Alienation and Struggle for Emotional Evolvement in Jhumpa Lahiri’s the Namesake
Aasif Ahmad
Research Scholar, APS University, Rewa (M.P), India.
ABSTRACT:
This paper deals with the feeling of alienation and struggle for emotional evolvement in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. It depicts the struggle between the homeland and the host land. It discusses an immigrant’s experience in a new land and the problem of assimilation. This paper highlights the alienation, sufferings and the emotional evolution of Lahiri’s characters in The Namesake. Alienation is an unavoidable aspect of modern life. Nevertheless, it is as old as human beings themselves. Alienation and loss of identity are some of the predicaments from which immigrants suffer. The intellectuals and authors have tried to represent these feelings in diverse ways in diverse writings all over the world. Jhumpa Lahiri, a child of immigrants, has experienced the feeling of alienation at a very early age. Lahiri lays down certain types of alienation through her characters’ lives adventures. Characters from The Namesake show some certain symptoms of having experienced the feeling of alienation in various forms. Ashima experienced emotional pain at a heightened level, a pain caused by loneliness, lack of familial support, apart and isolated. She and her husband make every endeavour to keep their children intact with their ancestry. To avoid emotional pain the expatriates must always prefer for propinquity, connectedness and strong emotional bonds. The main interest of this article is to examine the theme of alienation, sufferings of alienated people and struggle for emotional evolvement and how it is manifested itself in Jhumpa Lahiri’s the Namesake.
KEYWORDS: Alienation, Emotional Evolvement, Pain, Suffering.
INTRODUCTION:
Jhumpa Lahiri has carved a niche for herself by dint of her literary works among the Indian diasporic writers. Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American writer. She is one of the most prominent diasporic writers whose real name was Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri. She was born to Bengali parents on 11th July 1967 in London. She is the second generation immigrant. She studied English literature at Barnard College in 1989 and she got her master’s degree from Boston University.
She got her doctorate in the field of renaissance studies. She begins her writing career as a short story writer and the name of the work is 'The interpreter of Maladies' in1999 and sold more than half a million copies which brought her a popularity in the world. Her first novel was 'The Namesake' which was published in 2003 and it was made into film.
The Namesake opens with the scene in which Ashima, a pregnant woman from Calcutta-India, tries to cook an Indian meal that dissatisfies her. This very first scene reflects the total physical and psychological mood of migrants. Although she has the same ingredients to cook an Indian dish, she does not manage to prepare as she did in India. The feeling of displacement and alienation exist in all activities the characters carry out. She hides her pain and shares the meal with her husband Ashoke. Ashima is married to Ashoke Ganguli, who is an engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their families arranged their marriage and she moved to the USA to live with her husband. She successfully bore a boy. The baby is named after Nikolai Gogol, famous Russian author. Ashoke chooses Gogol as the pet name for the newborn baby. Because Bengali culture requires a baby to have two names; a pet name to be called by family and a good name to be called in the society. While Ganguli couples are about to leave the hospital, they are asked to write a legal name for the baby. They just write Gogol on the birth certificate as an official name for their boy with a hope that they will change later with a good name. The reason of Ashoke’s choosing Gogol as a pet name for his baby is that he is indebted to The Overcoat – a short story by Gogol, because in a train accident the book saved his life. Gogol has no problem with his name until he enrolls a kindergarten. Gogol struggles to carry the burden of two names. Unaware of the fact that Gogol saved his father’s life, he changes his name into Nikhil before he starts the college life. An Indian Gogol shifts into an American Nikhil. The change in his name affects all his life style. Nikhil gives him an American way of life freedom that does not exist and is not accepted in Bengali culture. In the end of the novel, we see that Gogol is alone again. Two different conclusions can be drawn from his situation in the end of the novel: Either he manages to embrace both his past and present life in a more mature way and he come with a total or he is different from both Gogol and Nikhil (The Namesake).
Ashima’s transformation from Indian housewife to an American mother starts with the growing up of Gogol. She should be recognized as a wife, a mother and above all, as an American. In order to achieve all of these identities, she has to go through great personal, emotional and habitual changes. To bring change is not always easy, they create emotionally disturbances. Ashima also embraces this during her long life in America. Ashima, in The Namesake, suffers severely for her inability to recreate India. So she expresses her great reluctance about her life in America and pressurizes her husband Ashoke again and again to go back to India. “‘I am saying I don’t want to raise Gogol alone in this country. It’s not right. I want to go back’” (Lahiri 33). But, gradually, she realizes the reality about her life in America. So she reshuffles herself in terms of her daily activities. She knows how to go to the market alone for buying everything necessary and she begins to pride herself on doing it alone. But the alienation haunts her when she revisits her past which gradually create a deep crisis in her.
Ashima and Ashoke plan to visit their relatives in Calcutta. Ashima takes Gogol and goes for shopping. Ashima buys presents for both her and Ashoke’s parents. While coming back from the shopping on the subway, she is late and takes Gogol out of subway clamp. Then someone from the crowd shouts to her, “your things.” (Lahiri 42) But the doors of subway clamp has already shut. She looks behind their present bags in the rear car disappearing from the sight helplessly.
She stands there watching until the rear car disappears into the tunnel, until she and Gogol are the only people remaining on the platform. She pushes the stroller back down Massachusetts Avenue, weeping freely, knowing that she can’t possibly afford to go back and buy it all again (Lahiri 42).
Her feelings of being a stranger take her towards alienation. Ashima’s alienation is clearly visible throughout the novel. At every occasion, she misses her native land, Calcutta. At the time of her delivery, she laments that she is all alone here and nobody is here to take care of her newly born child. Had it been India, she would have been surrounded by relatives. Her emotions helped her to survive while being away from her home land. The anxiety, the fear of losing one's identity in an entirely foreign land, is passed on to the next generation also. Ashoke and Ashima's son Gogol, who emerges as the central figure in the novel is the typical example of this phenomenon. Ashima often feels upset and homesick and sulks alone in their three room apartment which is too hot in summer and too cold in the winter. She feels spatially and emotionally dislocated from the comfortable home of her father full of so many loving ones and yearns to go back.
The Ganguli children realize that neither they are Americans nor Indians. Gogol cannot erase his past so he accepts his name and his parents’ home. Likewise, he cannot disregard the present American home in which he brings up. After Udayan’s death Subhash marries Gauri to save her from alienation. But Gauri is haunted by her past all the time. She never proves to be a good wife and a good mother. As a matter of fact, Gauri has also been a sufferer in her own ways. But she convenience herself and accepts the ups and downs of life. Udayan marries her without the consent of his parents. So, Gauri in her in-laws’ house is not accepted and remains alienated. After her husband’s death she goes to Rhodes Island with Subhash and gives birth to a baby girl, called Bela. Being haunted by past, she alienates herself from Subhash and her daughter Bela. She remains restless. For her, isolation, emotions are the only remedy to get solace and that too helped her very much. (The Namesake)
CONCLUSION:
Thus, Lahiri explores the Alienation, Loneliness and Struggle for emotional evolvement in his Namesake through his characters and the events that take place. Lahiri depicts the loneliness and isolation in the lives of foreigners by depicting the critical situations. Lahiri herself a child of an immigrant couple has clearly expressed the struggles and hardships of the immigrants. She expressed her cultural dilemma and fear of losing her true identity in an interview as “As a young child, I felt that the Indian part of me was unacknowledged and therefore somehow negated, by my American atmosphere and surrounding: I felt that I led two different and isolated lives” (Joshi). Ashima accepts all the worries and lives as an immigrant forever by embracing her role and responsibilities as an immigrant. She acknowledges that she is part of a larger community of people who have left their homeland and are trying to build a new life in a foreign country. Ashima finds solace in the company of other immigrant families, as they share similar experiences and understand the challenges they face. She accepts the worries and challenges that come with being an immigrant and learns to navigate through them.
REFERENCES:
1. Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2003. P. 33. Print.
2. Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2003. P. 42. Print.
3. Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2003. P. 43. Print.
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5. Interview with Vibhuti Patel in Newsweek quoted from Suchita Joshi, “The Namesake: Account of a name looking for its Bearer”, Indian Women Novelists in English, ed P.D. Bheda (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1993) pp-91.
6. Parekh, B. Some Reflections on the Hindu Diaspora. New Community 20(4),1994. Print
7. Parmanand, Jha. Home and Abroad: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. The Indian Journal of English Studies, Vol. XXXVIII (2000 -2001). Print
Received on 10.08.2023 Modified on 30.08.2023
Accepted on 18.09.2023 ©AandV Publications All right reserved
Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2023; 14(4):197-199.
DOI: 10.52711/2321-5828.2023.00040