Dual State of Migrants in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake (original) (raw)
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Migration has become a common trend today. Though having an age long history of migration, migration studies have only gained prominence since 1980s and have started to establish itself as a new genre in literature. Migration is a voyage between two cultures in which a migrant is neither able to assimilate the new culture nor able to cast off its root culture and gets tangled in between. The immigrants face the problem of assimilation into the other culture and there is a perpetual push and pull between two traditions. The present paper focuses upon the life struggle of a Bengali couple Ashoke and Ashima who immigrate to America from India and try to incorporate the new culture. They try to keep their roots alive in the foreign land by observing some of the Indian rituals and thus developing a sense of belongingness to their homeland. But for the second generation, the couple had to adopt the tradition of the immigrant country. Gogol and Moushumi often feel as if they are torn and lost between the country of their birth and the values inherited from their parents. Not only Gogol and Moushumi but all other characters are bewildered about their self and are shuttling between two worlds. The present paper explores the theme of displacement and rootlessness in their life and a quest for the self.
Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake Through the Lens of Diaspora Literature
International Journal of Management and Humanities, 2024
Abundant papers have been written on Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, endeavoring to elaborate on alienation, ecologic overtones, cross-cultural conflict, feminism, existentialism, and identity crisis, to name a few. However, navigating through a labyrinth of complexities, this study, in addition to cultivating the results found hitherto, aims to crack the case of two acculturation strategies opted by Gogol, namely assimilation and integration. To further the point, this qualitative research which has been done based on a close reading approach, will reveal Gogol's shift of strategy from assimilation to integration. In the second place, the lights are to be shed on the remarkable traces of re-orientalizationin the selected work, especially during the arrival of Gogol in Maxine's house where binary opposition, i.e., the Occidental Culture/ Oriental Culture will be visible. Furthermore, this paper sets out to lay bare Moushumi as a foil character for Ashima, who, unlike Ashima's vigorous allegiance to her husband, Bengali roots, and Patriarchal norms, is a Byronic-like character with intelligence, selfishness, refractoriness, complacency, and penchant for infraction of patriarchal rules. Last but not least, this study aims for a deeper understanding of the kernels of this diasporic novel including alienation, uprootedness, nostalgia, and search for genuine identity.
Identity Crisis and Diasporic Elements in Jhumpa Lahiri's, The Namesake
THE SPL JOURNAL OF LITERARY HERMENEUTICS, 2024
In this paper, the main aim is to describe the requisite issue of the migration to present the pain and the problems that are faced by the immigrants by understanding the term 'Diaspora' in Jhumpa Lahiri's, The Namesake. The novel, The Namesake, has so many diasporic expressions such as language as a barrier, alienation, culture identity, relationship between parents and children and nostalgia. The novel tells a story about the assimilation of an Indian Bengali family from Calcutta, the Ganguly into America, over thirty years (1968-2000). Methodology and Approach: The author has consulted the primary and secondary sources as part of her research. This research uses qualitative literary analysis of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, which focuses on the themes of the identity crisis and diasporic elements. The paper is based on textual analysis aided by secondary sources to explore the impact of migration on identity formation. Outcome: Through this paper, the researcher has found that "The Namesake" complexly portyrays the intense struggles of identity and belonging faced by migrant people. It outlines how cultural heritage and personal yearning shape as well as complicate the protagonist's and his surroundings journey. Conclusions and Suggestions: The study concludes that this novel profoundly captures the complexity of identity crisis. The researcher has tried to explore comparative analysis with other diaspora literature also to get to know more about how different cultural backgrounds shapes and influence identity formation to enrich the understanding of multiculturalism more effectively.
DISLOCATION, RELOCATION, DIASPORA IN THE NAMESAKE
The aim of the paper is to bring forth the way in which Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer prize winner novelist explores the dilemma of name and immigrant's sense of identity and belongingness in the novel The Namesake. The paper discloses the term 'Diaspora: and their role in the present day world, the major issues of multiculturalisms, struggle for name, identity and belongingness suffered by the characters in the novel.
Unhomely Home: Cultural Encounter of Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake
NUTA Journal
This article discusses unhomely home of the diasporas which is constructed geographically and psychologically by encountering the alien culture based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake. The purpose was to highlights recent debate on ‘home’ for immigrant and diasporic people. The notion of home for diasporas has become an injured concept which forces them to face scars and fractures, blisters and sores, and psychic traumas on the move. In such a situation, unhomely home refers to the condition of living here and belonging elsewhere. Jhumpa Lahiritells the story of two generations of Indian family and their struggle to acculturate themselves in the west. She presents a gloomy spectacle of racism, prejudice and marginalization in which Gogol, the son of a Bengali couple, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, becomes a victim of it. Gogol struggles to transform himself by escaping from the traditions of the community of Indian immigrants to which his family belongs. He also cannot assimilate wi...
DIOASPORIC ELEMENTS IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S THE NAMESAKE
isara solutions, 2019
This paper attempts to explain the cross cultural conflicts of Indian immigrant Gogol Ganguli who finds him torn between the two cultures and conflict of quest for identity never ceases. Jhumpa Lahiri belongs to the second generation of Indian Diaspora, an Indian by ancestry, British by birth and American by immigration and her theme of writing deals with the experience of emigrants to USA from India makes her a centre of Diaspora. Diasporic literature is a very vast concept and an umbrella term that includes in it all those literary works written by the authors outside their native country, but these works are associated with native culture and background. The term Diaspora comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “to scatter about”. And that’s exactly what the people of a Diaspora do they scatter from their homeland to places across the globe, spreading their culture as they go. The bible refers to the Diaspora of Jews exiled from Israel by the Babylonians. But the word is now also used more generally to describe any large migration of refugees, language, or culture
The Manifestation of Cultural Translation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel “The Namesake”
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is a good example that better illustrates the concept of cultural translation in its new postcolonial, postmodernist essence as a process of cultural transformation and a condition of human migrancy brought about by transnational, global Diasporas, and as synonymous with the concept of hybridity and the idea of the third space coined by Bhabha. The manifestation of such a concept in this novel could be discussed from different angles. Firstly, the essay will discuss this idea by showing how cultural translation is manifested in the context of South Asian Diasporas. Secondly, it will move on to tackle the issue of cultural conflict, identity crisis and negotiation. And finally the essay will shed light on the idea of newness which is regarded by Bhabha as a main component of cultural translation.
MIGRATION, ETHNICITY AND CULTURAL HYBRIDITY IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S THE NAMESAKE
Every country has its own social cultural and ethnic cryptograph, but no culture has remained homogenous in the present era. Due to the mobility of human beings across the borders of a nation, the socio-cultural values of a society are becoming heterogeneous and hybrid. The social values, customs, religious beliefs, technologies, food habits and products are mixed with the cultural traits of nations and their ethnic values. The present paper attempts to bring out migration, ethnicity and multiculturalism in the novel, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Migration and international space facilitate cultural hybridity in the behavioral pattern of the characters who are caught between the cultures of two nations. The paper will also touch upon two different generations and their responses to multiculturalism and international space. Jhumpa Lahiri captures both the cultural encounters and the resultant psychological and emotional crises in the lives of her characters. Lahiri uses her novel as a medium to negotiate the borders of society and culture to implicate identities that move across continents, communities and cultures. The cultural complexities of the second generation migrants are explored by her. Lahiri being a second generation migrant explicates the notions of cultural hybridity and international space. The ethnic markers of the first generation migrants are thrown away by the second generation immigrants and they embrace the culture of the host nation. The ethnic bonds of the homeland are strong with the first generation migrants which are evident in their attempt of celebrations and community gatherings which showcase their ghettoism. The second generation of the migrants, on the other hand, prefers liberty, free sex and mongrelism. Cutting lose from their Indian ethnicity, the second generation migrants attempt to assimilate with the culture of the host nation but they fail to do so. They are seen with a hyphenated identity. Key words: migration, culture, society, ethnicity, cultural hybridity
Diasporic Consciousness and Identity Trauma in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake
Smart Moves Journal Ijellh, 2020
In the contemporary era, immigration, exile and expatriation are related to home, identity, nostalgia, memory and isolation. These are the recurrent theme in the diasporic writings of the post-colonial writers like V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri and so on. Identity is a topical issue in the contemporary study of culture with many ramifications for the study of ethnicity, class, gender, race, sexuality and subcultures. It becomes an issue when something assumed to be fixed, coherent, and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty. When a period of uncertainty and confusion upsets a person's identity, it becomes insecure, usually due to a change in the expected aims or role in society. This identity trauma brings a sense of longing and loss as seen in Lahiri's stories. The present article focuses on the first generation and second generation immigrants adherence to the old and new land as can be found in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake.