Namesake By Jhumpa Lahiri

Many people say home is where the heart is, but in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake the house on Pemberton Road is a constant reminder of Gogol’s traditional Bengali lifestyle that he tries to avoid by leaving home. The house on Pemberton Road is not only where Gogol, the novel’s central character, grew up in, but is also a big reason why he tries to turn away from his Bengali traditions and become more American. While he was growing up he dreaded the weekly Bengali family dinners. and just wanted to hang out with his American friends who had ‘normal’ lives. He believed that once he got to college he was free from staying true to his Bengali traditions and would be able to become more American, and less attached to his family. He tries to push away his Bengali tradition by changing his name to Nikhil and that makes Gogol’s parents feel like they have lost their son to the American way. He even goes as far as to say that he has a new home in college at New Haven.

It is how he is supposed to live his life according to his parents. He is supposed to go to a top school, supposed to marry a Bengali women, supposed to have a respectful lob like a doctor or engineer, but Gogol does not want that. He wants to be someone else that keeps him clear from these traditions. He wants to be his own person that his parent’s do not decide anything for him. He believes the only way he can do this is by living separate lives in his adult life. In college he is his own American self, that everyone knows at Nikhil, one who does not even associate with being Bengali. But when he boards his train to go back to Boston on weekends he goes back to Pemberton Road where he goes back to being Gogol, his true self. He also continues to distance himself from his home by deliberately picking Columbia over Harvard for graduate school because does not want to accept that being Bengali is who he is, it is part of his