Identity Crisis

In Bengali culture, people are given two names, a bhalonam, a given name, also known as a good name, and a dak nam, a nickname used for family and close friends (26). Although Gogol Nikhil Ganguli is a Bengali, he isn’t your average typical one; the whole pet name (Gogol) vs. his good name (Nikhil) sets forth a battle within his mind causing himself to alienate him from those who care about him the most. In The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the theme of identity crisis gets played a lot throughout the novel. When Gogol first starts school, his father tries to persuade him to go by his good name, Nikhil, but he refuses because he’s afraid to be someone he doesn’t know. His parents tell him that “It’s a part of growing up… part of being a Bengali” (57). But the irony in what Gogol’s parents tell him is the fact that they gave their son a Russian name as a good name. They named him after Nikolai Gogol, a Russian novelist, where he later finds out that it was “Gogol” who saves his father’s life. Despite the fact that Nikhil is a Bengali name and Gogol is a Russian name, Nikhil is the name that feels foreign to him. Gogol is half Bengali and half American, but his legal good name is Russian. How is Gogol supposed to embrace and accept his culture when his name is neither Bengali nor American? He’s conflicted by his name, because up until that point he was known as Gogol and not Nikhil. The constant back and forth between the good name and nickname starts to confuse him and is the catalyst to him questioning his being. But when he begins school, he begins to understand that his name was strange and far from the norm. Gogol was born in the US unlike his parents, and as time passed by, he grew annoyed of the name “Gogol”. He discovers that the name Gogol isn’t your typical ordinary name, when his teachers and classmates stumble on it and ask questions. In the following paragraph, Gogol expresses:
“…by now, he’s come to hate questions pertaining to his name, hates