The Namesake Essay

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The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates in many ways how people deal with loss through the main character Gogol Ganguli, who throughout his life experiences the loss of his culture, heritage, the loss of his own name, the loss of his father and lastly the loss of all his relationships, but Gogol is not the only one in the book who has do deal with loss. Throughout his entire life Gogol is searching for his identity and for a long time (until he and his wife get a divorce) Gogol loses his family’s culture and heritage which his parents brought over from Calcutta. Even when Gogol was a baby he had begun to reject his culture and traditions that his parents tried to bestow onto him. At an early age Gogol already begins reject his family culture and begins to assimilate and conform to the American society all around him. Gogol begins to have an American meal at least twice a week at home and cajoles his mother into having his mother make him bologna sandwiches for lunch. After Gogol’s childhood he moves away from his parents have little connections with his culture from that point on, until his father dies. For the most of the book Gogol is continuously moving away from his culture but to me it seems that the further he gets away from his culture the worse his life gets. For example (this is just one even though there are many other examples of how as Gogol moves away from his culture and heritage and continuing to disobey his parents and his family’s traditions, his life gets worse) as Gogol keeps getting these American girlfriends and eventually marries an Americanized/assimilated Indian girl who is like himself, his life spirals downward. Of course he has happy moments once in while but for the most part his life is a mess until the end of the book when he divorces his wife and further begins to accept his own culture and finds the old book by Nikolai Gogol
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