The Namesake

Blog about one of questions for discussion.  Include quotations with page numbers. 


Well, I don't know what or where i get the questions for discussion from, so I am going to write about how I felt about the reading.  I actually enjoying the novel very much.  This story is about a Bengali couple who moves to America and is trying to find their identity.  The mother, Ashima is struggling to find her self identity in America.  She wants to go back to her home country because she doesn't know the American culture. She is also is pregnant, so she wants to be back home, where her family can help take care of the child.  She is "terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one" (6). Even after she gave birth to her child, Gogol, and three years after she gave birth, she feels like she is trying to find her self identity.  She doesn't like the idea that her child is adapting to the American culture instead of raising her child as a Bengali.  The reason why she wants to hold on to her Bengali because she wasn't planning to live in America and raise a family.  Her husband, Ashoke was in Cambridge to finish up his education and leave the states after he got his education. But Ashoke got a job in America and did not want to leave his job or his income.  If Ashima did not meet Ashoke, she would of have a career of her own.  "Before she was married, she was working toward a college degree. ...She was nineteen, in the middle of her studies, in no rush to be a bride" (7).  But her parents and Asoke's parents had an arrange marriage for their children and that is the end of Ashima's dream.  This really robbed her dreams because within two weeks of meeting Asoke, she is already married to him.