The Namesake: The Importance of Love/intimacy for Self-discovery

The Ganguli’s. This book begins with Ashoke and Ashima and their lives beginning after they get married. When they come to America Ashima gives birth to a boy named Gogol and later to a daughter named Sonia, and that’s when the narrative of the book switches. A huge part of the novel is how Gogol struggles to figure out who he is and his identity. Gogol also gets in relationships with girls which shows the readers that intimacy/love is up there with one of the most important themes. Throughout the novel Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri the theme of love and intimacy are shown to us by living through Gogol’s family and his relationships.

Gogol gets in a serious relationship with a woman named Ruth. He meets her while on the train back home to visit his family and easily falls for her. “In the autumn of his sophomore year, he boards a particularly crowded train at Union Station… A girl is seated next to the window, reading a folded back issue of the New Yorker”(Lahiri 109). Ruth goes to the same school as Gogol as well. After they start dating for a while they spend so much time apart. “He can't imagine coming from such parents, such a background, and when he describes his own upbringing it feels bland by comparison. But Ruth expresses interest”(Lahiri 111). To him it was really exciting dating a girl with a family so different from his. In this relationship it’s like we find new people because Gogol and Ruth start acting so different. The relationship obviously doesn’t workout and Gogol vows to be with a woman that only can show him the real meaning of love. He only gets with her because he never had a taste of love in his life

He also gets in another relationship with a woman named Maxine. “She approaches him again as he is standing idle… Her name is Maxine. She leans back against a column as she speaks, smiling at him easily, drinking a glass of champagne” (Lahiri 128). In this specific relationship he gets sad because she causes him to become distant from his family, and the culture he grew up with as well. “At times, as the laughter at Gerald and Lydia’s table swells, and another bottle… he is conscious of the fact that his immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal of his own”(Lahiri 141). Gogol loves the life that Maxine lives and that’s what makes him attracted. Gogol’s father dies and that’s when he feels so much guilt for not spending more time with his father and family. This is an important thing in the novel because Maxine allowed him to be distant from his culture, which he wanted to be but it helped us see him evolving as a character. This relationship he had with Maxine helped him realize how much he needs his family and how much they need him.

His next relationship ends up being arranged by his mother with a woman named Moushumi. “But his mother persists, reminding him, the next time they speak, that her parents come to his father’s funeral”(Lahiri 192). She spent most of her life in other countries and is a different type of girl that Gogol would see himself with. Gogol and Moushumi get married because their parents want them to and she ends up where something she had on from her old wedding. When Moushumi and Gogol go to Paris she betrays him by telling people his real name. “She agreed to an early dinner with Dimitri that night… he regards their time together as perfectly normal” (Lahiri 264). Moushumi then begins having an affair with her high school crush Dimitri, and ends up telling Gogol which obviously leads to them leaving each other. This relationship made him realize that the only thing important is his family and its culture, also leads to him finally take in the importance of his name and why he should accept himself.

In the novel Namesake when it comes to love and intimacy you see a pattern with Gogol's love life. The pattern you see is Gogol learning how to accept himself and figure how important family actually is, and each woman has some sort of freedom from their family which Gogol wanted earlier in the book. This is why the theme love/intimacy are really important in the novel.