The Namesake Belonging

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‘An individual’s interaction with others and the world around them can enrich or limit their experience of belonging.’ Discuss this view with detailed reference to your prescribed text and ONE other related text of your own choosing. A sense of belonging is essential for most individuals as it makes them feel needed, comfortable and secure. This is when individuals negotiate a way in which the group accepts and understands each other. Not belonging is when individuals fail to conform to each other and feel excluded. Individuals can improve belonging experiences by connecting to people, places, groups or the larger world. This is particularly so as it is only when individuals can feel conformity to different aspects of the world. Gogol in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel ‘The Namesake’ refuses to…show more content…
Jhumpa uses emotional diction in “I hate the name Gogol...I’ve always hated it” to show that Gogol could never accept his birth name given to him by his father and hopes change his name to ‘Nikhil’ in order to easily reject his parents values and culture and live a life without any attachment to it. Gogol changed his name since it was a foreign name which was linked to his father and wanted to avoid it and not belong. The use of symbolism of American life in “discovers Brian Eno and Elvis Costello and Charlie Parker” is to depict that Gogol wants to be like young Americans and connecting with them by listening to their mainstream music. Adapting to a different culture rather than Gogol’s own is distancing and shedding his Bengali heritage. The irony of his situation in “Without people to call him Gogol… he will cease to exist… Yet the thought of this demise provides no sense of victory” is that a simple name change will not change his Bengali heritage but “there is nothing, apart from his family” in which he feels secure. Even though he tries to avoid

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