The Namesake (Pages 1-72)

Title: The Namesake
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Pages: 1-72
Chapters: 1-4

SUMMARY: The setting takes place in 1968. Ashima Ganguli was close to her due date and her husband Ashoke was expecting a new family member. They are both from Bengali family in India. Ashoke was a student in MIT and Ashima was taken to the hospital. Ashoke had to go to MIT so Ashima felt lonely in the hospital surrounded by complete strangers although they are there to help her. Ashima starts to have flashback to how she first met Ashoke when their parents were arranging their marriage. In India, almost all of the families live upon the belief of arranged marriage. They were married in Bengali style traditional wedding where the bride is decorated by her aunts and female relatives as she leaves her father's house. At that time Ashoke was in B.E. Institutional college where he was the top of his class. As Ashima was lying on the hospital bed, she thought of how nothing distracted Ashoke. He could read and walk at the same time and spent his childhood with his Grandfather reading books. He was different from his siblings. In October 20, 1961, Ashoke left to see his grandfather who became blind so he was to inherit all of his books. He got into a huge train accident which still haunted him. His traveling partner Ghosh was killed. A baby boy was born and he was given the name Gogol due to the hospitals requirement for a birth certificate name. The name was supposed to be decided by Ashima's grandmother but the letter never came. Gogol was named after Ashoke's favorite Russian author, Nikolai Gogol. Ashoke gets his dream job as a professor and they do a traditional rice feeding for Gogol with other Bengalis. Ashima was strucked by the news that her father recently died after her grandmother was permanently paralyzed in her right side. They go to India and after a while they move to a University area in the suburbs. Surprisingly, Ashima found out that she was pregnant again when Gogol was five years old. Gogol's new name becomes Nikhil, the one who conquers all, according to Ashoke but the school teachers call him Gogol as it was on his birth certificate and he prefers the name.

QUOTATION: "Ashoke's mother was always convinced that her eldest son would be hit by a bus or a train, his nose deep into War and Peace. That he would be reading a book the moment he died" (Lahiri 13).


REACTION: This is definitely a horrid foreshadowing. The writer's style is amazing how she can shift her writing from one time period to another by giving vivid yet very descriptive explanations of characters, objects and situations. It was foreshadowing because the reader knows that Ashoke is the eldest son and he is the only character in the book who loves reading and is very passionate about it. It is going to lead up to the train accident which his mother was aware of. There is another element there, Dramatic Irony.