Behind The Namesake

Love is an emotional rollercoaster ride, a ride full of high and lows, affection and confusion, devotion and despair. Love can be called many things, but how does one know that they are truly in love? Love is a universal human experience shaped by unique cultural and personal circumstance. You must understand yourself first to understand another human being. In the Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the protagonist Gogol, a first-generation Bengali-American is confused between his parent’s expression of love and his” American” life. He struggles to find himself, while rejecting his own cultural heritage, and uses love to find himself. Throughout his life, he will discover his heritage slowly and what it means to love and to be loved.

Throughout Gogol’s upbringing, his first perception of love was of his parents. In an ideal Bengali relationship, affection between

the wife and the husband is kept private. “It has never occurred to him to buy his wife flowers” (Lahiri 12). Ashima and Ashoke instead show each other love by upholding their responsibilities and conforming to a strict sense of gender roles. Ashima and Ashoke’s arranged marriage is the epitome of a traditional Bengali relationship. In an ideal Bengali culture woman do the house chores, cook and watch the kids, whereas the man of the house is the breadwinner. Ashima upholds her responsibility “By now she has learned that her husband likes his food on the salty side…” (Lahiri 10 ) At time of marriage their arranged marriage they were strangers to each other, but throughout the years of marriage Ashima had “grown to know and love” Ashoke (Lahiri 279). Gogol’s first view on love isn’t about superficial love but what it takes to love a person. The love between them didn’t quite translate to Gogol’s American self. In an ideal American relationship love is about public affection and a grand lifestyle in his views. This confusion leads him into a divide between his Bengali traditions and his modern American definition of love; unable to create a balance between the cultures.
As Gogol enters his young adulthood, he is having difficulties relating back to his name.

His confusion stems from the fact that his name is neither Bengali or American but Russian. Named after Nikhil Gogol a Russian author, he will soon find himself taking the first name of the author. The name Nikhil gave him a temporary sense of identity in which is used to start an American relationship. The relationship with Ruth was a relationship based on their vast difference of being a “Yankee” American in contracts to him being a first-generation Bengali-American. However, he does identify as being a Bengali but a typical “suburban” American. The love he has with Ruth was a taste of what an American relationship would look like. Her parents are divorces and are hippies who accepts Nikhil for who he is. Compared to his own family who questions his love with her. The falling of the relationships is when Ruth left for Oxford and when she comes back Gogol tries to rekindle the fire between them but realizes that there was nothing to rekindle. Their love was just a fling, and a way to express his love for American

culture.
Gogol enters his second love relationship with Maxine who lives in a tony neighborhood with an extravagant lifestyle of shopping and eating the finest food there is. She was a woman who gave him a sense of escape, and a sense of belonging. Gogol used this relationship as a buffer from his own cultural identity. “moves as far away as he can from his parent’s world, trying to avoid being grouped with the “ABCD” (American Born Confused Desis)”. (Shao 6). The relationship stems from his refusal to keep his connection with his parents as shown by him “… not given them the number and the Ratliffs are unlisted… in this cloistered wilderness, he is free” (Lahiri 158). The feeling towards his traditions, and his hatred of being categorized no longer will define as his desire to assimilate into American culture is fulfilled. However, the relationship doesn’t last, when his father died, he realized that the relationship was only to fulfill his desire to be an American. The abrupt life event Gogol’s faces changed his view on the love and moves back with his family.
After many failed attempts of trying to assimilate into Western Culture, Gogol finally gives into his mother wishes and finds someone of his own background. Gogol and Moushumi both come together to please their parents. Their love is forged by “her familiarity that makes him curious about her” (Lahiri 199). Being familiar with each other gave them a sense of “their love affair is therefore a metaphysical return to their expected cultural norm (Friedman). Their love is based on a fact of cultural similarities. The relationships end abruptly when Gogol find out about the infidelity that happened between Moshumi and a past colleague. In turn Moushumi infidelity causes the marriage to fall apart.
Finding long and lasting love is a balancing act. To find love you must first be able to find yourself. Once you find yourself and is comfortable with who are then you can relate to another person and find true love. Love can’t exist with an anchor. Gogol through his trial and error with love finally understands that he is neither American or Bengali but a combination of both. A Bengali-American. While his attempts to assimilate into American culture didn’t work out, Gogol finally begins to come around and be himself. Instead of trying to be someone he is not, he embraces his bi-cultural heritage and becomes Gogol Ganguli.