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Personal identity cultural identity
Personal identity cultural identity
The importance of one’s cultural identity
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Recommended: Personal identity cultural identity
Throughout life, it is important for individuals to obtain their own sense of self and individuality. Jhumpa Lahiri narrates a story of this young man, Gogol, who is caught between two worlds, through her novel The Namesake. Through the progress of the novel, Gogol comes to terms with his multicultural and complicated identity. Gogol’s struggle with his identity is the focus for the novel, and his name becomes a symbol for this difficulty. Gogol grows up never understanding the significance of his name and grows up hating it. By choosing one name over the other, Gogol decides to define himself under a different self. And last but not least, the narrative depicts Gogol's fractured identity as he tries to disassociate himself from both his family and his cultural heritage to forget his own self. Gogol grows up never understanding the significance of his name and grows up hating it. The name that eventually defines a being's individuality becomes a burden for him. Gogol’s name does not give him an identity but puts him in a dilemma about his original identity. From the start, Gogol tries to evade others’ efforts to choose his name for him. On Gogol’s first day of Kindergarten, keeping tradition, Gogol’s parents try to assign him the “good name” Nikhil. Even though Gogol knows “his parents want him to have another name,” Gogol “shakes his head” when asked if he wants to be called Nikhil (59). Notwithstanding his parents’ desires, Gogol, an otherwise submissive child, attempts to take control of his identity in the only way that he can: his name. During his time at school, Gogol comes to realize that his name separates him from his classmates. When substitute teachers arrive at his name on the roster, they "always pause," forcing Gog... ... middle of paper ... ...himself from the customs and culture with which he was raised, Gogol forges himself to like and put up with things that he would not have otherwise liked. Gogol’s struggle with his identity is the focus for the novel. Jhumpa Lahiri narrates us a story of this young man, Gogol, who is caught between two worlds, through her novel The Namesake. Through the progress of the novel, Gogol comes to terms with his multicultural and complicated identity. Gogol grows up never understanding the significance of his name and grows up hating it. By choosing one name over the other, Gogol decides to define himself under a different self. And last but not least, the narrative depicts Gogol's fractured identity as he tries to disassociate himself from both his family and his cultural heritage to forge his own self. A person’s identity is the most valuable possession one could have.
...o assimilate into the society by entering school with a more acceptable name, but Gogol refuses. The acceptance of the society has pressured him to change his name in college, and to hide Gogol from the society. Till the day Gogol understands the reason why his father chose to name him Gogol instead of an Indian or American name, Gogol experienced a lot of changes, as a second generation American immigrant. Gogol has been assimilated to different culture than he ethnically is. At the end, through family, Gogol has come back to his roots. Gogol was not given an Indian name from his Indian family or an American name as he was born in America, to emphasize an individual try to assimilate into a different culture, but in the end, he is still bonded to his roots as the person he ethnically is.
Identity is an important theme in many stories. Especially in the The Outsiders, Eleanor and Park, and“Flowers for Algernon.” In The Outsiders identity is tied heavily to which gang a person belongs to. In the novel, Eleanor and Park, identity is portrayed through gender and race. Also, in the short story, “Flowers for Algernon,” the main character identifies with his level of intelligence. Although, one common trend expressed is how jubilance is felt when the characters are free of how they are told they should identify. I will be analysing identity in these stories is represented through the characters, and how this proves how easily the characters find identify in themselves when they detach how they are to identify by society.
Unsurprisingly, the novel is a classic coming of age story which centers on a young man who is confused about himself and his sexual identity in his early twenties. This confusion about himself and his sexual identity is the driving force of his interactions with his friends and lovers. Moreover, this confusion about himself and his sexual identity also facilitates the conflict and unforeseen consequences which occur during the novel.
Gogol basically grows up his whole life not feeling comfortable with his identity and who he is. Gogol doesn't feel like he belongs in his parents Bengali family, and he somewhat feels like he is living in between cultures sometimes. Growing up in America has made him feel like an outsider because his parents were always doing things in their culture. Throughout the book Gogol makes great efforts to find out who he really is and he does that by moving away from home. Gogol’s definition of home changes whether it's by getting a new girlfriend or moving to a new place he's not familiar with.
In the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri mentions a short story named “The Overcoat” written by Nikolai Gogol numerous times. This “mentioning” is also known as an “allusion.” The Namesake is about the Ganguli family and their transformation to an American family. Gogol Ganguli is the character that is closely related to “The Overcoat” which is about the life and also the death of a man by the name Akakiy Akakievitch. Besides the fact that is is named in The Namesake, “The Overcoat” can be related to the novel. Through the themes and the what happen with the characters can be seen as paralleled with these two texts.
As Josselson (2012) argues, it is simpler for the people to fix multicultural or multiracial individuals into a single cultural or racial identity, although realistically, most people find it difficult to categorize oneself in a single-margin. This is apparent in the reading White Teeth and Tar Baby, where the character’s identity is influenced by a socially embedded habitus of values, expectations and self-understanding, or lack there-of. In order to understand the challenges of racial and cultural identity in these novels, I will first look at characters Son and Jadine from Tar Baby and Samad and his twin sons, Millat and Magid from White Teeth.
[… The] only person who didn’t take Gogol seriously… who tormented him, the only person chronically aware of and afflicted by the embarrassment of his name, the only person who constantly questioned it and wished it were otherwise, was Gogol. (99-100)
...zation leads to Gogol’s discovery of his true identity. Although he has always felt that he had to find a new, more American and ordinary identity, he has come to terms that he will always be the Gogol that is close to his family. While Gogol is coming to this understanding, Ashima has finally broken free from relying on her family, and has become “without borders” (176). No longer the isolated, unsure Bengali she was when arriving in Cambridge, Ashima has been liberated from dependent and powerless to self empowering. The passing of her husband has forced her to go through her life as a more self-reliant person, while at the same time she is able to maintain her daily Indian customs. This break-through is the final point of Ashima’s evolution into personal freedom and independency.
The main character, Ovid, is a vivid example of how lives can be periodically changed according to alterations in the surrounding environment. At the start of the book Ovid is a stranger to his setting, stranded in a culture that deprives him of his language, his customs, and his pride. This shows that identity is primarily constructed according to the society in which people are placed, and much social learning and norms are derived from conformity to the conditions of a particular environment. In An Imaginary Life, Ovid completes a journey of self discovery, learning how to create and cultivate an existence based on interrelationship with the natural world, entering a into partly idealistic and imaginary existence, hence the title.
Throughout the novel Gogol begins to feel more compelled to his Bengali life. Towards the end of the book Gogol becomes more acquainted to his Bengali life and his family, slowly slipping away from the American identity that was once present to him. Truly inside he has a background of Bengali culture there for him when he needs it. As for Gogol’s American identity as Nikhil, something seen as fake to him, was only an experience. It was an experience Gogol, a Bengali child, had grown up to live.
Whether we know it or not we all develop a sense of personal identity throughout our lives. Personal identity is the development of the way you view yourself as well as the way you want others to perceive you over the course of your life. For some people this may be more difficult than others because developing a sense of personal identity can be a lifelong journey whereas for others it can be as simple as getting through a certain situation and then realizing what you’re capable of. Personal identity crises not only occur in real life with everyday people but also in works of literature as well since they depict characters or speakers who struggle with the concept of personal identity. Examples of works of literature that
The hardships to fit in America as an immigrant are possessed in The Namesake written by Jhumpa Lahiri. Gogol, the main character, struggles to uphold the traditions his parents expect him to follow. “Its not the type of thing Bengali wives do- a husband’s name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over” states Ashima. (Lahiri 2) This statement made by Ashima exemplifies the importance of private life and feelings to Bengali families. In this culture family and close friends use a pet name then everyone else uses another name. Gogol is given an unusual pet name as his real name because his grandmother’s letter with his real name has not arrived. This is probably because it is a typical Indian name not an American name. He dislikes his current name and starts to reject the name in his teens. Later on, while in college he is only known as Nikhil, which is a more usual name. This puts him in an identity crisis. “Individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared.” (Lahiri 28) Although this is true, Gogal and the children in America are embarrassed by their differences instead of appreciating them. In college, Gogol finds a girlfriend who is an American but his parents disapprove. They disapprove because she is not Indian. Gogal finds an American girlfriend because he wants to fit...
The entire basis of this book deals with communicating from both character to character, and narrator to reader, on a very high cerebral level. Because of this analytic quality of the book, the most important events also take place on such a high level. In fact, the major theme of the novel, that of the narrator searching for his past self, as well as the cognitive change between the "...
This is the central theme in which it is described that not having a strong sense of where one comes from, impacts who they are. One of the biggest examples of feeling like he doesn’t fit in is his name. Due to his name not being Bengali nor American, he feels that he is separated from both cultures and essentially from his family. He expresses that “he hates having to explain to people that it does not mean anything ‘in Indian’. ” He always feels left out, especially during Bengali get-togethers where he does not fit in with Sonia, or with the mothers or with the fathers. Gogol is not self-confident when he thinks of himself as Gogol. When he changes his name to Nikhil, for a while, he is unaware of how to be that person for quite some time. The change of his name expresses his change into adulthood, and it is the first step in him finding out who he is. In a way, the two names represent the two parts of his life; Gogol representing the life his parents laid out for him and Nikhil describing the life he wants for himself. Gogol is the name given to him by his parents which was never supposed to be his real name. He always finds it embarrassing that he has a pet name that was turned into a good name. Gogol represents the life that his parents have laid out for him which is a stable home and a stable life, both predictable and with lots of
The issue of identity is of primary importance in the cosmopolitan today’s world characterized by blending of cultures and globalization processes. Identity is a construct: the ways an individual understands what it is to belong to a certain gender, race or culture. As Jonathan Culler says “Literature has not only made identity a theme; It has played a significant role in the construction of the identity of the readers. Literary works encourage identification with characters by showing things from their point of view” (2005: 112). In this regard there is a lot of theoretical debate that concerns the nature of ‘subject’ or ‘self’. The question about the ‘subject’ is ‘what am I?’ and further the question whether the identity of the ‘subject’ ‘something given’ or ‘something constructed’ has