When a name is chosen for you, the name becomes your personality, appearance and you. In the book The Namesake, Lahiri compares Gogol/Nikhil's struggle with the struggle of growing up in two different cultures. America is a free country, which allows Gogol to change his name and be anything he wants to be. On the other hand, the culture of his parents and them giving him that name, is anything but free. The name they chose was chosen by respect and honor towards their homeland. The author teaches us that life is what you make of it; the past shapes you into who you are, and you decide the future. Although Gogol tries to stray far away from his culture and name, he learns that he could never fully reinvent himself because he will always go
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Gogol meets a girl at a party he attends at MIT. Gogol doesn’t want to use his real name because he knows the action he is about to take will go against his society norm. He instead introduces himself as “Nikhil” because Gogol feels as though he can get away with these actions through a different identity. He says, “He doesn’t tell them that it hadn’t been Gogol who kissed Kim. That Gogol had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t me.” (Lahiri, 96). Those three words are influential to his future because it foreshadows him becoming a daring and carefree “American”. He feels that being in a different persona, he can get away with much more. Gogol thinks that because Nikhil sounds like an American name, he can do what all American kids do, smoke, have sex and interact with a lot of girls. He doesn’t feel like he is going against his culture by taking these actions in the name of Nikhil. When he attends Yale, nobody knows him as Gogol and it makes it easier for Gogol to become Nikhil. The actions of changing his name can mean that he wants a new identity, he wants to be Nikhil, the “American” architect whose experiencing college, but he realizes deep inside himself that back at home he is Gogol and Nikhil is only a persona that will eventually obliterate. In the end, he realizes that he is named Gogol for a reason, and no matter how hard he tries to change that, the name Gogol was meant to
Gogol meets a girl at a party he attends at MIT. Gogol doesn’t want to use his real name because he knows the action he is about to take will go against his society norm. He instead introduces himself as “Nikhil” because Gogol feels as though he can get away with these actions through a different identity. He says, “He doesn’t tell them that it hadn’t been Gogol who kissed Kim. That Gogol had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t me.” (Lahiri, 96). Those three words are influential to his future because it foreshadows him becoming a daring and carefree “American”. He feels that being in a different persona, he can get away with much more. Gogol thinks that because Nikhil sounds like an American name, he can do what all American kids do, smoke, have sex and interact with a lot of girls. He doesn’t feel like he is going against his culture by taking these actions in the name of Nikhil. When he attends Yale, nobody knows him as Gogol and it makes it easier for Gogol to become Nikhil. The actions of changing his name can mean that he wants a new identity, he wants to be Nikhil, the “American” architect whose experiencing college, but he realizes deep inside himself that back at home he is Gogol and Nikhil is only a persona that will eventually obliterate. In the end, he realizes that he is named Gogol for a reason, and no matter how hard he tries to change that, the name Gogol was meant to