The Jhumpa Lahiri

By Author: Anthony W Bills
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The Jhumpa Lahiri
Thesis
Gogol’s cultural identity crisis is evident in his romantic relationships with women in the novel “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Introduction
Born of immigrant parents, Gogol and his sister are brought up in America. Gogol particularly wants to be fully American and wants to shed off the baggage of his parents’ ancestry. He hates the name given him by his father and refuses to take a course acceptable for an immigrant at Yales University and instead takes Architecture. He despises making trips to his parents’ land of origin and prefers to stay in America. All these events however do not however help Gogol to have a cultural identity and he ends up in a cultural identity crisis as we shall soon see in this paper.
Gogol’s Cultural Identity Crisis
Even after making all the efforts that he made to erase his past, his failure is still very conspicuous in his interactions with women. When he meets Maxime, he makes sure that she does not meet his parents. He actually tries to become an entirely different person from whom he really is. He takes up Maxime’s ...
... way of life, her carefree kind of life and even starts listening to her kind of music. It is evident that at this point, Gogol actually hates anything that reminds him of his past and heritage. He is actually trying to put a wall between past and his present but unfortunately, this is not possible. When a close relative dies, Gogol realizes the futility of trying to bury his past. He actually realizes that he loves his Indian people and their culture. From this moment onwards, he spends his life trying to reconcile his past and his present. He starts to involve his family and his past in his relationships with women.
Conclusion
The plot of the novel highlights the fact that Gogol was not able to completely shake off his past. Even though the writer does not precisely tell us if he was able to fully come to terms with his past, it does not take much imagination to realize how difficult it was for Gogol to embrace his Indian heritage. The novel emphasizes the fact that our present is inextricably bound to our past and any attempts to reverse or negate this situation will be futile. We are what we are today because of the occurrences in our past which, unlike our uncertain future, could not have happened in any other way.

Works Cited
Lahiri, Jhumpa "The Namesake" (2004)

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