Preview

The Namesake and Bend it Like Beckham Belonging essay

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1707 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Namesake and Bend it Like Beckham Belonging essay
My two texts are “The Namesake” and “Bend it like Beckham”. Our prescribed text, Jhumpa Lahiris “The Namesake” explores the link to belonging in detail. The emphasis is on Gogol Ganguli. Gogol struggles with a sense of belonging to his family and his Bengali culture and heritage throughout his life in the course of the novel. Born and raised in the U.S., while his parents spent their entire life in India following Bengali culture and practices and moved on to America as young adults. Gogol must try to find a sense of belonging as he deals with trying to belong in American society, while following his Bengali traditions. This shares many similarities with Jesmindar Bhamra, the main character in my related text, “Bend it Like Beckham”. The film was released in 2002 and directed by Gurinder Chadha. The film portrays a stereotypical Sikh- Indian family living in England. The youngest, Jesminder dreams of being a footballer, but due to the religious expectations set by her mother and father wanting to raise her with traditional Indian-Sikh beliefs and customs, she is alienated and left to feel as an outcast to her English friends. In both the Namesake and ‘Bend it like Beckham’, the two main characters of Gogol and Jess are brought into this life of divided cultures and strive to find a sense of belonging between their cultural heritage and newly adopted culture they’ve been brought into. The texts show that a person’s sense of belonging is a concept that evolves through time and experiences.

The “Namesake” follows Gogol Ganguli, an Indian origin, born in America. Gogols parents Ashima and Ashoke, faced the more harrowing task of leaving their home and family in India and relocating to America. Throughout the novel, the composer of the namesake illustrates an aspect of belonging through the technique symbolism. Lahiri uses the motif of naming, to create the sense of belonging and not belonging. Gogol’s name becomes a symbol for the difficulty he faces in accepting

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The definition of belonging can be twisted and shaped into numerous forms through various texts that exist. These tend to portray different perspectives of belonging. 'Rainbows End' and the movie 'The blind side'; have composed a series of different situation, which emphasises the sense of belonging by exploring the importance of family relationships and the environment they foster.…

    • 427 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    One’s understanding of belonging can broaden their understanding and acceptance of themselves and the world around them. The statement that we all strive to belong is true, however it may take time to belong to a certain person, place, group, community or even the larger world. This issue is explored in Raimond Gaita’s biographical memoir Romulus, My Father and Khaled Hosseini’s confronting novel The Kite Runner. Throughout these texts, the themes of personal relationships, migrant experience and morals and values arise from the concept of belonging and are explored through the use of language devices.…

    • 1183 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Belonging is a feeling of attachment and security which takes time, patience and sometimes is never achieved due to isolation. When humans strive to achieve a sense of belonging they experience an understanding of their identity and the social relationships within their lives. Belonging in the texts Gattaca, My Immigration Story, Jane Eyre and Immigrants Chronicle is designed to highlight the intricate mix of social relationships and the continuous quest for individual identity throughout their stories told.…

    • 1138 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jhumpa Lahiri Culture

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Those that live in America and those that live in India have different lifestyles and traditions, but when you have to balance both, it’s difficult to figure out who you truly are. Gogol grows up throughout the book with a Hindu-Indian family while living in America. He confronts the challenge of assimilating while trying to pursue two cultures. As he gets older, he then tries to find his identity by changing his name from Gogol to Nikhil and starts different relationships. But Gogol then realized that what has held him and his family together has been the Indian culture, which has influenced him from the moment he was born and named. In the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol was influenced greatly by the Indian culture because it motivated…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout “The Namesake”, Gogol has experienced many occasions where his understanding of his identity has either hindered him. Growing up with an abnormal name, he never thinks much of it until his class excursion to an ancient cemetery brings light unto his peculiar difference. In that moment talking to his teacher, telling him “Now those are some names you don’t see very often these days… like yours”, it allows his to have a further insight towards his own identity. With the recurring motif of the importance of names, Gogol had then begun to question his unusual name, and how it often discriminated himself from the others. This significant moment in time helped him gain a further understanding of identity, as until then “it had not occurred to Gogol that names die over time, that they perish just as people do”. This ultimately lead to him changing his name so that he would no longer feel the isolation he was accustomed to.…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The struggle to find self identity within the upbringing of two different and contradictory cultural groups is the main theme for Alice Pung's memoir Unpolished Gem and Mira Nair's film The Namesake. The main characters for each, Alice Pung and Gogol Ganguli respectively grow up the children of immigrants from developing to western countries who are torn between respecting, participating and identifying with traditions from their parents countries or fully immersing themselves in the identity of the western country they were born in. Pung and Nair explore this confusion through the assimilation of main characters and the effect this has on their parents, the experience of intercultural dating and how it can be a symptom of rejection of culture and parent’s wishes. The significance of a name in developing a cross cultural identity is also…

    • 1349 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Through studying belonging, one can recognise that acceptance and understanding of one’s cultural and racial differences can enhance the sense of belonging, although a lack of understanding prevents it. Peter Skryznecki’s poem “Feliks Skryznecki” and Tom McCarthy’s film “The Visitor” are two texts which explore these ideas. The composers of the text use techniques such as contrasting imagery to convey both these ideas. Through studying these two texts my understanding of the concept of belonging has widened, as I have come to recognise and understand of how and what shapes and enhances one’s sense of belonging.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Namesake Analysis

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Knowledge and perception are key factors in how things are interpreted. They can be the difference between understanding and being perplexed. In the novel, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol seems to go through identity issues with his name. He struggles to find meaning in his name but as the years pass, he starts to understand his namesake through being able to accept his name himself.…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    People have different experiences of belonging, some of these are positive and others are negative. This concept will be explored through the prescribed text, the poems Immigrant Chronicle by Peter Skrzynecki, the film Looking for Alibrandi directed by Kate Woods and the novel Ten things I hate about me written by Randa Abdel El Fattah. These texts highlight the different aspects of belonging in varied negative and positive ways.…

    • 1728 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Belonging Essay

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages

    An individual is significantly influenced by their surrounding when striving to achieve a sense of belonging with others and oneself. Individual’s identity is solely shaped from how they belong in the world, differentiating us from everyone else. An individual’s interaction with people, society, and community and their response will determine if we’re able to develop a sense of belonging or not. They may choose to reject and challenge our behavior; character, values and beliefs making us feel excluded. But only when these features are accepted and recognized we’re able to gain a sense of belonging. This concept of external forces affecting an individual’s sense of belonging is explored in Peter Skrzynecki’s poems ‘St Patrick’s College’ and ‘In the folk Museum". These are the poems from the Immigrant Chronicles which are a collection of Peter’s and his family’s migrant experiences and their endeavor to gain a sense of acceptance and belonging in their new country. This is a similar situation reconnoitered in the graphic novel The Arrival by Shaun Tan, where the author captures every move and thought of the migrant who strives to fit in into the new environment and people.…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The main aim of this report is to describe, analyze and understand Indian culture and integration Indians with British culture in a connection to movie: “Bend it like Beckham”. The aim is also to assign every character to stage of intercultural sensitivity and define what kind of cultural development is possible for each of them.…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tone: Sympathetic Genre: Growing Up, Family Drama Themes: Identity: In The Namesake, everybody is seems lost under various terms . Every character struggles with his or her identity, as they feel allured by the different cultures, traditions, and personal ambition. Gogol, in particular, is torn between two cultures – the Indian traditions of his parents and the modern American culture in which he grows up. His struggle is the same one that his sister Sonia goes through.…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Gogol Family

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The movie’s focal point was on an Indian immigrant couple coming from Calcutta to the United States after an arranged marriage. They give birth to their son, and without even thinking name him Gogol after a famous Russian author. Gogol’s father gave him that name serving a link to a secret past, and the hope of a better future. The family is forced to come to terms with living in a new culture and introducing their son to their heritage. The movie shows the families struggles, and hardships, cultural values/norms, deviance, rituals, cultural identity, gender roles, and how they balance the two cultures.…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    explores the dilemma of name and immigrant 's sense of identity and belongingness in the novel The…

    • 11233 Words
    • 45 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    Language carries the culture and the skillful use of language brings home the heightened sense of homecoming, The protagonists Ashima and Gogol stages become obsessed at different to absorb the world inherited and finally in the process of assimilation they long for belonging. A balance is finally struck in their lives. Introduction: The Namesake is the cross cultural multigenerational story of a Hindu Bengali family 's journey to self acceptance in Boston, The story takes the Ganguli family from their tradition bound life in Calcutta to their alien setting in America.…

    • 2076 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Best Essays