Dangling and Sandwiched Identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s

THE NAMESAKE

Submitted by:
Divneet Kaur
Email- kaur.divneet@gmail.com
Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Namesake’ makes a modest attempt to throw the spotlight
on the effects of migration and settlement on the first and second generations. Addressing
the themes of immigration, collision of cultures and the importance of names in The
Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates how much of a struggle immigration can be.

The Namesake is all about the story of two generations- Ashoke and Ashima on
the one hand and their children on Gogol and Sonia on the other. It depicts the different
attitudes, outlooks and the way of living of two generations while dealing with the
problems in a foreign country. They face identity crisis as the meaning of culture differs
for both generations- the first being directly related to his/her homeland and second
generation forming an image of culture based on the information transmitted by the first
generation. Jhumpa Lahiri has very well portrayed the characters and the pain of
belonging nowhere. The focus of this paper is on the means by which the characters in
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake deal with their identity-crisis and how they handle the
trauma and possible success, failure or resistance of subjects who in their confrontation
with the culture of the other negotiate their new identities.
Introduction

The writers of the South Asian diaspora, in recent decades, found prominence in
the international literary arena. These writers while depicting migrant characters in their
fiction explore the theme of displacement and self-fashioning. The diasporic Indian
writers’ depiction of dislocated characters gains immense importance if seen against the
geo-political background of the vast Indian subcontinent. That is precisely why such
works have a global readership and an enduring appeal. The diasporic Indian writers have
generally dealt with characters from their own displaced community but some of them
have also taken a liking for Western characters and they have been convincing in dealing
with them (Saha, Exile Literature and Diasporic Indian Writing 186). While Indian
writers have been making a significant contribution to world literature since
Independence, the past few years have seen a massive flourishing of Indian fiction in the
global market. Though there is a great deal of difference between Indian writers, there are
few themes that loosely link them together- the issues of identity and language for
example, and the themes of exile and diaspora which have been a focal point of much
Indian fiction. (Sinha, The Sense of Exile 184)

The immigrant experience, the question of identity and the expatriate experience
continues to furnish terrific material for fiction and can be traced in the works of various
South Asian women writers too. For example, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane which won the
Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists of the decade, Newcomer of the Year at the
2004 British Books Awards and was also short listed for Booker Prize, reveals tellingly
that the truest part of Ali’s writings is about the experience of exile, the pain of un-
belonging. Zadie Smith, another non-white novelist blasted into the literacy scene with
White Teeth- the Booker nominated bestseller about immigrant culture in London (Sinha,
The Sense of Exile 184). Jhumpa Lahiri is also one of the finest South Asian writers who
has explored the ins and outs of immigrant’s experiences- those immigrants who have
lost their sense of belongingness and with their alienated self they dangle between two
worlds in search of their true identity.
 Having born of educated middle class Bengali parents in London and grown up in
Rhodes Island (USA) Jhumpa Lahiri beautifully and authentically portrays the diaspora
experiences in her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (which won her
the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000) as well her first novel The Namesake (which spent
several weeks in on New York Times bestseller list). What sets Lahiri apart is the
combination of her empathetic concern for the moral and psychological truth related to
the immigrant’s discontentment with the outstanding literary qualities which makes her
writings- supple, elegant, economical, ironic and compassionate, marvelously capturing
the nuances and minutely observed details. Aruti Nayar remarks:

Though endowed with a distinct universal speech, her stories do bring out
rather successfully the predicaments of the Indians who trapeze between
and across two traditions, one inherited and left behind, and the other,
encountered but not necessarily assimilated.

Lahiri holds a unique place among the Expatriate writers as well as Indian English
writers. Though she has produced only nine short stories and a novel uptil now, she has
become a milestone in Indian English Literature. She is the zephyr in the firmament of
Indian English Literature. She is the writer of the caliber, who can hold her own place in
any grouping- among Indian writers, among short story specialists or American literateurs
(Bheda, Indian Women Novelists in English 115).

About the novel and the immigrant experiences of the characters

Undeniable is the fact that living in between condition is very painful and
marginalising for the diasporas. Rootless and displaced, the immigrants nostalgically
yearn for “home”, go back to the “lost origin” and “imaginary homeland” (Nair,
Compromise or Confrontation?: Dislocated Self 177). The new generation of Americans,
born of immigrant parents are presented by this young and vibrant writer, Jhumpa Lahiri
in her novel- The Namesake, in a very genuine and first hand manner. Her first novel The
Namesake was published in 2003 which made her a literary celebrity overnight. In this
novel, “She deals with the theme of identity crisis and the problem of assimilation and
adaptation in another country. The novel is a story of two generations- Ashoke and
Ashima on the one hand and their children Gogol and Sonia on the other hand, and their
life period of thirty years. The novel begins in the year 1968, the birth year of Gogol and
stretches to the year 2000, depicting the different attitudes, outlooks and directionality of
two generations in dealing with the problems in a foreign country. They face different
problems as the meaning of the culture differs for both the generation- the first being
directly related to his/her homeland and second generation forming an image of culture
based on the information transmitted by the first generation” (Agarwal, Generational
Differences in Diasporic Writings 29).

The novel presents the story of the Ganguli family and their attempts to survive in
a middle class neighborhood of Boston. In fact, it is an immigrant tale which traces an
East Indian family’s conflicting attempts to assimilate American ways. Her major subject
for projection is the bi-cultural experience that an immigrant goes through. Her emphasis
is on the significance of cultural encounter which takes place among Indian diaspora, and
the creation of a new culture which finally emerges on diasporic surface. Jhumpa Lahiri’s
The Namesake explores the inner conflict of the characters who are sandwiched between
two cultures and they are unable to recognize their real identity. First generation wants to
stick to their traditions and culture but often they have to jump to the role desired by their
children according to American culture. Even the second generation is expected to follow
their root culture but they fail for obvious reasons.
The first part of the novel revolves around the life of an immigrant couple Ashima
and Ashoke Ganguli who have come to create a new life for opportunities for themselves
in the University of Suburbs in Boston. Ashima is the anchor for the first part of the
novel, which presents the immigrant experience in an authentic manner. Her attachment
to her family in Calcutta gradually seems to loosen up, a her life begin to revolve around
Gogol and his upbringing, various experiences which Ashima has, during her delivery a
very lifelike and bring out many sharp contrasts between the two cultures. These
experiences are presented in a first hand manner, as Lahiri was born of immigrant
parents. She seems to understand the immigrants’ realization of being a hyphened self,
and have portrayed them in life-like manner.

The novel begins with the pathetic portrayal of anxiety, uneasiness and various
psycho-sociological problems such as nostalgia, rootlessness, alienation, schizophrenia
experienced by Ashima who at a young age has migrated to a country where “she is
related to no one” (Lahiri, The Namesake 6). Motherhood for Ashima does not bring only
happiness but also the threat of raising the child all alone in a country of strangers. The
child’s birth was a lonely celebration and the realization that his entry in the world was
“so alone and deprived” (Lahiri, The Namesake 35) laid the foundation of the dilemma
that small child had to experience throughout his life. Ashima’s struggle to adjust in a
foreign country, to adapt herself to the newly found environment, is the struggle of every
immigrant, for the universal issue of identity (Bhatt, Immigrant experience in Jhumpa
Lahiri 36) In the beginning of the novel, Lahiri’s unnamed, third person-omniscient
narrator writes of Ashima’s maternity:

As the baby grows, so, too, does their circle of Bengali acquaintances…
They all come from Calcutta, and for this reason alone they are friends.
Most of them live within walking distance of one another in Cambridge.
The husbands are teachers, researchers, doctors, engineers. The wives,
homesick and bewildered, turn to Ashima for recipes and advice, and she
tells them about the carp that’s sold in Chinatown, that it’s possible to
make halwa from Cream of Wheat. (Lahiri, The Namesake 38)

Ashima for all her efforts to settle down in a new way of life, felt homesick in that alien
land. She felt uprooted and lived in a world of nostalgia. She spent hours in the apartment
napping and sulking, rereading her parent’s letters and the same five Bengali novels time
and again. The dichotomy between public and private sphere is always tormenting to
these woman immigrants who have to suffer double dependence. It becomes difficult for
them to cope with multiple stresses of the two different cultures. They have to reconstruct
their gender identity and locate themselves in the host culture. These immigrants have to
construct a sense of community, culture and nation (ality) in a country where they see
themselves as different. They have to define both their historical legacies and their
present geographic and social realities (Agarwal, Generational Differences in Diasporic
Writings 30-31).

Ashima’s pains and the yearnings for going back to her own country, own land is
kept hidden away in some corner of her heart. She keeps the “disappointment to herself”
(Lahiri, The Namesake 30), not wanting to offend Ashoke or worry her parents, Ashima
gradually adjusts herself to the new surroundings and devises a routine for herself where
she completely mergers herself in looking after Gogol, her son, who demands her utmost
devotion and care. (Mishra, The Identity Crisis- An Immigrant Experience 67). Nostalgia
for one’s own homeland often problematizes the identity of an immigrant. The tug-of war
between the distant past and isolated present is made further cruel by the absence of
family/society. The vacuum disorients the immigrants to the extent that they hanker after
relocating themselves in this adopted culture. For an Indian to raise children, to lead a
happy and secure life, a society is must. Society, community and culture are a shelter as
well as a safeguard behind which an individual grows finds his roots. And when that
shield is removed, such a person becomes unprotected, uprooted, dislocated. For
immigrants like Ashima, maintaining ties to India, and preserving Indian traditions, in
America, means a lot (Joshi, The Namesake: Account of a name 95). Once Ashima asks
Ashoke, after her delivery, that she feels so lonely:

I’m saying hurry up and finish your degree. I’m saying I don’t want to
raise Gogol alone in this country. It’s not right, I want to go back (Lahiri,
The Namesake 33).

Ashima’s nature is nostalgic, as a typical immigrant Bengali woman in initial stage she
finds it difficult to adjust and adopt herself to the American atmosphere. Her migration
disturbs her, but in the course of time she welcomes it as one accepts inevitable (Joshi,
The Namesake- Account of a Name 95).
 Ashoke’s loneliness and sense of exile becomes apparent from his fondness for
Nikolai Gogol. Once he explained Gogol, his son, “I feel a special bond with Gogol more
than any writer… He spent most of his adult life outside his homeland. Like me” (Lahiri,
The Namesake 77). Throughout the novel, he keeps a pregnant silence. This one sentence
describes his loneliness and nostalgic nature very strikingly. It was his and Ashima’s
dream that after getting retirement that they would return to India, but Ashoke could not
see that dream getting fulfilled. Before his retirement he dies. Ashoke’s character creates
a vulnerable picture of an immigrant who considers his nostalgia as a positive force, to
walk ahead and explore the world, to create a place of his own in an alien world (Joshi,
The Namesake- Account of a Name 107).

It is around Gogol, and around whose name most of the second part of the story
revolves. They also have a daughter Sonia, who totally portrays the second generation of
immigrant Americans and is least involved in family matters (Mishra, The Identity
Crisis- An Immigrant Experience 67). For the second generation Diaspora, Gogol and
Sonia, identity and problem are rather different, for they have a sense of pride and affinity
to India, but it is America that is perceived as ‘home’. In America, they are born and
educated. In America they want to be accepted on their own terms. It is here that they
face a sense of alienation in the sense of ‘insider’ ‘outsider’ (Agarwal, Generational
differences in Diasporic writings 32).

The first generation diaspora wants to retain their homeland culture and transfer it
to the second generation, it is through the eyes of older generation that the younger
generation perceives and learns about homeland culture. Ashoke and Ashima sent Gogol
to Bengali classes and culture classes every other Saturday, held in the home of one of
their Bengali friends. Though they do face some conflict with this endeavor but the older
generation makes certain compromises to maintain inter-generational relation. Ashoke
and Ashima learnt to celebrate some of the main festivities of the dominant culture.

For the sake of Gogol and Sonia they celebrated with progressively
increasing fanfare, the birth of Christ, an event that children look forward
 to more than the worship of Durga and Saraswati (Lahiri, The Namesake
64).

Ashoke and Ashima adjusted with food habits of Gogol and Sonia. It is Bengali food, that
Ashima and Ashoke relished and preferred but for Gogol and Sonia, she conceded and
made American dinner once a week as a treat ‘Shake’ and ‘Bake’ chicken or hamburger
helper prepared with ground lamb” (Lahiri, The Namesake 65). Ashoke and Ashima gave
in many ways but it was only to peripheral values, i.e. food, dress which were negotiable
but not the core values such as their cultural and religious traditions. In fact, the first
generation maintains a tangible link with the homeland by continuing tradition- an
outward manifestation of its cultural tradition (Agarwal, Generational differences in
Diasporic writings, 33). The approach of second generation to their state of being in
someone else’s home is not as emotional as that of first generation.

In fact, the title The Namesake reflects the struggle Gogol Ganguli goes through
to identify with his unusual name. His struggle for establishing his identity is dual. The
name that untimely defines a person’s individuality becomes a burden for him. It does not
give him an identity but puts him in a dilemma about his original identity. “He is
traumatized because he takes his Russian name for his identity. His name becomes a tool
which speaks of his fragmented identity. Gogol, is given a name which he finds misfit on
his personality, somehow disgusting, meaningless and shapeless. In the course of
changing his name he looses his identity. As Gogol grows up in America, he realizes that
his identity is an imposed one. He thinks that a Russian name has nothing Indian about it,
he finds it very suffocating that the name is neither American, nor Indian, mere irrelevant,
ludicrous, lacking dignity, and gravity. When he turns fourteen, this identity crisis
becomes apparent (Joshi, Namesake: Account of a Name 91).

For by now he’s come to hate questions pertaining to his name, hates
having constantly to explaining. He hates having to tell people that it
doesn’t mean anything “in Indian”…. He hates that is name is both absurd
and obscure, that it has nothing to do with what he is, that it is neither
 Indian nor American but of all things Russian. He hates having to live with
it, with a pet name turned good name, day after day, second after second
(Lahiri, The Namesake 75-76).

He feels that his personality is neither rooted in America nor in India. His name becomes
a factor that distorts his personality into a confused state and his mind into an ambiguous
anonymity. He changes his name from ‘Gogol’ to ‘Nikhil’. Sense of alienation does not
cease even after changing the name. Perhaps he is more confused with his dual identity as
‘Gogol’ for family, and ‘Nikhil’ for outer world. The new name comes with its dilemma
and conflicts; with it he feels nowhere. All his complications and troubles are due to his
dual personality, eventually, he tries to erase the former, and becomes detached with his
family and home (Joshi, The Namesake: Account of Namesake 93).

Gogol’s affinity has been towards American culture. Ignoring his roots, he
indulges in several misbegotten relationships. Cultural divide separates him and his
girlfriends. Gogol’s free life makes him rootless and displaced. As he grows up, Gogol is
more in search of a new ‘home’ rather than spending enough time with his parents and
sister at his home. After the demise of Ashoke, Ashima finds the daughter of a Bengali for
his son, “fulfilling a collective, deep-seated desire” on the part of their families.
Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian- American world she inhabits. Her
secret, illegitimate affair breaks their marital relationship. Gogol becomes totally lost. His
great American dream is shattered. Now he is an ABCD (American – born confused deshi
in the words of Jhumpa Lahiri) (Nair, Compromise and Confrontation?: Dislocated Self
179). Gogol’s love life becomes disastrous because he is not confident about the assertion
of his identity. His relationship with everybody muddles because he could not get hold of
any one fraction of his identity (Joshi, The Namesake: Account of a Name 93). He makes
sporadic efforts to unite himself into any relation, but his attempts are doomed. Until the
climatic scene at the end, shorn off an emotional connection, Gogol is looking for a
meaning in life. Though in the end he recognizes his roots, starts his spiritual journey to
explore life (Joshi, The Namesake: Account of a Name 108). But, at each step of life and
throughout the journey of self-realization, he is reminded of his dangling and sandwiched
identity as a misplaced Bengali- American boy.

Through this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri has tried to present the exact condition of the
immigrants and their family. These immigrants are unable to forget their roots yet they try
to adapt themselves in the world which is not their ‘home’. Their eternal struggle to settle
a home away from home makes them confront their fragmented and bruised identity.
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