Jhumpa Lahiri's the Namesake Speech

Claude Levi-Strauss once said ‘being human signifies, for each of us, belonging to a class, a society, a country, a continent and a civilization.’ Belonging is a human desire of being accepted with people or places. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s story, The Namesake, the story follows the Ganguli family from their traditional Indian life in Calcutta through their uneasy transformation into America. This family is strewn with opposing fidelities and the underlying concept of the difficulties of cultural belonging, for being tradition bound immigrants.

The common use of the food motif and repetitive contrasts between the cultures of India and America throughout The Namesake create cultural jarring, which demonstrate cultural transitions. The novel opens with Ashima, a newly arrived Indian immigrant in America, making an Indian snack as best she can using American-branded ingredients. Ashima focalizes, “as usual there’s something missing”, reinforcing the challenge of her own transition to adopting a new culture alternatives. Whilst the iconical American brands of “Rice Krispies and Planter’s Peanuts” are familiar to western readers, for Ashima it emphasizes her difference, establishing a cultural jarring within her experience of immigration. Another instance where the food motif is evident is at Gogol’s ‘Rice Ceremony’. The traditional Bengali ritual, lays a pen, a handful of earth and some money in front of the baby to determine their future career. The objects are layed in front of Gogol and he turns away. An ‘uncle’ then proclaims that, “most children will grab at one of them…but Gogol touches nothing’. The inability of the baby Gogol to choose anything forshadows uncertainty plaguing him throughout his life. This contrast between Gogol and ‘most children’ makes him become different, which emphasis Gogol’s struggle to belong in both American and Indian civilization.

In order to belong to a society, effort must be made to immerse yourself into the patterns and behaviors