The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake portrays both the immigrant experience in America, and the complexity of family loyalties that underlies all human experience. Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, after an arranged marriage in India, emigrate to America where Ashoke achieves his dream of an engineering degree and a tenured position in a New England college. Their son Gogol, named for the Russian writer, rejects both his unique name and his Bengali heritage.

Critics have high praise for Lahiri's richly sensuous, epicurean descriptions of the preparation and consumption of food. The author says that she is an enthusiastic cook. Like food, train travel, both in India and the United States, is a recurring motif. In an interview, Lahiri said that she sees her narrative as resembling the incomplete glimpses of the passing scene through the window of a train.

Several critics find that the gaps in the narrative give the impression of incompleteness. Others say that the third-person, distant narrative voice creates a flat, unemotional tone. However, The Namesake has received enthusiastic popular acclaim, and most critics agree that it fulfills the promise of her earlier, highly praised work.

As a portrait of immigration and a personal quest for identity, the novel raises interesting questions. Given the genuine pain that Ashima and Ashoke suffer in attempting to reconcile their cultural heritage with the American dream, it is worth considering whether Gogol's angst over the oddity of his name should evoke the reader's sympathy. Ashoke's common-sense interpretation of Gogol's complaints when he announces he will change his name is instructive: “The only person who didn't take Gogol seriously, the only person who tormented him, the only person chronically aware of and afflicted by the embarrassment of this name was Gogol.” (Lahiri, 85) As Gogol takes up his father's gift and begins to read, there is hope ...