Gogol Identity In The Namesake

One’s home often becomes an integral part of one’s identity. Since Gogol constantly struggles with his identity as a blend of both Bengali and American cultures, he also struggles to determine his home. It seems that he never truly feels at home, despite the great diversity among the places in which he lives. In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri shows that one’s home and one’s identity are interconnected; consequently, Gogol’s struggles throughout the novel to determine his identity parallel his difficulty defining a home.

One home in which Gogol lives is that of his girlfriend Maxine’s family, the Ratliffs, where he is truly immersed in the lives and culture of a wealthy American family. After just his first visit, Gogol immediately feels “effortlessly incorporated” into this “beautiful house” (136, 138). Due to both the Ratliff family’s hospitality and the grandeur of their home, Gogol is drawn into their lifestyle and he comes to believe that he feels at home there. However, by claiming to feel at home at Maxine’s house, Gogol rejects a large part of his identity, and his “immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal of his own” (141). Since he is not entirely accepting of the Bengali aspects of his identity, he tries to disregard this culture by

living in Maxine’s house. However, his attempts to ignore his Bengali heritage ultimately fail. He cannot truly be at home with the Ratliffs because this home aligns only with the American aspects of his identity, rather than a blend of American and Bengali cultures.
Another of Gogol’s temporary homes is in Calcutta, where he, his mother, his father, and his sister travel to India to visit members of their extended family. Here, Gogol finds himself surrounded by traditional Bengali culture. During one of their trips, Gogol and Sonia both become “terribly ill.” Their relatives blame their sickness on “the air, the rice, [and] the wind,” remarking that Gogol and Sonia were not “made to survive in a poor country” (86). Is is clear that Gogol does not feel at home in Calcutta, neither physically nor emotionally. His physical reactions display the discomfort he feels while living there. Another reason why Gogol cannot claim Calcutta to be his home is that the American aspects of his identity are completely disregarded. Although this is the opposite of his situation at Maxine’s house, where he was immersed in American traditions and the Bengali aspects of his identity seemed to be erased, the conflict is the same: neither of these homes are able to encompass all aspects of Gogol’s identity; therefore, he can not truly belong in either of these places.
Finally, at the Gangulis’ house on Pemberton Road in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there is a blend of both Bengali and American cultures.

The Bengali traditions comes from Ashoke and Ashima, while the American influences come mainly from Gogol and Sonia. The blending and conflicting of cultures in this home parallels the different aspects of Gogol’s rather complex identity. For most of the novel, Gogol avoids going to this house because he rejects most of the Bengali aspects of his identity. However, at the end of the novel, as he begins to become more accepting of all the parts of his identity, he realizes that the Pemberton Road house is the closest to a home that he has, even if he never felt that he truly belonged

there.
Just as Gogol struggles to define his identity, he struggles to determine where to call home. Over the course of his lifetime, he lives in places that encompass all of the American parts of him but ignore all the Bengali influences, and he also lives in places where Bengali culture overrides all parts of him that are American. Eventually, he comes to realize that the place he calls home must effortlessly blend these two cultures. The house on Pemberton Road is the closest that Gogol gets to feeling completely at home because both Bengali and American influences exist there.