Week 3 – The Namesake

Well. The book is finally over. That also means this is the last blog for now. Writing this blog has helped me look at the book in a brand new way that I have never done with any other book. It kind of made this book feel a bit more personal. Overall this is one of the better books I’ve read as it tells a story without any action and very little drama and yet it still seems so interesting. Alright, enough of that let’s get into the blog.

(Dramaalert, 2017)

To start off with can we all just have a moment of silence for Gogol. This man has had one of the most depressing lives that I’ve ever seen. For this week I decided to compare this to a movie that I found which is coincidently called The Namesake. This movie has a lot of similarities to the novel to the point where it’s almost uncanny. One of the more memorable things that happened in this part is Gogol’s marriage to Moushumi and everything that came with her. Moushumi is someone that is heavily integrated into western society, even more than Gogol and Gogol seems to find this point difficult to accept. It was during these points that I discovered how Gogol has just been switching sides between his western part with Maxine and his Indian part with Moushumi both of which don’t seem to work out for him. Now coincidentally there is a Gogol in the movie as well who goes through a very similar life to our novel Gogol (wow what a surprise). As the story moves on we see both of our Gogols realize that they don’t seem to have the same type of relationship that  Moushimi that his sister Sonia has for her partner. We see this in a family dinner with Gogol wondering “Did he make her happy?” (Lahiri 271). All of this ends with Gogol discovering Moushimi’s affair with Dimitri in the novel and Pierre in the movie. This ends their marriage in both the movie and the novel.

The Namesake, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 11 March 2007

Although I can’t really relate with what Gogol experiences in his relationship, I can relate with the idea of Gogol not being able to fit in as 100% American nor 100% Indian. I also feel the same way about this after spending half of my life in Nepal and the other half here in Canada. Although this should mean that I am 50/50, it feels more 30/70 as most of the time I spent in Canada were my defining years.

Imgur 50/50,  Thefluffernutter, Dec 4, 2014

The ending of the book was quite moving as the now old Gogol finds his father’s Nikolai Gogol books and starts reading it, maybe finally understanding what his father thought of when giving him his name.

The Namesake, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 11 March 2007

That’s it, folks. The final blog post about the novel The Namesake. It has been a lot of fun writing these every week and to share my thoughts with everyone. I hope to do it more often.