The Panorama of Cultures Reflected in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake

Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri, a renowned Pulitzer prize-winning immigrant writer born to the Bengali parentage in London in 1967. Her first novel, The Namesake was published in 2003 that reflects the immigrant life experiences and identities concerning the ties and clashes between the families. The study elaborates on the issues of displacement reverberated in the lives of the characters of the novel, The Namesake, and this tendency is shown inherent in the central character Gogol Ganguli. To live and settle in America, he assimilates the culture, nationality, and belongingness, and in due course of finding a new self- identity, otherwise called putting on fake personalities, he loses himself. Moreover, he started realizing that running away from reality will only improvise his agitations of both the Indian heritage and the American lifestyle. The study connects extensively with the transnational world to the world of cultures and identities where the people have a choice of their own to live and settle in their lives. The people in post-colonial times opt their own life the way they want to live or abandon their home for any reason. They are truly not forced by war or colonization to aspire to live under any hegemonic condition. However, this freedom leads to the later consequences and could not possibly be controlled while they adapt an unknown culture and the new identities where the experiences are often predictable. These cultural experiences, displacement, and even diasporic communities are turned out to be the international obligation that is welcomed. The quest for identity is the fundamental question that involves the self with its interlining factors of cultures, especially for immigrants