The Namesake

“Ashima, unable to resist a sudden and overwhelming urge, stepped into the shoes at her feet. Lingering sweat from the owner’s feet mingled with hers, causing her heart to race; it was the closest thing she had ever experienced to the touch of a man. The leather was creased, heavy, and still warm. On the left shoe she had noticed that one of the crisscrossing laces had missed a hole, and this oversight set her at ease.”

Ashima’s first encounter with her future husband takes on a symbolic turn as she steps inside his shoe, foreshadowing her lifelong understanding and support for the man. The mingling of their sweat becomes a metaphor for the physical contact that will only come after they marry, and the slight oversight gives Ashima a valuable indication of Ashoke’s character. The scene is realistic in depiction yet metaphorical in describing their whole future relationship.

“Without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side, the baby’s birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half true. As she strokes and suckles and studies her son, she can’t help but pity him. She has never known of a person entering the world so alone, so deprived.”

Forever bound to traditions from India, Ashima is unable to comprehend the Western ways, which to her feel distanced and lonely. Even though the birth of her son is a happy event, she feels a pain of longing for the multitude of relations that would welcome the baby in India. His entry into the world speaks symbolically of Gogol’s future uneasy place between cultures.

“It wasn’t until morning, stepping briefly outside wearing a pair of Ashoke’s socks under her thin-soled slippers, the frigid New England chill piercing her inner ears and jaw, that she’d had her first real glimpse of America: Leafless trees with ice-covered branches. Dog urine and excrement embedded in the snowbanks. Not a soul on the street.”

The description of Ashima’s first impressions of America reflects her inner psychological state: the air is “frigid,” in contrast to the material and metaphorical warmth of India; trees are bare and frozen because Ashima feels frightened and stripped of her traditional sense of security and cultural knowledge.

“For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy—a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.”

The author here places an emphasis on the protracted nature of being a foreigner—a state that has its “gestation period.” She underlines the slow and sometimes unwanted process of assimilation, especially in Ashima’s case, as she struggles to reject the influence America impinges upon her. Although her foreignness is a burden, and her “previous life has vanished,” she still fights for her tradition and culture. This moment foreshadows later in the novel when Ashima will “give birth” to her new self: Someone who takes an American job, makes American friends, and realizes she will miss America when she returns to India.

“For when Ashima and Ashoke close their eyes it never fails to unsettle them, that their children sound just like Americans, expertly conversing in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.”

The key word in this quote is “trust”: Both Ashima, and to a lesser extent, Ashoke, have never created a sense of belonging to America. The realization that their children are more American than Indian is a betrayal of sorts, and the sound of the American accent makes them view their children as changelings. Having been born in the States, their son and daughter are necessarily and essentially different from their parents. This moment foreshadows Gogol’s sense of separation from his cultural identity.

He hates that his name is both absurd and obscure, that it has nothing to do with who he is, that it is neither Indian nor American but of all things Russian. He hates having to live with it, with a pet name turned good name, day after day, second after second […] At times his name, an entity shapeless and weightless, manages nevertheless to distress him physically, like the scratchy tag of a shirt he has been forced permanently to wear. At times he wishes he could disguise it, shorten it somehow [.]”

Gogol’s extreme reaction to his name reflects his inability to fully participate in either his parents’ culture or in the culture of his birth. The fact that the name he bears is Russian further symbolizes the alienation he feels from both cultures. Not knowing his father’s full story, Gogol is unable to appreciate the significance of his name and the true connection to his namesake. His desire to change his name indicates his fantasy of living a different life, one unburdened by the chasm between two cultural matrices.

“Assured by his grades and his apparent indifference to girls, his parents don’t suspect Gogol of being, in his own fumbling way, an American teenager. They don’t suspect him, for instance, of smoking pot, which he does from time to time when he and his friends get together to listen to records at one another’s homes. They don’t suspect him, when he goes to spend the night at a friend’s house, of driving to a neighboring town to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or into Boston to see bands in Kenmore Square.”

Although he “fumbles” through it, Gogol works hard on fitting in with the American way of life, often at odds with his family’s beliefs and traditions. The author here positions him as a spy of sorts, infiltrated into two different sets of ideals, and his decision to assimilate to the American way is both rational and emotional. His parents never “suspect” that he is “betraying” their ideals or values, which demands of Gogol subtle ways of subterfuge.

“He wrote in the new name he wished to adopt, then signed the form with his old signature. Only one part of the form had given him pause: in approximately three lines, he was asked to provide a reason for seeking the change. For nearly an hour he’d sat there, wondering what to write. He’d left it blank in the end.”

Gogol’s decision to change his name reflects his deeper search for a stable identity, one that will remove him from the ideas he associates with his pet name turned real name. The fact that he chooses another Indian name shows that he does not wish to sever his family or cultural ties to India, but the fact that he cannot simply state his reasons for changing his name belies the firmness of his decision to renounce it.

“‘Is that what you think of when you think of me?’ Gogol asks him. ‘Do I remind you of that night?’ ‘Not at all,’ his father says eventually, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now. ‘You remind me of everything that followed.’”

The moment where Gogol finds out the truth behind his name and the horrible accident of his father’s past marks a shift in Gogol’s attitude toward not only his father but also his own name. This, in turn, introduces a new level of maturity to his character, and he begins to see beyond the superficial dissatisfactions of a child of immigrant parents and understand how things connect and intersect in the larger scheme of things.

“Quickly, simultaneously, he falls in love with Maxine, the house, and Gerald and Lydia’s manner of living, for to know her and love her is to know and love all of these things. He loves the mess that surrounds Maxine, her hundreds of things always covering her floor and her bedside table, her habit, when they are alone on the fifth floor, of not shutting the door when she goes to the bathroom. Her unkempt ways, a challenge to his increasingly minimalist taste, charm him.”

Falling in love with Maxine is symbolic of Gogol’s desire to embrace different ways and modes of living from the one he experienced as a child. The chaotic nature of Maxine’s habits, and the ease with which her parents welcome Gogol into their family all contrast with his parents’ difficulties to accept the American way of life. Gogol’s “minimalist taste” is another reaction to the excesses of his family’s celebrations, large gatherings, and a house full of photographs and souvenirs. He falls in love with Maxine’s chaos, not because it is that different from his family’s but because it is American.

“She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other than herself, raised in any other place, in any other way. This, in his opinion, is the biggest difference between them, a thing far more foreign to him than the beautiful house she’d grown up in, her education at private schools. In addition, he is continually amazed by how much Maxine emulates her parents, how much she respects their tastes and their ways.”

Maxine embodies Gogol’s fantasies of his own ideal identity: She is comfortable in her own skin, she has a clear sense of belonging, and she has a close and warm connection to her parents. Gogol regards her as a surrogate to his own imperfect life, and his falling in love with her is a continuation of his desire to melt into the American identity he is trying to build. Maxine is more of an object of desire that a real person for Gogol—he cherishes what she represents rather than who she really is.

“‘But you’re Indian,’ Pamela says, frowning. ‘I’d think the climate wouldn’t affect you, given your heritage.’ ‘Pamela, Nick’s American,’ Lydia says, leaning across the table, rescuing Gogol from the conversation. ‘He was born here.’ She turns to him, and he sees from Lydia’s expression that after all these months, she herself isn’t sure. ‘Weren’t you?’”

This is one of the key scenes in the novel. Gogol’s worst fears come to life in a brief exchange where he feels the full force of American superficiality, not just regarding the insensitive woman and her casual racial prejudice, but also regarding the reaction by Maxine’s mother. Gogol understands that the woman who has seemingly accepted him fully does not know pertinent facts about him—his illusion of belonging is thus in a moment shattered on two major levels, cultural and personal.

“Having been deprived of the company of her own parents upon moving to America, her children’s independence, their need to keep their distance from her, is something she will never understand. Still, she had not argued with them. This, too, she is beginning to learn.”

Ashima’s life in America is a long, steady, often unwilling process of learning and acceptance. Although, having come for a country that cherishes communality, she does not understand her children’s need for individuality, she loves them enough to accept their different ideas and beliefs. She shows strength in learning how to adjust her own inherited life’s ideal to fit the new generation, which proves her a good and loving mother.

“He wonders if he should touch his father’s face, lay a hand on his forehead as his father used to do to Gogol when he was unwell, to see if he had a fever. And yet he feels terrified to do so, unable to move. Eventually, with his index finger, he grazes his father’s mustache, an eyebrow, a bit of the hair on his head, those parts of him, he knows, that are still quietly living.”

Gogol faces his father’s body with a mixture of disbelief, terror, and sorrow. He feels both connected to his father and detached from the fact that he is now dead. In deliberating whether to place a hand upon his face, we see a reversal of roles, where Gogol is now in charge as his father once was, which speaks of the shifting of generations that comes with the death of a parent. Gogol’s choice to lay a finger on his father’s hairs indicates his inability to accept that Ashoke is no longer living.

“From earliest girlhood, she says, she had been determined not to allow her parents to have a hand in her marriage. She had always been admonished not to marry an American, as had he, but he gathers that in her case these warnings had been relentless, and had therefore plagued her far more than they had him. When she was only five years old, she was asked by her relatives if she planned to get married in a red sari or a white gown.”

As opposed to Maxine, Mo shares with Gogol the ambivalence toward tradition and Indian culture. The author indicates through Gogol’s refection that a woman’s role is even more complex because Indian culture relies heavily on women to cherish customs and keep traditions alive. This helps Gogol understand that his own perception of his parents must change, because they have given him freedoms he might not have known he possessed. Additionally, it shows us how much Mo has had to fight to free herself from her family’s pressures, which foreshadows the lack of success in their future marriage.

“Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge—she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind. It was easier to turn her back on the two countries that could claim her in favor of one that had no claim whatsoever. Her four years of secret study had prepared her, at the end of college, to escape as far as possible.”

The author utilizes the example of Mo’s character to highlight another way children of immigrants deal with their cultural predicament. Mo locates a third culture that bears no personal connection to her family life and immerses herself in it as a means of avoiding having to face the clash between disparate natures of Indian and American cultures. Pursuing French language and culture, she is “without guilt,” which relieves the pressure American society and her Indian family place upon her. Her studying is “secret” because she is aware of the rebelliousness of her act, and her mission is to “escape” because she chooses not to enter into a culture conflict. Her behavior again foreshadows her later affair.

“He thinks of his parents, strangers until this moment, two people who had not spoken until after they were actually wed. Suddenly, sitting next to Mo, he realizes what it means, and he is astonished by his parents’ courage, the obedience that must have been involved in doing such a thing.”

As Gogol grows older and gains his own life experience, he learns to appreciate the vastly different experiences of his parents and their friends and relatives. Only as he marries Mo does he realize what strength of belief and faith in tradition it must have taken for his parents to marry without having properly known each other. This is an undertaking of which he knows he would never be capable. The author thus also underscores the differences in two cultures: the Indian way of abiding by custom and the American way of individuality and experimentation.

“He’d confessed to her that he still felt guilty at times for changing his name, more so now that his father was dead. And she’d assured him that it was understandable, that anyone in his place would have done the same. But now it’s become a joke to her. Suddenly he regrets having ever told Mo; he wonders whether she’ll proclaim the story of his father’s accident to the table as well.”

As differences between Gogol’s worldview and Mo’s begin to emerge, he begins to feel threatened by her American (or possibly faux-European) closeness to her friends. Gogol holds a much more deeply ingrained sense of his Indian self than his wife does, and understanding this difference frightens him. She does not appreciate his guilt over changing his name because she has changed her whole personality to suit her fantasies of a culture-clash-free life. Gogol realizes with dismay that in Mo’s world, the prerogative is to feel free, unencumbered, and willing to act on impulse (which she does by rekindling her old relationship).

“Mo wonders how long she will live her life with the trappings of studenthood in spite of the fact that she is a married woman, that she’s as far along in her studies as she is, that Nikhil has a respectable if not terribly lucrative job. It would have been different with Graham—he’d made more than enough money for the both of them. And yet that, too, had been frustrating, causing her to fear that her career was somehow an indulgence, unnecessary.”

This quote gives us insight into Mo’s inner self. Regardless of the fact that she has hidden behind her plunge into French culture, she is still at heart troubled by the state of her selfhood. Additionally, by comparing her life with Gogol to the potential she would have had with Graham, she shows that she views her marriage as something that does not define her as a person. Mo’s uncertainty may not lie in her Indian American culture clash, but it still emerges as a conflict between different choices she can make for herself. The author here portrays her as a person who must seek independence, yet who desires to have the support of a man in her life. Mo’s identity crisis is essentially similar to Gogol’s; she has only found a different outlet for her ambivalence.

“For the first time since her flight to meet her husband in Cambridge, in the winter of 1967, she will make the journey entirely on her own. The prospect no longer terrifies her. She has learned to do things on her own, and though she still wears saris, still puts her long hair in a bun, she is not the same Ashima who had once lived in Calcutta. She will return to India with an American passport.”

The flight to India on her own marks the long path Ashima has walked since her arrival to America from a traditionally brought-up Indian woman to an immigrant who fears her new life, to a widow in her middle age who has adopted a new way of living and embraced the changes with a newfound philosophy. Her American passport symbolizes this transition, as Ashima is no longer just a product of her Indian upbringing but also of her American life. This quote signals the end of the “gestation” period Ashoke references at the novel’s open.

“And though she still does not feel fully at home within these walls on Pemberton Road she knows that this is home nevertheless—the world for which she is responsible, which she has created, which is everywhere around her, needing to be packed up, given away, thrown out bit by bit.”

Ashima has learned throughout her life that home means many different things: Home is her life in India and the house she shared in America with her family. Home is also her numerous relatives and the Bengali friends she has made during the years in America. Home is America itself, the country that has given Ashima her adult life and which is the birthplace of her children. Finally, home is the house which she has made her own, and which she now must leave as part of her journey forward. The author underscores that home is the journey itself.

“He wonders how his parents had done it, leaving their respective families behind, seeing them so seldom, dwelling unconnected, in a perpetual state of expectation, of longing. All those trips to Calcutta he’d once resented—how could they have been enough? They were not enough. Gogol knows now that his parents had lived their lives in America in spite of what was missing, with a stamina he fears he does not possess himself.”

This quote connects well to quote 18, as it refers to how adult Gogol comes to understand his parents even more as well as their experiences and sacrifices. He learns to value what he has taken for granted before: the fact that he lives in a country where he has been born, and that his heritage is only an addition to his American identity. He also grasps the fact that his parents have made this possible for him, and as he grows older, he finds a new closeness with his mother, having come full circle from his rebellious teenage self.

“Still, he wonders how he’s arrived at all this: that he is thirty-two years old, and already married and divorced. His time with her seems like a permanent part of him that no longer has any relevance, or currency. As if that time were a name he’d ceased to use.”

Unlike his original name which proves to be of lasting power despite his prolonged misgivings (and further proof of this is that the narration refers to him as Gogol even after he has officially become Nikhil), Gogol’s time with Mo reveals itself as a phase which both of them felt was necessary yet transient. Their courtship and marriage represent a passing phase in their process of reaching full adulthood and a more stable sense of self, and although as a phase it has fulfilled its important purpose, the whole period loses its significance once it has moved into the past.