67 pages • 2 hours read
Jhumpa LahiriThe Namesake
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Gogol’s Name
The naming of Ashima and Ashoke’s son is a central symbol of the novel, which also functions as a leitmotif as the author threads the idea of the influence of a name through the book. Having received no official Bengali name but an unusual version of a pet name, Gogol at first accepts this appellation. However, as he grows older, the name becomes a burden, distancing him from his family (because it is not a proper Bengali name) and also from his American peers. Thus, Lahiri uses Gogol’s name a symbol for his whole identity crisis and the cultural clash that exists within him. Through Gogol’s attitude toward his name, we can trace his growing sense of self.
Furthermore, by focusing so much of his self-doubt on his name, Gogol himself also treats it as a symbol in his life—a symbol of not belonging anywhere and of the instability of his identity. He believes that by changing it officially, he can get rid of the anxiety that the name represents for him, but this idea proves to be untrue.
Finally, the name acquires an additional symbolic value once Gogol learns why his father has chosen it. The name becomes a representation of his father’s love and faith in his son. The multi-layered value of this symbol ensures that the author’s point of the significance of naming comes across.
The Book of Stories by Nikolai Gogol
Ashoke presents Gogol with a book of short stories by Russian writer Nikolai Gogol to honor the book that he believes saves his life and his son’s namesake. Gogol does not even open the book for many years, feeling oppressed by his namesake. The book comes to represent all of Gogol’s identity as it sits abandoned in his childhood room. Through the years of Gogol’s journey of self-discovery, the book patiently waits for him to rediscover it, and through the book to rediscover himself and the significance of his name and of his father’s love. The book signals that he must reconnect his older self with his childhood self in order to become whole.
Lahiri places this event at the very end of the book, and it is only then that the symbol becomes fully realized, as Gogol reads the transcription by his father: “The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name” (340). The book is thus also a symbol of the circle of life that connects Nikolai Gogol with Ashoke, Ashoke with his son, and Gogol with his namesake. The ending of the book represents the end of Gogol’s search for the very core of himself because he finds it in this book. The future will have him on another journey with a mature understanding of who he really is, and his rediscovering and reading the book shows us that.
Birth
The notion of birth also functions both as a symbol and as a leitmotif in the novel. The novel begins with Gogol’s birth, which is his literal and symbolic entry into the world of a country that is new to his parents and to him. However, Lahiri soon connects this actual birth with two other symbolic ones: Ashoke’s survival of the train accident in India, which he sees as a rebirth that allows him to reexamine his life and ideals, and the family’s arrival to America, where they are reborn as a unit without the support of a large and communal family.
By definition, birth is a messy and painful process, and so it is for the members of the Ganguli family. Ashima finds herself isolated, lonely, and unmoored, while Ashoke unquestioningly thrusts himself into his new life, working and focusing on supporting his family. Gogol finds his position as a child of immigrants difficult and distressing to the extent that he keeps failing to acquire a fuller sense of self. The birth of his younger sister, Sonia, on the other hand, speaks of a family that has already found its feet in a new culture and environment, and thus Lahiri represents Sonia’s life as less complicated by doubts and insecurities.
Furthermore, the contact between the Gangulis and other Bengali families in the US, as well as their relatives in India, revolves around news of new births and new members of families, as such news symbolically speak of the strength that lies in numbers and staves off ideas of loneliness and aloneness. Thus, Lahiri uses the motif of birth in its literal and symbolic meanings to highlight perpetual the circle of life, and the notion of rebirth as a representation of renewed sense of self and finding one’s own place in the world.
Alienation in a Foreign Culture
One of the leitmotifs in the novel is the profound experience of displacement and loneliness that immigrants often feel living in a country not their own. Lahiri focuses on the example of the Ganguli family, detailing especially Ashima’s slow and at times painful process of adapting to a new culture, but also includes glimpses into other Bengali families living in America.
Ashima’s life in India has been replete with a wealth of family, relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Indian culture as such bases its traditions on the value of communal living. Therefore, her arrival to America with only her husband, who is at work most of the day, leaves Ashima lonely, impotent, and as if she has lost her anchor. She feels comfortable only in the company of other Bengalis. It takes Ashima almost 30 years to start developing friendships with Americans, particularly as she starts to work in her local library. The sense of alienation in her is so deep because her values are Indian, and they cannot easily find parallels within American culture.
Although born in America, her son Gogol also feels alienated and different from his other American friends. He places the blame on his unusual name, and yet the reason is much deeper: Coming from a Bengali family, Gogol has also soaked up their values and they sometimes sit uneasily with American values that he is picking up in school and among his friends. Lahiri uses his example to show that life for second-generation immigrants can be difficult as they try to navigate the spaces between the two cultures to which they belong. Similarly, Mo’s journey also indicates an inability to find a functional balance between her Bengali heritage and her American upbringing, leading her to immerse herself in a wholly different French culture as a refuge.
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