Gogol’s Values
Every individual has their own values they follow as they are growing up. For Gogol he has gone his entire life knowing and following Indian values and being very family-oriented. When the Ganguli’s move to America and Gogol grows older American values start to take over his life and he becomes more individual. There was a major twist in the novel that rapidly changed Gogol’s personality form individuality to family-oriented. In the end the Indian values were the most significant.
Throughout the novel Gogol is affected by American values in many different ways. When Gogol came to America he changed in a big way. He became a very individual person. He didn’t act the same with his parents anymore because of this. It all began when he found out that his parents named him after their favorite Russian author Nikolai Gogol. He was very angered by this because as he got older he didn’t like that name. In class his teacher was talking about the Russian writer and how he was a Genius but had some problems. Nikolai was very paranoid and he didn’t have any friends. He never got married and finally committed suicide by starvation. “Did you know about [Nikolai Gogol] when you named me? That he was paranoid, suicidal, friendless, and depressed?” (Lahiri). All of Gogol’s classmates started to tease him because of his name. This is when Gogol really started to get mad at his parents. “Of all the freaking Russian writers in the universe why did they have to choose the weirdest? What the hell’s wrong with Leo or Anton?” (Lahiri). Gogol eventually lived on his own in New York. When he was living there he got with this girl Maxine. That was his love interest at the time. Ashima’s wish was to have a Bengali daughter-in-law and Gogol...
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...d Moushumi Mazumdar.
In the end, the values that affected him the most are the Indian values. This is because the end result of the novel he was back to the Bengali values. He was back living with his mother and he married a Bengali woman instead of an American one that he was with before his father’s death. His father’s death is the major reason he went back to being family-oriented. If that didn’t happen then he would still be the individual person he was. He still carries some American values but now he is all about family and back to the way he used to be when he was young. He will continue his Indian culture with his wife and when he has kids. I’m sure he wont go back to full American values now that he is married to a Bengali woman. That is his partner and they do things together so he knows that Indian values are the most important thing to him from now on.
[… 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)
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...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.
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