.
I agree with Alex's notion that the Gogol is symbolically trying to "kill" his namesake and roots but cannot because of his attachment/need for Calcutta, which is represented by the mosquito net. As an inference from the very title of the story, it is apparent that Gogol/Nikhil is internally conflicted with the idea of his namesake. This confusion is only further deepened by his relationship between his "American" self and his heritage from Calcutta. Symbolically, it would be a very rational leap for Lahiri (the author) to create a symbolic message through the mosquito net (which he remarked he had only ever needed in Calcutta) used by Gogol in America.
To bring the underlying message a step further, I also had a thought on the concept of how a mosquito draws blood from its victim. Literally removing blood from of a human vessel is a surprisingly vile and sacred act. Gogol remarked that the mosquitoes were “engorged with his blood”, meaning they had drawn a fair amount of blood from his body. This fact offers the conclusion that though Gogol was using the mosquito net, it was not really protecting him to a very large extent. Perhaps the net AND the mosquitoes can represent Calcutta? Genetically, (through the blood/his heritage) Gogol was almost “related” to Calcutta. He may not have enjoyed that information, or even celebrated it ever. But, he needed Calcutta to survive (the mosquito net), explaining his continuous internal conflict over his name and his past. So technically, I suppose one way to look at it is that Gogol was extremely bothered by his internal conflict, but he needed it to lead his life.
I liked reading this second part better, because Ashima and Ashoke's lives were pretty interesting, but I like how their son Gogol is different. In this section, Gogol tries to completely disassociate himself from his family. What I think he is doing is what every kid does, tries to rebel in order to get more attention. I think Gogol enjoys having an Indian heritage, but he really loves the American life. I think that he wants to fit in with the culture around him and fears that if he embraces his true Indian culture, Americans will reject him. In his mind, in order to be considered fully American, he has to cut his ties with his family. In all honesty, I think that is the worst thing that Gogol could possibly want to do. If something bad were to ever happen, family is usually the only thing someone really has in the end.
Two more big mistakes that Gogol makes in this part is one, giving himself a public name. I think he should just keep his name, it makes him unique from everyone else. And he should just own up to his heritage. And the second mistake, he should definitely not have moved in with Maxine so quickly. Now that he is so distant with his family, of course his father dies and then he becomes distant with Maxine. It is a vicious cycle of bad choices for Gogol.
Getting deeper into the book, Gogol becomes independent and obtains his freedom. I wondered a lot why Gogol distanced himself from his family. He seemed like he didn't really care too much about his past like Ashima did in the first part of the book. We get to see how much Gogol has grown into the man he became and also we see his love life develop.
Gogol deciding to change his name to Nikhil was a big decision and an extreme change to his life, showing his independence. Why does the name Gogol bother him so much still?
I found the relationship between him and Maxine somewhat strange because he was constantly with her and her family and they knew nothing about Gogol's family. Although Gogol knew that his family probably would not accept nor care about him dating someone who doesn't share the same traditions as them. This shows that Gogol was more assimilated to how Ratliff's lived being that they were American and he wanted to live differently.
I also wondered why in the beginning Ashima kept saying that her and Ashoke never really showed or said they loved eachother. I thought it was very odd. Maybe Gogol spent most of his time with Maxine because he wanted to show his love for her unlike his parents had done.
When Ashoke dies, I feel sorry for Ashima because she relied on him and loved him. I think Gogol's biggest mistake was ignoring his family over a extended amount of time. You never know what you have until it's gone and I suspect Gogol realized that after his father passed away which is why he detaches from Maxine. "He thinks of the last time he had seen his father, three months ago: the image of him waving good-bye as he and Maxine pulled out of the drive way on their way to New Hampshire. He cannot remember the last time he and his father had spoken. Two weeks ago? Four?" (p 177).
I would like to agree with Alfonse’s point made in part one of The Namesake because I feel as though it carries over into part two. Alfonse mentioned that it was quite clear how miserable Ashima was in America. But, when she gave birth to Gogol and his sister Sonia, “Ashima found a new sense of meaning in life, replacing days of crying and missing her old country.” In part two of The Namesake, Gogol and Sonia grow up and once again, Ashima is alone with Ashoke. Now that she has time on her hands and is alone, she returns to keeping herself bust picking up food and doing laundry. Another sign that Ashima’s children are growing up is the relationships that Gogol has. His relationships with Ruth and Maxine were both consummated which shows that Gogol is a man. It is almost as if Lahiri uses Gogol’s relationships as indicators of how much time has passed.
Of course, the death of Ashoke Ganguli is devastating not only because it is around the holidays but mostly because the audience feels sympathetic toward Ashima. Her children have grown and now she is even more upset having lost her husband. It seems as though Ashoke’s death was rubbing salt in Ashima’s wound so to speak. Ashoke’s death accelerated certain expectations. Ashima wants Gogol to be settled with children. Her want brings along Moushumi, a friend of the family’s. it will be interesting to see if Gogol’s relationship with her lasts and perhaps turns into marriage.
Seeing as though the symbolism of the mosquito net seems to be the topic of discussion I would like to also try to answer Alex’s question. I think that the mosquitoes that surround Gogol are symbolic of the problems that he faces and will continue to face, and that is why he cannot kill them. For example, Gogol has not been successful on his quest to find love, that’s one mosquito. Another would be his mother wanting and begging him to come home for the holidays, or Ashima’s concern about Maxine addressing Ashima as well…Ashima (unaware of the Indian culture).
I agree with Alex when she says for part two there is a shift in the direction of the story. Because in the beginning you get the sense of Ashima’s and Ashoke’s hardships. Now there’s a transition and we begin to see Gogol’s hardships rather than his parents.
The action of Gogol changing his birth name to Nikhil illustrates the strong strength of hatred he truly holds for his Bengali heritage. By him covering up his original name he is covering up his family and their culture. Since Gogol now started college at Yale this is his chance for him to create a name for himself and that’s literally what he did. No one knows him nor where he had come from. And Gogol would be glad to keep it that way. On his journey of becoming an American he meets Maxine which in my opinion is not only someone he is attracted to. Yet, she is a symbol of his getaway from escaping who he really is and becoming someone who he thinks he wants to be.
When Gogol introduces Maxine to his family he gets an reaction he does not expect. His mother Ashima tries to explain to Gogol that she is not right for him. She tells him as if Maxine will not be in his life for a very long time. I think this is also a major thing that drives Gogol away from his family and leans more towards Maxine’s family. Now when she introduces Gogol to his family it is a complete opposite reaction than his family gave to Maxine. Again this is where we see the difference in the two different ethnicities. Maxine’s family is very fond of Gogol. By them being so excepting this allows Gogol to feel as if he belongs. Because his parents wants him to be engaged with his culture. Since he is not this might make him feel as if he is an outsider. Now with welcoming parents of Maxine’s comforts Gogol as a “true American”.
Now a tragic incident occurs where Ashoke experience a dreadful heart attack. Sadly he is unable to recover from it and he dies leaving his family behind. Now suffrage overcomes his whole family.
Gogol goes to Ohio to gather his father’s belongings. It is then when he and Maxine goes in their separate direction. Since I mention earlier that Maxine was a symbol of Gogol wanting to be an American, he no longer holds that passion. This is why he let Maxine go, and becoming an “true American” fade along with her.
Gogol grows up and we see that he tries to increase the distance between himself and his family and his roots more and more. He refuses to date within the Bengali culture, he has few Bengali friends, he doesn't go home from college very often. Gogol is rebelling against his family, against where he comes from, and through this he is also rebelling against himself.
I found that I liked Maxine's character in the beginning, but when it became apparent that she knew nothing of Gogol, as Alex Mazarakis touched on, my liking for her evaporated. It was as though she didn't care to know anything about Gogol, as if he was just some exotic accessory for her cushy life. It made me wonder why Lahiri chose to portray Maxine like this. Perhaps Lahiri has a slight prejudice against upper-class Americans? It was like the message she was trying to convey was that people of that background rarely care about others and just assume that whatever they have is better than what others may have, and thus others will always convery willingly to their cushier life style. And the way Lahiri made Gogol react to this reflects this theory. Then, as Gogol's liking for Maxine fades and he becomes more in tune with his Bengali heritage again, it is almost like Lahiri was saying that the American culture (or other cultures in general) is great entertainment for a while, but that sooner or later people realize -- as Gogol seemed to realize -- that our original roots are something we should never neglect.
To respond to what Alex Mazarakis said about the mosquito net and symbolism, I'd like to say that I think the mosquitoes could represent Gogol's roots that he was trying to squash and leave behind. Yet they were "engorged with is blood"; they were connected to him too much for him to squash completely. They always keep coming back.
The mosquito net might symbolize how Gogol is finally beginning to realize that he needs his Bengali culture, both for comfort and for survival.
I absolutely loved how Moushumi and Gogol broke up, as odd as that sounds. I think it really shows another theme of the book: that you must keep going. There will always be obstacles in life, big and small, but you must continue to strive for life. Ashoke had his train crash, yet he survived, recovered, and moved to America to fulfill a dream. Ashima had the burden of living so far from her family, yet she survived and made friends, helped to build and nurture a family, and she even found a part time job at the library that she really loved. Gogol and Sonia both had the obstacles of living in and trying to fit into two worlds - an American world and a Bengali world. Yet both survived and thrived. This theme is very important for many people to learn, and I love how Lahiri portrayed it -- it was like the message was hidden in little pockets throughout the fabric of the story, and we readers had to look deep to find it for ourselves.
In this section I found it very interesting how it was mainly about Gogol's love interests and how almost all of them were doomed to fail. (sorry this will probably be more than one post too)
1. Ruth
- This was a physical attraction if I have ever read one. All Gogol can think about after he meets her is "their faces flushed from the heat of the compartment, their bodies cramped in the same way" (p.112) Now to me this sounds a lot like sex (maybe how to read like a professor rubbed off on me). When else would two bodies be cramped in the same way and faces flushed? So Gogol only wanted Ruth for the physical aspect. To make this relationship even more doomed, on page 115, Gogol admits how he cannot picture Ruth in his house on Pemberton Road; basically he cannot picture her with his family, immersed in his culture, a part of his other life. Thus, when this relationship ended, it did not surprise me.
2. Maxine
-She is the complete opposite of Gogol. She was raised privileged, remains that way, and is sure of her upbringing. To Gogol, she probably seems like the perfect escape from his parents because she and her family were everything her parents are not. The lifestyle the Ratliffs lead is foreign but not unwelcomed to Gogol. Still this relationship is doomed for a few reasons. One, he cannot see his parents sitting with the Ratliffs, being a part of this extended family. Personally, I believe for Gogol to have any happiness he needs to reconcile his differences between his two halves: Gogol and Nikhil. Therefore, since he cannot picture his family and, inadvertently, his life as Gogol being accepted by the Ratliffs, this relationship will not work. Second, (and I think Alex Maz might appreciate this insight) are the mosquitoes. They only target Gogol and not Max, because e does not belong there. The mosquitoes, by biting him are almost leaving him a message: you are not welcomed here so don't get comfortable. Max is left unharmed because it is her home, her lifestyle. Gogol is just not supposed to be part of her world. And lastly, the Garden of Eden. Page 155 "nothing is locked...the Ratliffs own the moon...and the sun and the clouds." Here, the Ratliffs almost sound like God in their summer escape. They own everything, much like how God owns the world because according to the Bible, he created it. And our Adam and Eve for this Garden of Eden? Gogol and Max. Adam and Eve, who went naked and had no shame about it before Eve ate the forbidden fruit, are being channeled by Gogol and Max who too go around naked on the beach and go skinny dipping. Though just as this couple ended tragically with Eve committing the sin, Gogol's relationship ends tragically with his father's death and his own emotional withdrawal.
I’ve come to find that Jhumpa Lahiri’s trademark is not straying from the main subject at hand, so she avoids using “flowery” words or “fluffing up” her writing. However, on certain, rare occasions, her sense of humor appears on the page, which is a welcome relief for me. One example of this is when Lahiri writes, “Plenty of people changed their names: actors, writers, revolutionaries, transvestites” (97). Though Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing is very aware and solemn, she can also be witty, which helps prevent this work from becoming too stuffy or sentimental.
I’m surprised that Gogol changes his name. Even though he disliked it, it seems unlike him to actually go through with it. Gogol seems too grounded and traditional to go through with the decision. During his teen years, he stayed quite close to his parents’ expectations of him, maintaining good grades and being accepted into a respectable school. The only instance in which he rebelled, albeit to a small degree, was when he went to a college party with his friends before taking the SAT, but that wouldn’t follow him for the rest of his adult life, and only his friends knew he was disobeying. As well, the fact that he attended a party isn’t something that will be immediately made apparent to anyone who met him. Changing his name is something that will redefine who he is. Granted, in a way, he will always be “Gogol” because he will have the same personality traits and will retain his memories of the past. However, the fact that he changed his name to “Nikhil” seems to have tarnished his original name. Even if he ever went back to it, it’s as if he lost faith in it, gave up on it. The alternating between the two names gives me the impression that Gogol is lost, as though he has no true identity. He believes that a name has the power to relieve him of the pressures and obligations of his family.
I feel conflicted as to why Gogol changes his name. Though Alex Maz commented that Gogol harbors resentment towards his “namesake/culture”, the two are not one and the same. Gogol’s namesake is Nikolai Gogol, a Russian author. His culture is Indian-American. Why would Gogol’s hatred of his first name extend to his Indian heritage? Perhaps the name “Gogol” is too exotic-sounding in comparison to “Tom” or “Sam”, and it made him feel like a foreigner in his own country. However, it is not an Indian name, so why detest aspects of Indian culture?
(continued)
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Gogol hates his Indian culture. He is just refusing to fit himself into the stereotypical Indian mold. It only makes sense for Gogol and Sonia to lean towards the American ideals because they were raised that way. Gogol and Sonia weren’t raised in India-they were raised in America, alongside other American kids and the American ideals that permeated the atmosphere. Ashima and Ashoke shouldn’t place blame on themselves or feel depressed about the direction their children’s lives are taking. The ideals that people hold onto upon entering adulthood are often influenced by their surroundings. In the Ganguli family’s case, Gogol and Sonia have been bombarded by the ideals and images of what a typical American holds to high esteem ever since early childhood. Whether it be on the playground or on television, the values and ethics of the masses are presented for others to acknowledge, accept, and incorporate into their own lives. The earliest example of this is kindergarten, when Gogol is taught by his teacher that his own desires are independent of his parents and he had the opportunity to do as he pleased and keep his name. Upon entering college, he doesn’t study engineering, place great emphasis on finding himself an Indian wife, or stay completely obedient to his family’s wishes and expectations. Some might argue that because Gogol doesn’t openly acknowledge his Indian heritage, or possess some of the basic expectations of Indian culture, he is denying it. I disagree. Just because someone doesn’t embrace a facet of their identity, or the identity that others dictate for them, doesn’t mean he or she is rejecting it. A person can be an American and never have sung the Star Spangled Banner or light fireworks on the Fourth of July. Does that mean the person is rejecting the American identity? Certainly not. They’re just not willing to take part in expressing any attitude towards that ideal. This reminds me of some of the issues African-Americans face today. Some people label African-Americans who they believe do not fit the stereotypical qualities they’ve come to identify with their race as not being “black enough.” However, even though certain ideals are possessed by some people of a certain background or persuasion doesn’t mean all people of that background or persuasion are the same way.
Honestly, thinking about his entire predicament, I wonder why Gogol holds such deep negative sentiment for his family, avoiding them as often as he can. His parents may have named him, but there was thought and good intentions behind it. Perhaps his alteration of his name is just a rebellion against his parents’ authority, as many teens do.
It’s unfortunate that Gogol ignores his own family in exchange for spending time with his girlfriend, Maxine’s family. No one can ever replace family, but Gogol is avoiding his own like the plague. He views them like ants at a picnic, as though they’re intruding on his fun. However, when you think about it, what harm did Ashima and Ashoke cause to Gogol? They were loving and affectionate parents, and they weren’t abusive towards him. Gogol must dislike them for their Indian heritage, for all of the expectations they have for him and the obligations he must endure as a part of his culture. This explains why he is so drawn to Maxine’s parents. The American culture doesn’t hold obedience to one’s parents to a high priority, so children have more leeway to do as they wish. They don’t have to think about the impact the decisions they make will have on the family’s welfare. Maxine’s parents don’t know him to the capacity in which his own parents know him. As hospitable to Gogol they may be, they view him as their daughter’s boyfriend, and it’s unlikely that they would hold him to as high of a standard as they might do with a relative.
(continued)
One of the most heartbreaking parts of the book is when Ashima is attempting to persuade Gogol to see his father off at the airport when he leaves to direct research work in Ohio. Instead of complying with this small request his mother makes of him, he responds by asking “Why do I have to see him off?” (144). Hearing this response from Gogol makes me imagine him as a small child in the supermarket aisle, whining and moaning to his mother. He’s still remarkably immature as an adult, not yet having grasped the concept of loyalty and love for one’s family. Gogol doesn’t even have the decency to congratulate his father on this accomplishment, admitting that he “knows vaguely of his father’s plans” (144). Gogol seems to harbor this cold indifference to his mother’s request, preferring instead to go on his vacation with Maxine.
I wonder if Gogol thought that his “vacation” was worth missing his father’s last moments for?
Following Ashoke’s death, Ashima has to become independent and self-sufficient. It feels very unnatural seeing her in that light, as I associate her too much with Ashoke. How will she rebuild her life and her self-esteem? How will her husband’s death affect her approach to life? Hopefully, after a traumatic experience like death, she wouldn’t have to deal with other negativities. I imagine she might become more protective of Gogol and Sonia, out of fear of losing them prematurely as well.
The fact that the last opportunity Gogol had to see his father was one in which he was unwilling is tragic. That’s a terrible memory of yourself to keep.
3. Bridget
There isn't really any symbolic reason for this one. It was simply that Gogol wasn't with her for a long term relationship.
As for themes for this section?
A. The Importance of Trains
-Ever since the first section, I felt like trains were a big thing for this book, though i couldn't put my finger on it. Clearly it changed Ashoke's life since he was reborn on a train (Remember he didn't plan on leaving India until he met Ghosh, then he nearly died in that train wreck only to emerge as a man who would not even let his family keep him in India much longer. Sounds like a rebirth to me.) However, Gogol meets Ruth on a train as well, his first love. Also, while Gogol is on a train someone commits suicide in front of it. Lastly, Gogol takes a train past the cape and it teeters dangerously on its tracks with two curves. What I believe that Lahiri is trying to say is that Gogol (and on a larger scale people in general) is like a train. Sometimes, he is on track, other times he teeters dangerously, and then he stops altogether even getting off track. When Gogol's father dies of a heart attack, Gogol temporarily loses his tracks, the person that guided him and gave him direction. He lost his way and can only seem to get back on track by accepting his family,his heritage, his name and the legacy that comes with it.
B.The World keeps Spinning
-A bit on the morbid side but still present. When Gogol changes his name, it is the turning point of his life. he can finally be who he has dreamed of being, though even he can realize that something so life changing for him, goes unnoticed in the world. "the procedure is entirely unmomentous..." (pg. 102) Also, when Ashoke dies, Gogol didn't even realize it was happening: he was at a party, getting drunk with Max. (171) In addition, when Gogol goes to the place where his father was living he is unsettled. "The relentless uniformity of it upsets him..." To think that his father was living just like everyone else, that he was just another apartment, upsets him. Lahiri is emphasizing how, despite how all consuming our lives seem to be, even things that may put us on hold for a few years, means nothing to the world around us.
Gogol undergoes an enormous transformation in chapters five through eight. At the start of these chapters he sets out to change his name. After having done so he feels to have lost his identity. He begins to feel as though he is living another person's life, as though he is not his parents' child. Even though he told them to do so, he gets upset when his parents refer to him as Nikhil. It reminds him that he has created a distance between them. Three months into his freshman year at Yale, Gogol refers to his dorm room as his home, when speaking to his parents. Ashima is immediately hurt by this and explains that she has never once considered America her home, and she has been living there for twenty years. Gogol and his parents grow further and further apart as time goes on. When he moves to New York, he creates his own identity. He knows that such a place is foreign and scary to his parents.
Throughout his college career Gogol experiences romantic relationships, his first being with a woman named Ruth. Her different background draws his attention. Gogol does not feel the need to tell his parents of Ruth, and they find out about her a year later. As time goes by, Ruth and Gogol end their relationship and eventually he meets a woman named Maxine. She is awkwardly forward, but in an honest confident kind of way. To me, she is beautiful. Gogol enjoys Maxine's lifestyle, especially how different it is from the way his parents live. He begins to notice all of the things his parents would refuse to take part in. Gogol tells his parents about Maxine after six months of dating.
The distance between Gogol and his parents is so easily maintained because of different cultural identities. Gogol enjoys being isolated and living an American life. In an attempt to reconnect with his son, Ashoke tells Gogol the truth behind his name. (This happens before he has met Maxine). This only makes Gogol feel as though his father is a stranger. He is upset that he was lied to for such a long time. Maybe he would have kept his name if he had known a long time ago.
As Gogol grows up to be a man he realizes how much he enjoys being away from his family, and their way of living. Even Sonia has escaped to California. Ashoke moves to Cleveland for a while and Ashima adjusts to living on her own. As first it was hard for her but she managed to find ways to occupy herself. To everyone's surprise, Ashoke suffers a heart attack and dies. Already distant from his father, I expected Gogol to handle the situation a little differently than he had. Just before the death of her husband, Ashima struggled to understand why her children needed to be so distant from her. Upon Ashoke's death she realized that he had gone away as a way to teach her how to live on her own. Gogol may have gone back home to Maxine's house, but he will never be the same man that once lived there.
As I read on from chapters 5 through 8, I grew progressively melancholy, a certain heaviness setting itself upon me, this subconscious burden growing with the turn of each page. This portion of the book begins with Gogol’s “transformation,” so a few people who posted before me have called it, consisting of the changing of his name (from “Gogol” to “Nikhil”) and the metamorphosis of his personality that follows. This particular event—a definite “baptism,” in the eyes of any who have read How to Read Literature Like a Professor—suggests the superficiality that coincides with being young; the face that there is even room for such a transformation as this is because Gogol views his name as the deciding factor of his identity, the one aspect of him that makes him the person he is. This thought, to the more mature, less insecure part of the rest of the world, is incredibly naïve. Therefore, in conclusion, this name-changing not only signals a new start, a step upward as well as outward, for Gogol—now Nikil—but also reveals to us just how much there was that needed to change in order for him to grow, to step foot in the real world.
From his name-change on, we observe Gogol’s love life, the coming and going of a few women, their affect on him, the significant events that took place around the time of each relationship all having lasting effects. Ruth, the first woman we, as an audience, see Gogol grow seriously interested in, appears near perfect. The end of their relationship is abrupt and unexpected (Lahiri mentions the breakup in passing, on page 119, in the introduction of a new part of the chapter) catching the audience offguard, and making a very sudden switch from a positive to negative atmosphere. Her purpose for such a sudden end, however, could support this theme of the inevitable destinies of man, an all-powerful fate that so many others have posted about, suggesting that no matter how perfect a scenario may seem, it can very easily and very quickly fall apart.
Gogol’s relationship with Maxine could also serve as support for these ideas of man’s predestined future and its inevitability. Lahiri makes it very clear to the audience that Maxine and her way of life are “foreign” to Gogol, her parents “unlike his parents,” her house far more “beautiful,” and even countless more differences in their displays of affection, meal customs, etc. (138). The author likely makes note of all of these differences so to deeper emphasize the failure of Gogol’s attempts to live a life aside from the one his mother wants for him, to escape this predetermined fate his parents have set out for him. Additionally, I believe the death of Ashoke was the author’s way of waking Gogol up from this fantasy, showing him that he cannot simply ignore such significant parts of his life—his family, his heritage, his birth name, etc.—with the death of his father also almost like a punishment, of sorts, for his attempts to do so.
(cont'd)
All that considered, Gogol’s building a relationship with Moushumi fits into this idea of a fate-focus perfectly. The one woman he actually ends up fully committing to—through marriage—is the epitome of his parents’ hopes and expectations for his wife: a Bengali woman, whose family they are already close to, who shares their customs and beliefs—or so they believe she does. While the fact that Gogol ends up choosing the path his parents laid out for him after trying so desperately to avoid it for so long may come as a shock to the audience, this event in itself was, to some extent, expected. Upon [adult] Moushumi’s entering the story, the tone brightens, and we are noticeably freed from the miserable rut that we were caught in in the text following the death of Ashoke. Furthermore, Lahiri foreshadowed her presence in Gogol’s life by paying special attention to her character [as a child] earlier in the book. Ultimately, the wedding of Gogol and Moushumi sends the message that we cannot change who we are, we can merely accept it, discovery how to properly handle ourselves in the real world; it claims that there is such a thing as the inevitable.
Gogol’s decision to legally change his name to Nikhil shows his attempts at a rebirth. His reconstruction comes at a perfect time. He’s going to Brown, finally living away from his parents. There he falls in love for the first time, with a girl named Ruth who is in some ways similar to Nikhil. The allure of falling in love with an American girl (not a Bengali one like his parents wish for him to find) is another step in his rebellion from his parents. This impulse to rebel is likely a consequence of his parents’ (especially Ashima’s) deep devotion to their native Bengali culture. The way his parents live sets them apart from the Americans around him, and as a shy and insecure college bound student, the last thing Gogol wants to do is stand out.
So, Gogol becomes Nikhil and he “revamps” himself a bit. The relationship with Ruth was a stepping stone for a more serious relationship, this time with Maxine, a rich friend of a friend with a lifestyle far more luxurious and open than what Nikhil is used to. Maxine provides for him something that even his new life at Brown could not do for him. She is so vastly different from anything he has ever been used to that it’s easy for Nikhil to simply immerse himself in her lifestyle. The reader begins to notice him drinking wine every night, preparing meals with Maxine and her parents, attending parties with Maxine and her friends, and staying at her summer home rather than visiting his family on Pemberton road.
I really like what Alex had to say about trains in regards to this story. Trains seem to have a symbolic presence throughout the lives of the Ganguli’s. When I think of trains, I think of something being on a one track route to their destination. You can get off and on at certain stops, but the train is always going to be going the same way. I think this can help describe Nikhil’s life. He tries many different things to make his life unlike his parents. He lives away at Brown, becomes involved with Ruth, goes onto graduate school, meets Maxine and becomes part of her lifestyle. These are all of the different stops on the train of Nikhil’s life, yet he always has to get back on the cart at some point when one thing ends or no longer works. As a reader, I’m not yet sure where the final destination of Nikhil’s train is, but I’m sure the last third of the book will be laden with more stops before the end is reached.
As the Namesake continues Gogol becomes a man, or should i say Nikhil. He almost gets to start a new life entirely and forget about his past. In doing so he starts to forget his mother and father and their traditions. This part of the book shifts to Gogol's life, which is the main purpose of the story. I would have to agree with Alex that Gogol's relationship with Maxine was partly from his resentment toward his culutre. He was attracted to the entire family and their ways of living, not just hers. When Gogol took Maxine to meet his family he was already embarassed before even getting there. I don't think Gogol cares if he hurts his family. Even though he is a man now he still is not aware by how much his parents went through to give him and Sonia the life they have. I kind of find it rude that Maxine and her family never really ask Gogol about his life or his culture, only untill they are away in NH and a neighbor who knows nothing about Gogol brings it up. All his life Gogol was trying to move out of his parent's house and start his own life, yet he moves in with Maxine in her parents house. This just shows Gogol had enough of his culture and the Bengali traditions. He was settling for anything different that wouldn't remind him of his real name or real life.
In Chapters 5-8 of The Namesake, we are seeing the shift in the story from being primarily about Ashoke and Ashima's experiences and Gogol's childhood to Nikhil's independent and romantic adult life.
First off, Gogol legally changes his name to Nikhil, a move that I felt shows his rebellion against the Indian culture that his parents tried to instill in him and an increased acceptance of the American culture that he was born into (Gogol was born in America).
As the story goes on, we see the different relationships that Nikhil has, first with Ruth, then with Maxine, and finally with Moushimi, though I felt that his relationship with Maxine was where he really tried to distance himself from his heritage. On p.158, it says "here at Maxine's side, in this cloistered wilderness, he is free". This quote shows Nkhil's resentment toward the Indian culture and new acceptance of the American culture which he truly enjoys alot more.
Towards the end of Part 2, we see the Nikhil-Maxine relationship end with the death of Ashoke and Gogol going into depression. However, we also see a new relationship, a Bengali relationship form between Gogol and Moushimi, exactly what Ashima has been hoping for.
For some reason, my interest in Part Two was slightly lowered. Perhaps it was the plot lacking pages or repetitive family problems. By the time Ashoke’s death was reached, it was a tad harder to be inspired.
But let’s not be negative. A few people commented on how they didn’t like Maxine, but I thought she was absolutely lovely. Everyone seemed to hate the fact that she didn’t care about Gogol’s past, but why would she? And why is that a problem? In my opinion, someone’s past doesn’t define them at all, but maybe that’s just me. It goes along with the way she was raised, a rich, independent Manhattan girl. It’s also part of what Gogol loves about her, that she has “the gift of accepting her life.” (138). It’s the biggest difference between them, but leaves Gogol with “no sense of obligation.” It’s no surprise he’s detached from his family, as he’s already about 26 (because later he celebrates what I believe was his 27th birthday with Maxine) and graduated from Columbia for grad school.
But then there is a major shift. The perspective switches to Ashima’s, and soon Ashoke dies. It immediately changes Gogol; suddenly, he seems awful for forsaking his family for all this time. It’s an odd conflict, because while as a reader I don’t necessarily blame him, he stills seems awful. It’s a no win situation. It’s quite a reality check for him that grounds him closer to his family. There’s a definite tone of guilt the reader strongly feels.
While there is definitely a culture gap between the two generations, I don’t think it defines their relations. As a reader, I felt the struggle among generations overshadowed Gogol’s struggle with his previous culture, which is more just neatly tucked behind him. Looking at this book as the “immigrant experience” (a term everyone seemed to love in the Part 1 blogs that I am now stealing), is the conflict really between the cultures or the generations? Or both? You could easily say the parents represent one culture and Gogol represents another. At times the fact that it’s Bengali culture is irrelevant; it could be any culture really. The point is, is that Gogol has learns a separate set of values from his parents, one that causes him to not feel much attachment to them. An example being, his independence getting annoyed by his mother’s irritating calls home.
While Ashima would probably be happy back in Calcutta, especially now that Ashoke is dead, the idea isn’t even debated. To her, leaving her family would be awful. But it Gogol did it and Sonia did it, easily. It’s just where the flow of life took them. So much time passes in this novel that in reality so little happens in so much time. A lot is left out. While for us the seemingly fast pace makes Gogol seem bad for ignoring his family, in reality he’s just going with the flow of his life. He finished college, goes to grad school, gets a job, etc. It’s not so much a deliberate running away from his family so much as a unwillingness to stop his life for them.
As the story progresses Gogol starts to become independent and drift away from his family. Gogol decides to be rebellious and change his name to Nikhil which was also originally his good name as a child. With the change of his name it was like a slap in the face to his parents especially to his father because that name had a strong meaning for Ashoke.
Overtime Gogol gets involved with some serious relationships with non Bengali women. The fact that he doesn't even want to consider marrying a Bengali woman shows Gogol's resentment towards his culture. At first he meets a girl named Ruth but their relationship does not last long after she moves abroad. When Gogol has a relationship with Maxine it shows how much he resents his own culture and tries to be like her family, while they don't even seem a bit curious about his Indian roots. He moves in with the Ratliffs and completely abandons his own family. When Gogol asks his mother "Why do I have to see him [Ashoke] off?" (144) shows how much he cares about his own family. Gogol would rather spend all of his time with the Ratliffs than a minute with his own family therefore he makes seeing his father before leaving for Cleveland such a hassle. When Ashoke dies unexpectedly, this is when Gogol regrets his shameful behavior towards his parents but by then it is too late. In The Namesake Part 2 Gogol's actions and his animosity towards his own culture disgusts me because he tries so hard to be something he is not.
Gogol's relationship with Moushimi (an old childhood friend) seems a bit rushed. It was also ironic because when his dating phase began he did not seem the lease bit interested in Indian women. I think what connected them together was the similar experience they shared. In my opinion I didn't think their marriage would have lasted and it didn't.
The beginning of the second part is so different from how it ends. The beginning is Gogol or Nikhil trying to separate himself from his past but after his father’s death its not a complete 180 but a pretty hard 90 degree turn. He becomes more willing to bend to old Indian traditions because it links him to his parents.
At the beginning he tried to almost severe the ties but it was evident that he did not truly want to separate himself completely. Though he did see being with Maxine as “[him being] free,” meaning he that he was far from his parent’s hold, it does not explain why when he changed his name he chose Nikhil, a name his parents had chosen (158). This change in name is from a Russian name to a Indian name, becoming closer with his heritage and his parents, whom he weirdly avoids. He describes his lifestyle with the Ratcliff’s as a form of “betrayal” to his own parents, the connotation this holds makes him the bad guy in his own eyes (141). But I think its his fear of not being accepted that keeps him back from expressing his self as it becomes “a relief to be back in her world” a world more accepted by the culture of America or as what he sees it as; this moment is very similar to the moment when he changes his name when he realizes that it is him that has a problem with his name and not others (102). It’s ironic how he is trying to fit in in America, America the melting pot.
After his father’s death Gogol starts to embrace his culture as he sees it as the only way to connect to his deceased father. Through out the second part there are drawn comparisons of the two families, on pages 137-138 the descriptions of the family are back to back giving the reader the full understanding of how opposite these two groups are. The whole time it seems he has embraced the Ratcliff’s way of living until page 182 when he makes this comment about how “this time he doesn’t care how the house, how the piles of guest’s shoes…might appear to her eyes,” he is finally embracing who he is rather than shield it from his girlfriend (182). Gogol was so quick to embrace Maxine’s lifestyle and escape from his own that he realizes that he has not shared his own in fear that she would not accept him. This same fear has haunted him since grade school but now he seems to care less as he sees that one cannot live in fear because life is too short. This is seen in the scene when eating a “mourner’s diet” and the memory at the end, Gogol tries to become closer to Ashoke by finally following the Indian culture and his father’s teachings, something that is never too late (180, 187).
This part really shows Gogol accepting his cultural background, though it was too get closer to his deceased father, it means that he is growing closer to his family and growing as a person as he is able to accept himself.
Part 2 of The Namesake focuses on Gogol's development in identifying himself. He does this through having a relationship, moving away from his parents, and changing his name. Lahiri develops much symbolism throughout part 2. In this section, Gogol has sex (p.114), which symbolizes his new enlightenment (read "How to Read Lit.."), and he chooses architecture as his major, which is taboo in the eyes of his Bengali parents who want him to become a doctor, teacher, or an engineer. Gogol also distances himself from his family and culture, even rejecting an invitation to join the Indian Association at his school (p.119), and keeping his shoes on when he visits his parents (146).
It is clear that, at first, Gogol isn't fully comfortable with his new lifestyle. He is ashamed to tell his parents about his relationship with Ruth, being unable to "imagine being with her in the house where he is still called Gogol."(Lahiri 115)
Later in the section, Gogol has his relationship with Maxine and becomes accustomed to living with an American family. (137) Gogol has now completely lost touch with his family, symbolizing how he is "free." (p.158)
Although Gogol claims to be free and happy, his tranquility doesn't last. Lahiri uses the death of his father to bring Gogol back to his family/culture. As she implies later in the novel, it is the events in one's life that shapes their person. Gogol's relationships and traveling have fueled his independence, however, he must be brought back to his roots.
In response to Alex Maz's mosquito comments, I agree and this is why Maxine is "unbothered and unbitten"(p.143) by the mosquitoes, because she is not fighting off her roots; on the contrary, she cannot leave them (still living with her parents). This is a lesson which must and will be taught to Gogol.
I found the section where Gogol was reading about name changes glamorized the American culture. The celebrities had renamed themselves and the article states, “it was a right belonging to every American citizen” (99). Gogol thinks of his own name, he wants to change it to Nikhil. This is where Gogol accepts being American and in a way, his parents accept being American. His father tells him that, “In America anything is possible. Do as you wish”(100). This is also one of the first times Gogol has had control over his own life. This symbolizes his growth from an adolescent to an adult. Gogol accepts this readily, he desperately wants to leave the Indian culture behind.
It was ironic when Gogol left the courthouse as Nikhil. There is a striking similarity between Gogol and his own mother. Gogol stepped out of the courthouse alone with no one to congratulate him (102). His mother gave birth in a country where she knew few. She felt pity for her own son, who was born into a world so alone. At Gogol’s birth and his rebirth, he still carries the same feeling of loneliness.
I was not surprised that Gogol faced an identity crisis. It was inevitable. He tried to move away from the Bengali culture, he tried to distance himself from his family, but in the end he identified as Gogol.
Gogol created a person who had no past, Nikhil. However, as the story progressed, he feels as if “he’s cast himself in a play” (105). The past creates a person, and a person can make shape himself in the present. Gogol did not know who he wanted to be, he only knew that he wanted to get away from his family and his culture. People look into their past to see who they are, but Nikhil was unable to fully understand who he was unless he reverted back to being Gogol.
This section is more focused on how Gogol accepts his own name and culture. When Gogol first hears the story behind his name, I was angry that he did not do anything about his name. Well, Lahiri does not give any information about what happened after the talk in the car. She forwards onto Gogol’s, I mean Nikhil’s life in New York.
I was mad when Gogol thought “That here at Maxine’s side, in this cloistered wilderness, he is free.”(158). Now, that is a little ironic. He feels trapped as Nikhil, but he also feels free because he is away from his family?
It is not until the death of Ashoke does Gogol finally accept his culture. He learned that family and culture are very important. His relationship with Maxine allowed him to develop these thoughts, because of the stark difference between her family and his. His family was run by the rules of the Bengali, while her family, well, they were free, and living the American dream. Gogol realized he couldn’t run away from his past, he could not live the rest of his life as Nikhil, because, then, he would be discarding his background. I agree with Jeri, Gogol is coming into terms with himself. He might not be the American born confused deshi anymore.
In part 2 of The Namesake we see Gongol growing we'll hes isn't "Gongol" anymore he's become Nikhil. After he legally changes his name he seems to just try to forget who Gongol was and just become a new person as Nikhil. I agree with how most believe thant Gongol changing his name was kind of a stab in the back to his Bengali heritage. He semes to want to have nothing to do with it he just wants to push it away, Ashima and Ashoke's fear.
I agree with Gabbys comment about how Gongol spent a lot of time with Maxine's family and how they didn't know much about Gongol's background. Even Maxine didn't know a lot of the details of his heritage. I feel like being with Maxine was another way for Gongol to bash his heritage by dating someone that he knew his parents wouldn't approve of since she wasn't Bengali.
These chapters seemed so much more emotionally heavy then part one of the book. We have Gongol's name change, "dating"(seemed more physical attration to me) Ruth, his college life, his time with axine and her family of rebellion to his heritage, Ashoke's death This was like a shock to me. I didn't expect for something this heavy. When I read about his death the first thing I thought was great now Ashoke died and he's died while not being close to his son. Then poor Ashima has to learn to live on her on. I felt like these chapters were filled with different emotions. I felt more of a closeness in the book because there were so many different emotion to feel. I felt most connected to Ashima needing to learn to live on her own. She went from her home, to living with Ashoke having kids and now for the first time is all alone. Husband dead and childrfen moved away.(Sonia then moves in with her after) The last topics that hit my attention was after the death of Ashoke Maxine and Gongol's realationship ended we move to his mother who now wants him to be with Moushumi. I love the relationship that they havew. How neither of them were ready for this and Gongol had no want to even meet her and in they end they end up getting married I find it so bitttersweet.
After his first relationship we now see Gogol in a more serious relationship with Maxine. I was really surprised by how welcoming her and her family was. It was either pure ignorance or sound judgment that they trust Gogol so much without even knowing about his past. I still wonder why they didn’t because you would think that a rich family like hers would be very cautious about people. This maybe bit of a stretch, but maybe the author is marking a point about American living with a false sense of security. Also that the money they have puts them in a position in which they only care about living the American dream and forgetting about other things. I think the point of this section was to compare the life Gogol family lives and the one Maxine’s family. It’s safe to say that Gogol likes how the Maxine’s family conducts their lives as opposed to his family.
Most people at this point are jumping to the conclusion that he hates his heritage and how his family lives. This is not completely false, but to some degree you can’t blame him since he grew up in America unlike his parents so he expects them to act like the people he grew up with. On the other hand at this point he should be old enough to understand that his parent unlike him did not grow up in America so expecting them to change or distancing himself from them shows how immature he still is. On a deeper level it’s not that he hates his culture or his parent’s practices rather I think he wanted to spend more time with his family as family. For example on special occasions there are so many guests that there is no time to celebrate these occasions as a family. I think Gogol should have told his parents because I am sure they would done something. Besides I did not expect his family to be as flexible as they are. I thought that they would make sure that he followed their traditions and chosen the career path they thought was appropriate for him. There flexibility shows how American they became which Gogol does not see because his only worrying about himself.
In fact his parents never forced him to do anything he did not want do. Although they were disappointed by his career path they still respect his choices and did what they could to help. I think his being ungrateful and ignorant to what his parents went through to raise him. They may not be like Maxine’s family, but they still did their best to adjust the American lifestyle to a certain point. The process of adapting to new places can be painful because you realize you are changing and although some changes are good in doing so you are also betraying what you grew up know and live with so you hold on to whatever you can like Ashima. Gogol at this point has not realized this because he too focused on himself to pay attention to other people’s feelings. Still I think Gogol no matter where he goes will never live too far from his home because as different he wants it to be there will only be one home for him and that home is where his family is because in end that’s what really matters
Despite their obvious influence over the person that Gogol becomes, I think Gogol’s girlfriends are probably the least interesting characters in this novel – and not accidentally. Both Ruth and Maxine sort of fit the manic pixie dream girl trope (though Maxine is a bit more fleshed out). They are essential to the person Gogol becomes, but they are not important in the grand scheme of things – basically, they are only important in terms of Gogol, which is reflected in Maxine’s carelessness toward Gogol’s culture – she is interested in it, sure, but at the end of the day she is still Maxine from Manhattan who goes to New Hampshire in the summers. Maxine represents more than a relationship to Gogol – she represents everything he has never had, and we see this in his direct comparisons between Maxine’s family and his own (138, 155). Unlike his own parents, Maxine’s entertain by being entertaining, not by being servants in their own home. Similarly, Maxine’s parents retreat to a quiet and serene vacation home in New Hampshire each summer – not to Calcutta, which, as has often been noted, is never quite quiet. I find it interesting that Alfonse noted Gogol’s acceptance of the past as a sign of his maturity, because I don’t think Gogol has accepted the past. He still wishes he’d grown up differently, gotten to experience everything Maxine did growing up – and that’s why he changed his name. The name “Gogol” just represents the past, and Gogol hates his past. He loves Maxine because she doesn’t care about his past, which we see even when he explains his name to her – Lahiri even describes Gogol’s name as an “essential fact about his life” that Maxine lets “slip from her mind as so many others did” (156).
Despite this obvious desire for something so vastly different from the world he grew up in, Gogol’s desire for a mosquito net (as Alex and Rachael mentioned) definitely betrays a deep(ly hidden) desire for his cultural roots – and even, in some ways, foreshadows his future return to his culture (though not necessarily permanently). After all, we do not have mosquito nets here; they are a strictly foreign form of protection. Interestingly, Lahiri still calls Gogol “Gogol,” as does his family (150), which to me sort of symbolized Gogol’s eventual acceptance – if not of the name itself, then definitely of his family (because only your immediate family calls you by your name). Essentially, even as Gogol rejects his parents’ culture, he finds it impossible to fall completely away from it – especially when his father tells him about his name (114) and dies only a few years later (169). Knowing that the name “Gogol” literally meant everything to Ashoke will, I think, factor into Gogol’s upcoming decision – does he call himself Gogol? Or Nikhil? After all, Nikhil is (quite obviously) a rejection of his parents – his name makes it easier to “ignore his parents, to turn out their concerns and pleas” (105).
(cont)
Notably, Lahiri emphasizes the train Gogol takes to get his name changed. This would probably be just another form of transportation of Lahiri didn’t use trains almost every time any of her characters was going on any sort of emotional journey; of course, in this section, the only character we really see using a train is Gogol because the only character whose life we see in any detail (aside from Ashima’s toward the end) is Gogol. After all, Gogol takes the train to get his name changed and comes back an entirely different person, one who will one day grow up to be the man his family probably does not want him to be (97); he meets his first real girlfriend, Ruth, on the train, a symbol of sorts that to me, represents the growing rift between himself and his family (110); he also takes the train after they’ve broken up, unable to travel without thinking about her – but the nature of this train ride, not nearly as friendly as the one he’d taken when he met Ruth, emphasizes his desire to distance himself from her as well (120). Of course, this is also the train ride that is disturbed by a man’s suicide – what do you guys think about this? Does it represent a more figurative suicide (i.e. that of Gogol in his current incarnation, the version that had the capacity to love someone like Ruth, or maybe Gogol in the incarnation that still visits his parents fairly often)?
And then, finally, we have Gogol on the train after his father’s death. And at one point, “the whole train threatens, ever so slightly, to topple over.” For the most part, passengers do not notice – but it “never fails to rouse Gogol from his nap” (185), thus indicating that trains – despite being relatively mundane, every day modes of transportation, are ridiculously meaningful to Gogol Ganguli (and, by extension, his family). I think the threat of the train toppling could also, in this case, be representative of Gogol’s emotions – he is on the verge of literally breaking down, and we see from his lack of any emotional attachment to the woman he’d once been so in love with that he may actually have “toppled.” I can’t tell if this emphasis on trains is Lahiri gearing up for some intense train-age in the rest of the book, or if she’s just emphasizing the similarities between Gogol and his parents despite their diverging upbringings and beliefs. I said it in my last comment and I’ll say it again – despite everything, Gogol really is his father’s son.
One other thing – Though people seem to continue to focus on Gogol being very distant from his Bengali roots, I find it more interesting that his sister has moved even farther away – both figuratively and literally. After all, while Gogol never goes further than a few hours by car from his parents’ Massachusetts home (first to New Haven and then to New York), Sonia moves all the way to San Francisco (166) – literally the opposite side of the country. Similarly, Sonia goes to dances and parties in high school (107), while Gogol, though always resentful, is pretty consistently his parents’ son (until/except for that one party at the end of chapter four). Interestingly, this seems to make Sonia less resentful of her parents than Gogol; he not only changes his name, but also refuses to visit his parents, choosing his girlfriend over them time and time again. This is not necessarily essential to the plot – I just find it interesting that Gogol’s parents’ insistence that he stay as Bengali as possible led to his resentment of them instead of, as they’d obviously hoped, gratitude and acceptance.
I agree with Brittany that this section focuses on the transformation of Gogol, but I wouldn’t describe it as a single, definite “metamorphosis.” I feel like although he undergoes this transformation when he changes his name to Nikhil, the act was marked by a desperate need to escape his culture’s influence. However, towards the end of the novel, we see him reconciling with those cultural roots, a behavior triggered by his father’s death. His traditional Indian marriage to a childhood friend was really symbolic of his newfound acceptance for his culture. So, with that said, I feel like his name change transformed him, but he definitely went through other transformations afterwards.
I feel like Gogol’s love life matches his confusion and this desperation I described earlier. All of his relationships are described by Lahiri with this sense of uneasiness, and the reader knows that Gogol in one way or another doesn’t fit in with his partners. All of his relationships seemed to have an expiration date, and I wasn’t surprised when they broke off, except for the one with Moushumi. The marriage that symbolized cultural acceptance was broken, but it also makes a powerful statement. There is a contrast between Gogol’s and Ashima’s marriage. One is at the beginning of the book, the other is towards the end. Though the ceremony was composed of the same rituals, Moushumi was never the traditional Bengali woman Mashima was. This is the way of Lahiri capitalizing on the different identities a person with a different ethnic background is able to form in another country. Another connection I made is that Ashima was the mastermind if this marriage, the coupling was almost arranged, like Indian marriages often are. Gogol’s marriage symbolizes a rekindling with his mother, and the divorce shows that Gogol’s identity doesn’t solely belong to his mother’s culture.
My thoughts on his relationship with Maxine: I agree with Terenzi that the fact that she didn’t care about his past was exactly what he liked about her. There he was, America’s child, college graduate, architect, in contact with society’s upper class. Her behavior towards him is what really validated his identity change from Gogol to Nikhil, and that is why he was so entranced with her. Now, where my thinking differs from Terenzi’s is that I think that as the relationship progresses, he subconsciously realizes that a significant part of him is absent and he begins to be emotionally distant. This is caused directly by his father’s death, which I said before, leads him to rethink his views on his culture.
On a more informal note, if anyone really enjoyed this book, I highly recommend Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. It’s a fantastic read. :)
Part two of The Namesake focused more on Gogol’s life and his decent away from his family. He constantly is trying to hide his old life, and make himself his own person as much as possible. I think, and as other do too from the previous comments above, that one of the reasons that he didn’t go to MIT, other than his parents being so close, is that he wanted to do his own thing. Make his own way. I think that his relationship with Maxine is a symbol of his new life. Everything about her family is almost the opposite of his own family. The freer environment, Maxine’s parents being more accepting to what Maxine wants, and even the relationship Maxine has with them. The book says she chooses to be faithful to them due to the fact that they often don’t push her into doing things of their tradition. I also thought it was a tad humorous when Maxine’s family walks into their vacation home and say, “welcome to paradise”, as it was quite the opposite in its looks in the eyes of Gogol.
I also feel really bad for Gogol’s mother, as I feel like most things don’t go her way. She never really wanted to stay in America, but yet she’s lived there for a few decades now. She lives alone now since her husband had moved to Cleveland, and then died. Her daughter is in California, and her son doesn’t enjoy her company or letting her know his business (which also is because of his wanting of a new identity). I just don’t feel like she deserves any of it. She has given a lot up for her children and her husband, so they could go after their own dreams while she’s still in a foreign land to her.
Something else that kind of surprised me was that speaker never refers to Gogol as Nikhil after he changes his name. It stays as Gogol. I’m not sure if this means anything or not, but I thought I would bring it up to see if anyone has any thoughts on it perhaps?
Truly, I believe that the plot does actually thickens because the narrator is in fact shifting from the parents (mostly Ashima) to Gogol. With this jump there is a jump of age and perspective, Gogol is now 14, a teenager. Lahiri does this, I believe, because she wants to show different time frames --some longer than others--for effectiveness. I think the readers got the hint , through Gogols childhood, of his hardships as a Bengali- American child. We got it for the most part. SO what happens when that little child grows up, who now has bigger difficulties of balancing his Bengali culture with his American culture. Simultaneously, my question is being slowly answered. THE NAMESAKE!. Gogol, Gogol, Gogol. It hits me hard on page 76, some evidence. This is because before I had a guess, but now its as solid as gold. And the winner is Ashokes favorite author Nikolai Gogol(which is present in the prompt for the first response, the beginning of the novel before it even starts, and with more depth later on in the novel) Why? Good question. Sadly on pages 77-78 the answer is not brought up to the surface and Gogol doesn’t get to know the answer. The reader may know but Gogol doesn’t (hint: Ashokes past, on the train)
Even in Mr. Lawson’s class Gogol’s name haunts him. Unsurprisingly, Gogol tries to runaway from his name, and he’s going to continue running away until he becomes comfortable. Gogol is running away from his identity . Most people probably don’t realize the impact of their name. A name defines some one, to a certain extent, whether they like is or not. I get the feeling, that just because the name is odd and is uncommon, and just because it originated from the roots of his parents belief, that Gogol feels suffocated by it. He is not only resisting his name but a big chunk of his family, of his culture, of his country. To me Gogol is a dog on a leash that he wants to tear from, and run away. To escape, he has to depart from his pet name into transitioning to Nikhil like on page 96. Finally, Gogol, or should I say Nikhil takes action, and changes his name just before going to college. New name, new personality, new school, new state, new life. The life of Nikhil Ganguli.
How does this “new life” treat Nikhil? Well he is “free” for the most part ,as some of my peers have been saying. Until his mother comes to visit, when mother calls, or until he has to go back home this remains true. I say mother because she is the one making the most effort trying to keep the family grounded with their culture. Also, he has more luck with woman such as his first love Ruth, and further along with Maxine. At last, Nikhil gets a revelation about his former name Gogol. Nikhil’s life just becomes less and less simple with the aspects of love, getting a job going to school. It goes to show that as one grows older problems get greater, and things just become just simply COMPLICATED, no matter what ones roots are.
That's a key observation Alex - the one regarding trains. I suppose it's a motif that merely carried over from the first part of the book. Since trains were emphasized to have been of such importance to his father, considering he almost died on one, train cameos appearing in Gogol's life is not out of the ordinary. However, I viewed the significant of trains to be slightly different. I don't think Gogol himself is the train himself per se - rather, the train is symbolic of old yet traditional values. I say that because in modern America today we use mostly cars, subways, airplanes, and have forsaken conventional trains, evidenced by abandoned railway tracks seen even in our own city. Still, the train in this book is important. It's destination is a return traditional values and as you say, he eventually ends up learning to accept his heritage, his name, and the legacy it bears.
When Gogol and Moushima move in together, they start baking a chicken. But due to their insistence on fooling around with each other rather than keeping an eye on the food being cooked, the chicken gets "irreparably scorched, so much so that the pan itself has to be thrown away" (211). At first I thought nothing of it other than it being a comical sign of negligence on their part. But then, when Moushima apparently starts becoming unsatisfied with Gogol and begins an affair with someone else, they have a divorce. Maybe that chicken was important after all; a foreshadowing for the eventual fate of their relationship. Scorched, charred, burned in flames. Incinerated, obliterated, annihilated. Absolutely ruined. Divorce. Ouch, man. That hurts.
If I learned anything from Gogol it would probably be not to forsake my origins. An apt comparison might be that for people like Gogol, as well as myself, in other words those who are born into America but have parents that hail from another land entirely, we are trees. Trees, you say? Yes, trees. We are bound to the roots that tie us, our origins, our backgrounds, our heritage. Trying to uproot ourselves causes us to lose our source of nutrients, our identity. You can't get far as a tree that uprooted itself and walked miles away from its original location. So might as well keep myself there, but extend my branches to reach the things I want to see. In other words...people like us should always keep our past and our origins in mind, but be able to experience new things without forgetting the part of us that will always be there.
This part of the book isn’t about Gogol. It’s about Nikhil. Changing his name to Nikhil is a quest (oh Foster…). It seems like just a trip to the courtroom to get a name change legalized; the entire court proceedings take only about ten short minutes and “tens of thousands of Americans had their names changed each year” (99). Gogol even realizes how far from monumental the event is since it is unnoticed by anyone. Yet he can feel the difference, and “he doesn’t feel like Nikhil” (105). At first he is excited by the new name, the new him, and he creates a whole new image, a separate, almost rebellious image of the old Gogol. It’s pretty saddening to see this change. What is almost a relief for the reader is when Nikhil meets Ruth. It seems he starts to embrace his culture rather than shunning it, especially because she is interested and he can easily talk to her about it. But it just didn’t work out. Maxine was different. I don’t like her as much, but that relationship didn’t last long either.
I was so touched by the talk Ashoke and Gogol had in the car. They finally connect and Gogol finally understands his name, where it came from, the significance of it. It’s not so much of a coincidence that the train he was on had trouble just before their talk because had the train not been late, had his father not been worried for over two hours alone in the cold and thinking the worst, he wouldn’t have told Gogol the reason behind his namesake just yet. What is kind of a coincidence though is that before he learns about it, Gogol decides he doesn’t mind his pet name anymore after hearing his father call him by it.
Chapter 7 was so sad and depressing with the sudden death of Ashoke and the way Gogol must deal with the pain and the loss and the guilt that he feels, but then chapter 8 was so beautiful. It’s so amazing that after all their time avoiding not only each other, but practically anything Bengali in America, Moushumi and Gogol end up falling in love. What’s more, they were brought together by their parents’ arrangement. It’s very ironic and completely unexpected, but also so perfect. Now after so many failed relationships, Gogol finally has someone that really loves him and that can make him happy.
Ashoke said to Gogol that “In America anything is possible. Do as you wish (100).” This quote reflects to the freedom that anyone can live up to the American Dream. In contrast to the lifestyle in Calcutta, freedom and equality maybe restricted to adult male. But, this is probably the part when Gogol begins to abandon his Bengalian lifestyle to strive for American lifestyle. This is the reason why he chose to attend college out of state instead of following his father’s path to MIT. Moreover, Lahiri decides to put in two American girls that Gogol had relationship with after choosing the American way of life. The complications that Gogol undergoes [Ashima’s disapproval, Ashoke’s heart attack], probably means that he have to return to his Bengalian life with his family. He cannot simply live alone without a family.
When it only took Gogol ten minutes to change his name, while the parents stressed for years on Gogol's name, it shows how different American culture is compared to India. Throughout the first part of the book, the author stressed so much on the idea of a formal name and a name used at home yet it only took ten minutes to change from Gogol to Nikhil. Nikhil was Gogol's way of escaping from his parents' roots. I think Nikhil completely lost his self was when he was with Maxine. With Maxine, Gogol was adopted into the relaxed American culture with vacations and parents who did not care if they walked around naked. However, I think Nikhil is stupid to not realize that Maxine could care less about him, he was just another figure in the house. She never really cared or appreciated Nikhil's culture. On the other hand, the ones who truly love Nikhil, his parents, were ignored and treated harshly. Nikhil needs to realize that his parents choose to stay in America and work hard because of him. They have struggled and tried so hard to fit into the American culture to create a happier life for Gogol yet he ignores them. When Ashima wants Gogol to see Ashoke off at the airport,an important part of Indian culture, he acts annoyed. Ashoke's death was a wakeup call for Gogol to realize what was truly important in his life. It was sweet how united the family was after Ashoke's death. When they were eating dinner, it reminded me of the idea of communion as mentioned in How To Read.. because although Ashoke was no longer there, his death reminded them the value of family.
Two words to describe part deux of “Namesake”? Fast Trains and Faster Woman.
Part two of the novel definitely focuses around the aspect of the reinvention of rebirth of Gogol Ganguli to Nikhil. His first romantic encounter was exactly what it was, sweet, innocent, young, and inevitable doomed to fail. It was young love, and Gogol had just begun teasing with the idea of a whole new persona. Ruth was just the appetizer. Although I think I have to disagree with Alex on the whole “cramped in the train” as a metaphor for sex. I think the fact that they met on a train was more symbolic and overrides that comparison. Ruth is reflective of Gogol’s lust. His lust for a new life, new name, new beginning in college. And like many who experience lust, the fire usually dies in time.
And now we move on to Maxine. Ruth was different than Gogol, yes. But Maxine, Maxine is like white and Gogol is black. They are the epitome of the whole ‘opposites attract’ saying. Although I do not think that Gogol really loved Maxine for who she was, he loved her for what she embodied. The lavish lifestyle, and the care freeness of it all was a stark contrast to the rigid, structured, and cautious life of his parents who would travel to New York not to tour but to go to Indian restaurants and buy groceries. Maxine was FUN, she was JUBELENT. In a way, Gogol’s union with Maxine was like a big slap in the face for his homelife with his parents. It was a subtle act of rebellion. Of course the theme of rebellion is rampant in the second part of the novel. Gogol adopts a taste for rich, white foods like pasta and whatnot. He lives with a woman, wearing dependent on her, sleeping in HER bed, which is probably counter the Indian social caste system which subjugates woman. That is why Ashoke is never acknowledged by his first name by Ashima, out of respect for the man. So by taking shelter with Maxine, he kind of shrugged off his culture. I thought when they went to the boathouse and they went for the midnight skinny dip was symbolic of him stripping away Gogol and submersing himself in Maxine (literally as they had sex on the beach..)
The next significant event in the novel would be the death of Ashoke. I was heartbroken, and it came as such a shock for Lahiri had put so much effort in Ashima’s careful construction of holiday cards, everything seemed so cute and sweet, then BOOM, Ashoke has died. His death signified a new chapter in Gogol’s life. He could no longer live out his rebellious and carefree life, so his new perspective clashed with Maxine’s easiness and ended their relationship. I feel as though Gogol took the death as a sign that he has to accept. Accept his name. Accept his family. Accept his culture, the reality of his life. WAKE UP CALL. The frequent visits to Ashima and his little sister are indicative of the new role that he feels he needs to fill in the absence of his father, I felt like his acceptance came with no other choice.
As we go on with the book, we get to know Gogol even better. Although, during the second part, i think we see more of "Nick's" personality rather than Gogol's. Once he attends Columbia, his romantic life also starts to progress.
He is becoming more accustomed to the American life and has a totally different attitude toward American traditions. His family had always brought him up to celebrate his culture but during this section of the book, it is clear that he has sort of a resentment to his culture. Although during the first part, he resented using the name "Nikhil", now that he has entered a new "world" per say, he has adapted new way of living. Maxine's family has taught him about American culture.
During his time in college, he met a girl named Ruth on the train. They grew very close to each other and we could see Nikhil's relationships growing. Now that he was Nikhil and not Gogol, he was able to become a completely different person and experience romance, friendships, and American culture. Unfortunately, just as it seems as if it were going great, Ruth moved away to another college and Nikhil had his heart broken.
I think that if Gogol had kept his name, he would have been more culturally attached to his heritage and family, but because he has changed his name to Nikhil, and even Nick, the more americanized version of his name, its as if he has to change who he is because he changed his name. With him name changed, he is not unique anymore. He is just another American who has lost their culture. I can relate to this because i have adapted to much to America that i have forgotten a lot about Albanian culture. My family does not celebrate our culture as much anymore and we have totally lost touch with our country. Celebrating another culture is such a special thing to have and people don't realize it until they've lost it all.
This section was my favorite of the three because i really enjoyed the perspective and changes that happened with Gogol. Also, i liked how the book shifted from talking about Ashima and Ashoke's life to being all about Gogol/Nikhil/Nick.
In part two of the Namesake the reader witness a major shift in topics within the novel, one in particular: the shift in focus transitons from the early life of Ashima and Ashoke in America, to the life of first born Gogol. As the book progress's the readers grow with Gogol; the ritual saturday visist to other Bengali/American families, the two seperate birthday celebrations (one for American school friends, one for Bengalis). As Gogol ages, he begins to posses this strong distaste for Bengali culture, and for specificly his name. The reader never can truly connect with Gogol, with this resentment toward his name because we ironically know what Gogol does not; the meaning, and power behind the name he wears. With age Gogol, now Nikhil leans more and more toward the American culture, attending regular parties at neighboring University's (him attending Yale at the time), experiencing sexual intercourse with girls like Rose and Maxine whom he seeks his first real realationships with. As Nikhil grows with age, so do his parents whom seem to slowly intergrate into the American lifestyle, but never to the exent of there children. ALthough at first it appeared to me that the struggles of immigration had been the main topic of interest within the book, that all seems to fade into a larger idea as the book progresses. After Nikhil see's the demise of his Father, the end of once passionate realationships, I feel as though he finally begins to realize what it was like to live as if father had years before his exsistence. Nikhil has never felt the power of lonlines; he is ignorant to how it feels to feel distant from those whom he loves. And as the novel comes to an end, i feel as though that is the underlying message. Nikhil always ignorant of his fathers culture, his emotions, and the meaning behind there exsitence as a middle class family in America has gone ignored untill it had finally disengrated; and now Nikhil was experiencing what his father once had felt: reality. Nikhil reflects on what his father had once told him " Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where ther was nowhere left to go"; and now he knows, even if it was just to a empty beach just miles shy of his home in Massachusettes, atleast he was not traveling it alone(187).
"I hate the name Gogol" he says. "I've always hated it" (102)
I could never imagine changing my first name. Your name is very much your identifier, when someones says your name it carries pictures and thoughts. It is a word that sums up your very essence. It makes my think of Native Americans and how they would wait to give their children names the reflected the child's very nature. I think it is best that we are named by those before us for two reasons. To name yourself I feel you must know yourself. Through this book Gogol goes on a journey to find out who he is, American? Indian? Husband? I also believe that he is also blind to the flaws he carries. I think a huge mistakes Gogol makes in the story is he chooses a name which he wants to live up to rather than a name that defines himself.
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