As Gogol grows up we can use his name as a window to his psyche. When Gogol is young he does not mind his name. On page 59 when he goes for his first day of school, he does not want to be called Nikhil or anything else. He knows himself only as Gogol and this is what he demands to be called. This is important because it is the first time he is presented with the option to change his name. Gogol has a strong sense of self at this point and knows no other influences. Once he is exposed to the outside influence of school, he begins to realize his name is peculiar. This is where Gogol begins to have doubts about his name. He is experiencing the typical doubts and ensuing paranoia that accompany puberty. It is typical of adolescence to believe that everyone will pick you out because of a stray from normalcy. However, Gogol does not realize that the most an unusual name will evoke is fleeting thought. As a result Gogol does a very normal thing, he begins to change things about himself to test if his environment will respond positively or negatively. The abnormality is Gogol has the option of changing his name whereas most would not even consider it in a serious capacity.
It is at this point that the problem of identity begins to develop. On page 95 He has the positive experience with the girl he meets in the college dorm room after telling her his name is Nikhil, along with a few other choice lies. In a way, this is his first real step outside of his shell and he does it as Nikhil. As a result, he never gives Gogol a chance. If the situation was an experiment of sorts, it was flawed by the changing of more than one variable. He changed his extraversion and his name in the same experiment. This confound leaves the possibility that it...
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...ip. He likes how he feels free. Then he sees a passing train and thinks about the consequences of what he is doing. Then he feels bad because he realizes that having no care and no choice can be as bad as it is freeing.
Looking back this theme of indecision is foreshadowed by the rice ceremony scene on page 40. Gogol chooses nothing as his path for life and instead when being impelled to choose he breaks down and cries. This is a microcosm of Gogol's life. He is being torn in two different directions. On one side lies family and tradition, while on the other he tries to be contrasted from his family by being stereotypically American. While this war for control of Gogol wages, it would seem that the real Gogol, the person defined and distinct from those two expectations, the person that baby had the potential to be has fallen through the cracks, at least thus far.
...his antagonist proves to be their own inner character which determines the trajectory of their decisions. As they all become aware, the consequences of their decisions prove to have an extensive impact on themselves and those around them.
...m to hate the world and soon make the Media Luna into a desert. He is willing to continue his cruelty but he knows that it will ultimately get back to him, it will cost him and most importantly, he will have consequences. The deaths that were caused in his world ruined him, ruined his want to feel emotions or change. The deaths in his childhood and adulthood made him indifferent to the emotions that he was feeling.
There he makes this identity of himself to try to totally forget his parents’ cultural identity. He changes his name to Nikhil and later ends up moving to New York with a girl by the name of Maxine. “He is overly aware that they are not used to passing things around the table, or to chewing food with their mouths completely closed. They avert their eyes when Maxine accidentally leans over to run her hand through her hair” (Lahiri 277). This quote is describing Maxine and Gogol having a meal with his parents. This whole scene is very awkward for both because Gogol’s parents aren’t used to doing things the American way. When the two are leaving his parents’ house Gogol’s father says to him “Drive safely, Gogol” (Lahiri 279). This confuses Maxine because she is not familiar with his real name. He doesn’t want to be reminded of who he was before. By chapter 8 Maxine and Gogol are no longer together due to
The value of his life increases as he runs from Zaroff and the hounds thru the woods. He also refuses to kill Zaroff when he has the opportunity because he has valued the life of other human beings. In the time he was being chased, he learned to even value the lives of the other animals in the world, and he thinks of of being an animal at bay. Furthermore, he will try to not become what he fears.
Throughout The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri cultural differences are seen. They are closely related to names and identity. Your identity is shown through your name and sometimes people may not be able to see themselves as their name shows them. Many cultures think certain names are ordinary but they also see names that are not ordinary or weird in some way. Throughout the book, you see the distaste Gogol has for his name. He does not like it and goes to great lengths to change it, although still maintaining part of his Bengali and Russian roots. Also seen is the distaste for his culture not wanting to keep in touch with the Bengali language trying to assimilate to American culture, which can be seen throughout the novel as conflicting with one another.
made him into someone who felt he had no control upon his destiny, because it
His morals and convictions change. The way he views humanity as a whole changes. He started off with questioning everyone's existence but later through his transformation welcomed humans and the idea that death creates commonality among them. He did not seek out connections but let them causally happen upon him; for example his neighbor Raymond and his girlfriend Marie.
...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.
He was tired and he felt he ought to be getting to bed” (Johnson 39) The fact that he has the mental capacity to analyze his different options in the situation (whether or not to stay up or go to bed) and conclude which one is the “right” choice reinforces….. This process requires a high level of maturity and awareness to be responsible enough to be able to consider something separately from what one prefers or wants. According to Piaget’s study “The Moral Judgement of the Child” children do not develop the ability to even begin to understand their role in relation to others and the rules until the age of 7 or 8, saying “(they) begin to concern themselves with the question of mutual control and of the unification of the rules” (Piaget 17). One may interpret this situation as Harold deciding for himself whether or not he wants to go to bed, thus taking control over his own life, but the intangible force in his mind that is driving him to go to bed does not come from the “child” side of him. The creative, whimsical idea to build a mountain to find his bed resembles the imaginative nature of a child, but the presence of a responsible, moral conscious resembles the much more mature, adult side to Harold. Although Johnson is trying to convey the freedom Harold possesses throughout his journey, there is some older, powerful force controlling his decisions, possibly showing how the individual freedom socialism strives for is idealized because there will always be some figure present with more authority.
...ds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust” (Lahiri 108). This too is a form of double-consciousness as both Ashoke and Ashima are aware of the loss of culture, of their own identity in their children as their children shun India and by extension Bengali culture, and no longer sound like the people they miss and love back in Calcutta. It is extremely sad, because in order to make a better life for themselves and for their family they came to America, but because of the search for opportunity, they also lost their sense of identity in their children even though they tried their hardest to create a kind of Bengali community in America as well. Quietly, unlike Dre, Ashoke, more than Ashima comes to understand that he cannot push his culture upon his children, especially Gogol, and instead allows Gogol to navigate being Bengali and being American, for himself.
...h him, because we do not truly know how he felt. We know that he felt unloved and that he cannot even face to love himself, whereas we have always received love from our parents and the creature never received this. He was always alone, he never even had a companion of his own species which had ‘the same defects’ .The creature does not want to be alive any more, as he does not love the world he lives in any more, and this is the world we live in.
faced with his own demise, grasps at any concept of freedom and safety to help him cope
Despite their similarities, Victor and his creation differ greatly. Only after rejection does the creature turn to
against the integrity of his own mind, he is consumed with guilt. This shows that though one may do
He avoids telling them for as long as he can, even if it keeps him from seeing Ruth “But such a trip would require telling his parents about Ruth, something he has no desire to do” (Lahiri 115). To him, his parents represent Bengali culture, something he is not sure he wants to be a part of. He tries to live entirely without their opinion, driving them out of his personal life almost entirely. Although he is trying to separate himself from Bengali culture, he still remains only a few hours away from home, still visits every other weekend. At the end of the day, Gogol is still connected to his home and culture in a way Ruth is not. Ruth seeks adventure in Europe choosing to study abroad in Oxford, London. “Instead of coming back from Oxford after those twelve weeks, she’d stayed on to do a summer course” (Lahiri 119). In fact Ruth wants to go back to England for graduate school, something Gogol has no real interest in doing. His connection, even if subconscious ends up being the driving force in Ruth and Gogol’s break up. He fails to learn from his mistakes with Ruth, however, and the next girl he dates is even more different than