Namesake

Title: //Namesake//  Year of publication: September 16, 2004 Author: Jhumpa Lahiri -- click picture for a bit of Jhumpa Lahiri's life. media type="youtube" key="lK2OuTOlNhg" width="339" height="280" --Interview of Jumpa Lahiri on her book and the movie. [|Another interview with Jumpa Lahiri]

Author Bio: Jhumpa Lahiri was born in 1967 in London, but raised in South Kingstown, RI by her father, a librarian, and her mother, a teacher. Her parents frequent visits to India and their irritation with migrating to America was an inspiration to her novels.  Setting and time period: The story begins in the 1960's, as Ashoke and Ashima leave Calcutta, India and settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Genre of Novel: Bildungsroman Theme statements: Primary characters:
 * Identity
 * Heritage
 * Does the name given to you impact who you are?


 * **Ashoke Ganguli**: Gogol's father who is nearly killed when he is a young man before traveling to the United States in the 1970s.


 * <span style="color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Ashima Ganguli**: Ashoke's wife who arrives in NewYork after an arranged marriage.


 * <span style="color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Gogol/Nikhil Ganguli**: The main character who struggles with his Indo-American identity and rebels against his parents throughout the novel.


 * <span style="color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Sonia/Sonali Ganguli**: Gogol's younger sister. Ashoke and Ashima give her only one name to serve as both an official and nickname, in order to avoid the confusion which arose with Gogol's two names. However, nicknames are hard to avoid, especially in Bengali families, so Sonali's name ends up being Sonia.

<span class="fti" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 1.38em; vertical-align: top;">Secondary characters:


 * <span style="color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Ruth** - Gogol's college sweetheart is a white American to whom Gogol is deeply attached. They soon separate after Ruth spends both spring and summer terms in England studying literature. Shortly after Ruth's return to the United States, they begin fighting and decide it is best that they stop seeing each other.


 * <span style="color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Maxine** - Gogol's first "real" love, Maxine, is of Anglo-Saxon American ethnicity and a member of a liberal and very wealthy Manhattan family. Although the two love each other, they break up due to Gogol's struggles regarding the emotional complications of his father's death. Maxine later gets engaged to another man.


 * <span style="color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Moushumi Mazoomdar** - Gogol's wife is a childhood friend from another Bengali family. After his breakup with Maxine, Ashima talks Gogol into starting a relationship with Moushumi, particularly due to their shared culture and background. Although she grew up in England, Moushumi shares a great deal in common with Gogol and the two eventually marry. However, their marriage breaks up when Moushumi starts cheating on Gogol with her old love interest, a man named Dimitri.

<span class="fti" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 1.38em; vertical-align: top;">Symbols: <span class="fti" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 1.38em; vertical-align: top;">Tone: The tone through out the novel shifted. It was tense whenever Gogol spoke with his parents, but it was mirthful when he lives with Maxine and her family and in college, then switches to melancholy when his father passes and Gogol slips into an extended depression and, for me, when him and Maxine separate. Finally, the tone becomes joyous when Gogol realizes who he is and becomes a better person. Major conflicts: Gogol struggles to grasp the importance of his name through out most of the novel. He has multiple issues with his parents and their heritage. He wants to be American, but his parents want him to be in touch with his Indian heritage. He eventually learns who he is, the importance of his name and his family. <span class="fti" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 1.38em; vertical-align: top;">Key scenes (turning points, resolutions, climaxes--inc. page #'s): <span class="fti" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 1.38em; vertical-align: top;">Key quotations:
 * 1) Gogol's fathers passing (pg 176)
 * 2) Gogol's birth (pg 33)
 * 3) Gogol's realization of who he is. (pg 290)

Ashoke meets Ghosh on the train. They have a long conversation and Ghosh tells him this to encourage him to travel before settling down. Later the train crashes and Ghosh is killed, but Ashoke survives. This also foreshadows his death later in the novel."It wasn't me."
 * **"Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late."** (Ghosh, page 16)

When Kim asks him what his name is, he can't imagine telling her it's Gogol - he identifies Gogol as the type of person who could never kiss a girl. Therefore, he tells her his name is Nikhil, and then he has the confidence to kiss her. Later, when he himself is in college, he permanently changes his name to Nikhil and gains confidence with women as a result. Moushumi reveals that Gogol wasn't born "Nikhil" to the dinner party guests at Astrid and Donald's home, somewhere Gogol feels betrayed by this revelation, though he has never told Moushumi that it's a secret. This action represents the beginnings of a rift in their marriage that will end in Moushumi's affair with Dimitri.
 * **"It's Nikhi."** (Gogol page 96)
 * **"Nikhil. It wasn't the name he was born with."** (Moushumi, page 243)

<span class="fti" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 1.38em; vertical-align: top;">Your reactions/ reader responses (note personal reactions to any of the above categories, or any other element of thereading experience): I actually thought that Gogol was meant to be with Maxine, so i was a little sad when they broke up. She seemed to be his perfect match, she was everything he wasn't. It was depressing. His fathers death was foreshadowed, i think, but still sad. <span class="fti" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e800ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 1.38em; vertical-align: top;">Notable literary devices present in work and how they contribute to meaning: Foreshadowing; Gogol's father's death was foreshadowed. His death was a the climax of the novel and helped to shift Gogol into realizing who he was.