Teasing the Tiger

        In Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, Gogol finds himself with a situation that keeps getting worse and worse. Before chapter eight, Gogol is happily dating and in love with Maxine. They date for a while and are constantly together until Gogol’s happiness is ripped away from him in one sudden phone call. Gogol is told that his father has died from a heart attack. Ashima, Gogol, and Sonia all meet together at home to grieve the loss of their loved-one. As Gogol is grieving he is doing the opposite of what he was doing when he was happy. He is now pushing away Maxine and not allowing her to grieve with him and bringing his family closer by visiting Maxine less often and his family more often. Because of this, Maxine breaks up Gogol, and Gogol is now even more depressed because he lost his love and his loved-one. Once he and his family have finished grieving, he meets a Bengali girl who he remembers from his childhood. They soon begin to date and then become engaged.

  Lahiri tortures Gogol by giving him a normal, joyful childhood until he became a teenager. At that point, Lahiri introduces Gogol to the truth about his name and the tragidies behind it. Gogol is then in constant shyness and embarrassment about his name and its roots. This pain lasts for a while until he’s eighteen when he changes his name to Nikhil. As Nikhil, Gogol studies hard, becomes an architect, and finds his love, Maxine. Gogol’s years of blissful joy with Maxine last for a while until his father dies, and he is sadness and depression again. Lahiri is brutal and cruel to Gogol by giving him a joyful childhood, followed by the pain and shame of his own name, followed by pleasure of freedom of his name and his parents in college, and sadness again due to the death of his father and break up with Maxine. Like all people, Gogol has his ups and downs in life but for Gogol, his ups and downs are extreme enough to look like Lahiri is giving Gogol a taste of happiness and freedom and when Gogol wants a little more, she rips it away. With Gogol’s recent engagement and happiness, I predict something horribly wrong to occur to hurt his new love and his family.

The Name Change

            In Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, Gogol is still trying to fight his name in chapter five and six and find out the reasons why his parents named him Gogol. After living with the name Gogol for about 18 years of his life, Gogol finally convinces his parents to allow him to change his named offically to Nikhil. As he enters college at Yale, he is determined to known as Nikhil and leave Gogol behind forever. He makes sure all of his offical papers that go to Yale say that his name is Nikhil and all of his classmates know him as Nikhil.

After college, Gogol moves to New York to work as an architect and begins to date a girl named Maxine who he falls in love with. He is at her house all the time when he’s not a work and she calls him by his new name Nikhil because she is in his new life. But, when Gogol decides to visit his parents with Maxine for lunch on his way to Maxine’s grandparents’ house, Ashoke calls Gogol “Gogol” instead of “Nikhil”. This mistake angers Gogol but he doesn’t show it and avoids the topic. When Maxine comments on it on the ride to the grandparents’ house, he changes the topic and avoids talking about his old name and avoids telling her that he changed his name from “Gogol” to “Nikhil”. She drops it quickly.

I find Lahiri’s style of writing interesting in regards to chapters five and six because even though she writes that Gogol changed his name, she still refers to him as Gogol when she is narrating his life. Even though Gogol has officially changed his name to Nikhil, Lahiri refers to him as Gogol. Reading this shows me that Lahiri will always remember him as Gogol and that the name Nikhil will not stick in Gogol’s life. I sense that when she refers to him as Gogol instead of Nikhil, she is foreshadowing him changing his name back to Gogol and liking Gogol more than Nikhil.

The Namesake Perspective

          The Namesake is written by Jhumpa Lahiri and is set in 1968. An Indian family consisting of a husband and wife, Ashoke Ganguli and Ashima Ganguli, are soon going to have a child and are struggling through pregnancy and labor. The interesting writing style caught my eye when I noticed that Lahiri wrote the entire first two chapters (and most likely the whole novel) in third person. Ashoke, Ashima and even their baby, Gogol, are refered to by their names from an outside perspective of the situation. This point of view doesn’t allow the reader to become emotionally attached to anyone of the characters as easily as a first person perspective would.

          On the other hand, Lahiri writes in a way that allows the reader to understand the strife and emotions of the main characters while still seeing them and reading them in the third person point of view. The way Lahiri shows me the conscience and emotions of Ashoke and Ashima, yet still allows me to watch the events in the novel unfold with no character’s bias, blows my mind. I can’t even describe how the writing gives me a feeling that I’m watching the novel as an invisible spectator, but still gives me a feeling that I can feel and think along with the characters. Lahiri’s writing has given me a mixture of third and first person perspective seemlessly.