From that day on, Ashoke had a new outlook and attitude about life. Nabokov especially admired Dead Souls, The Government Inspector, and "The Overcoat" as works of genius, proclaiming that "when, as in his immortal 'The Overcoat', Gogol really let himself go and pottered happily on the brink of his private abyss, he became the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced. The story's main protagonist, Gogol is the son of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli. Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! However, it is only after his father's death that Gogol comes to understand just how deeply his parents did love each other and that it was just their culture that prevented them from. After years of clandestine relationships, it felt refreshing to court in a fishbowl, to have the support of her parents from the very start, the inevitability of an unquestioned future, of marriage, drawing them along. It strikes him that there is no term for what they once were to each other. By entering your email address you agree to receive emails from SparkNotes and verify that you are over the age of 13. Gogol's romantic encounters are very different from what his parents experienced or expected for their son. His genius does not dwell in philosophical dialogues, allegory, or involved interior monologue as do the realist novels of the latter half of the century. Although Ruth, Maxine, and Moushumi were right for him at the time, they didn't end up working out. Continue to start your free trial. It is a place that has been good to them, as much a part of them as a member of the family. This is different than his parents, who are primarily only friends with other Bengali immigrants. The name Gogol was the emblem of his father which Gogol didn't realize at first. As a child, Gogol helped stage plays in his uncle's home theater.[18]. He first dates Ruth while he is in college. You can view our. notice that the narration seems to be taking on more of Moushumis perspective, referring to, surprised by the instant attraction she felt. Gogol makes with his classmates. In this lesson, you will read about Gogol, the protagonist from Jhumpa Lahiri's ''The Namesake.'' Teachers and parents! house down a remote dirt road and find Gerald and Lydia, lounging with their books. [41], The period of literary modernism saw a revival of interest in and a change of attitude towards Gogol's work. Gogol begins to grapple with how distant he has grown from his family roots. However, as Gogol grows up, he starts to hate his name. Each of these girls had both a positive and negative impact on Gogol's life. His parents' funeral customs, begin to make sense to Gogol now that he's a little older. Maxine and Gogol part ways. In 2009, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative coin dedicated to Gogol. By 1994, Gogol has received his graduate architecture degree from Columbia and is working at an architecture firm in New York City. While visiting the capitals, he stayed with friends such as Mikhail Pogodin and Sergey Aksakov. [29] His body was discovered lying face down, which gave rise to the story that Gogol had been buried alive. The relationship between Moushumi and Gogol is driven by Moushumi's desire which is greater even than Gogol's own, to confirm to a certain image of a modern American. Gogol's parents, Ashima and Ashoke, immigrated to the Boston area from Calcutta, India, in the 1960s. The three women he had a relationship with were Ruth, Maxine Ratliff, and Moushumi Mazoomdar. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Moushumi sees. He later starts to date his future wife, Moushumi. Gogol tells the hospital to send his father's ashes home, and is shown the bed where he died. Gogol is also inspired by the design of the Taj Mahal when the family visits India together, when he is in high school. When they arrive, they are swallowed by the embraces of their relatives, whose special names. . In January. [18] The themes and style of these early prose works by Gogol, as well as his later drama, were similar to the work of Ukrainian-language writers and dramatists who were his contemporaries and friends, including Hryhory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. In 1831, the first volume of Gogol's Ukrainian stories (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka) was published, and met with immediate success. But it seems perfectly natural in the story that he and his cohorts be drowned in the Dniper by the Cossack lords. It stunned Gogol when critics interpreted The Government Inspector as an indictment of tsarism despite Nicholas I's patronage of the play. [40] Nevertheless, subsequent generations of radical critics celebrated Gogol (the author in whose world a nose roams the streets of the Russian capital) as a great realist, a reputation decried by the Encyclopdia Britannica as "the triumph of Gogolesque irony". Gogol realizes, only after his father is gone, how little of his father he knew, or what his father chose to reveal to him over time. Speaking of forward motion, the 33 pages you read this week of The Namesake reflect Nikhil's (Gogol) life redefined as he manages the unexpected loss of his father, his growing distance with Maxine and the possibility of new love. [13][14] His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls). Despite having clear instruction from his father that Gogol would be addressed by his good name "Nikhil", an incident during Gogol's first year in school forced the hands of Ashima and Ashoke to abolish their standard of culture and abide by the rules of the American education system. They give birth to their son, and without even thinking name him Gogol after a famous Russian author. Gogol views his relationship with Maxine as the height of his "American-ness" so far in his life. Gogol the child is the happy outcome of a terrible event in Ashokes younger days. Gogol had three serious relationships with Ruth, Maxine and Moushumi one of which he ended up marrying. Latest answer posted December 30, 2017 at 5:56:17 PM. He also learned from Gogol to soften this danger through laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol's Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history from a Jewish perspective. Gogol, about to embark on a new life in college, wishes to do away with the name he hates and attempt to try on a new identity, one that he has complete control over. All rights reserved. With the death of his father and the reevaluation of his behavior, his family plays a role in his identity as he spends more time with them, even entertaining the idea of marrying the Bengalese girls, Moushumi. As soon as Ashoke dies, Gogol begins to remember all of the happy memories that he had shared with his father. How does the loss of Gogol's father turn him back toward his . By "Indian ness" I mean the amount of his parents Bengali ways and traditions that he retained. The family seems to possess every piece of the landscape, not only the house itself but every tree and blade of grass. Gogol is called away from the fantasy he had built for himself with Maxine, where he is now "Nick" - a further sign of the new, Americanized identity he has built himself there. The way the content is organized. Even as they get to know one another, she worked hard to catch up. LitCharts Teacher Editions. At the party, . By contrast, Moushumi, who is of Gogols world, wants constantly to leave that world, to make a new, more intellectually rich life for herself among her cosmopolitan New York friends. Gogol asks him if he reminds him of that night that he almost died, and his father says no; he reminds him of "everything that followed." Chapter 6 begins in 1994, and now Gogol is living in a tiny apartment in New York working as an architect. Through these romantic relationships, then, Gogol tests out different identities, different ways of relating to himself and his family, over time. When Gogol is born, the Gangulis meet other Bengali families with small children, and Ashima finds with the new baby that "perfect strangers, all Americans, suddenly take notice of her, smiling, congratulating her for what she's done." How, for all of us, do children change our place in the community, and what we expect from it? His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, who died when Gogol was 15 years old, was supposedly a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks (see Lyzohub family) and belonged to the 'petty gentry'. He met his future wife during the student protests of 1990 in favor of Ukraine's independence. It is his father's unexpected and unfortunate death that brings him close to the family. Gogol and Sonia know these people, but they do not feel close to them as their parents do. Gogol learns a lot from this connection, and his outlook on life, alters. Gogol, was born, the mishap with family back in India and the reasoning for his name will affect his life forever. She has never known of a person entering the world so alone, so deprived. [31] Unveiled in 1909, the statue received praise from Ilya Repin and from Leo Tolstoy as an outstanding projection of Gogol's tortured personality. He decides that it is her very familiarity that makes him curious about her, and as he begins to walk west, to the subway, he wonders when he might see her again. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. "My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." again with Moushumi. And when Gogol's father suddenly dies, Gogol's relationship with Maxine is strained and quickly ends. Sometimes in the apartment, visit Paris together, where Moushumi is presenting an academic paper. Between 1832 and 1836, Gogol worked with great energy, and had extensive contact with Pushkin, but he still had not yet decided that his ambitions were to be fulfilled by success in literature. Discount, Discount Code When, her the news Ashima feels instinctively that her grandmother has died. [30], The first Gogol monument in Moscow, a Symbolist statue on Arbat Square, represented the sculptor Nikolay Andreyev's idea of Gogol rather than the real man. When this relationship sours, Gogol's embrace of his name with the reading of a collection of the writer's work helps to establish that Gogol is more of a centered human being as he has made peace with who he is in the world, something that includes embracing his own familial background. During this period, he also spent much time with his old Ukrainian friends, Maksymovych and Osyp Bodiansky. From this point on, he introduces himself as Nikhil to everyone he meets. He returns to bed, squeezing in beside Maxines warm, sleeping body, and drapes his arm around her narrow waist, fits his knees behind hers. Contact us The stories adapted were "The Two Ivans", "The Overcoat", "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt", "The Nose", "The Mysterious Portrait" and "Diary of a Madman". Renew your subscription to regain access to all of our exclusive, ad-free study tools. He thinks of his life at fourteen, when he was still, with the names of each of her children, her husband, and her own. Ruth was Gogol's first real girlfriend who he went to . He desired literary fame, and brought with him a Romantic poem of German idyllic life Hans Kchelgarten, and had it published at his own expense, under the pseudonym "V. No matter where he is, Gogol feels out of place. But once his father shares the story of the train accident, it opens the door to see his old man in a new light. So, although he had once promised himself that he would never have a romantic relationship with another Bengali-American, he can't deny the connection he has with Moushumi. Download the entire The Namesake study guide as a printable PDF! Gogol's relationships in The Namesake A namesake is someone or something that has the same name as another person or thing. The fact that she is so different from him is what attracts Gogol. If he picks the dollar, he will be a businessman. It isnt simply the fact that his parents dont know about Maxine it is his knowledge that apart from their affluence, Gerald and Lydia are secure in a way his parents will never be. After resisting his parents' company for so long in favor of Maxine and her parents, Gogol now finds himself lingering in his father's empty apartment in Cleveland, spending weeks with his mother and sister in the house on Pemberton Road. They had both sought comfort in each other, in their shared world, perhaps for the sake of novelty, or out of fear that that world was slowly dying. Not yet. Though she knows its not his fault, she cant help but associate him, at times, with a sense of resignation, with the very life she has resisted, has struggled so mightily to leave behind. During this time, the Russian critics Stepan Shevyrev and Vissarion Belinsky, contradicting the earlier critics, reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer. 20% She feels out of place at his father's funeral celebration; for once, she is alienated, not Gogol. when she was fourteen. BBC Radio 4 made a series of six Gogol short stories, entitled Three Ivans, Two Aunts and an Overcoat (2002, adaptations by Jim Poyser) starring Griff Rhys-Jones and Stephen Moore. on 50-99 accounts. What are the themes of "The Namesake" and explain how they are significant to the title. Why do you think their love affair can't survive Gogol's grief? The first Russian intellectual to publicly preach the economic theories of Karl Marx, Belinsky accused Gogol of betraying his readership by defending the status quo. Gogol, page 182. They start dating, and it's serious. She is the keeper of all these names and numbers now, numbers she once knew by heart, numbers and addresses her children no longer remember. Let us know your assignment type and we'll make sure to get you exactly the kind of answer you need. Why do you think their love affair can't survive Gogol's grief? The magazines he sent it to almost universally derided it. Inspired by the idea of planning a trip to Italy, kindly on this marriageBen makes Sonia happy in a way that Moushumi never did with. But Gogol is attached to them. Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. In 1963 an animated version of Gogol's classic surrealist story "The Nose" was made by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, using the pinscreen animation technique, for the National Film Board of Canada. In recent years, however, "The Nose" became the subject of several postmodernist and postcolonial interpretations. [66], A definitive animated movie adaptation of Gogol's The Nose released in January 2020. What draws Gogol to his many lovers, especially to Ruth . Gogols decision to become Nikhil occurs before he knows his fathers story in detail. This outlook brought him love, success, and an opportunity to work in the United States. January 17, 2023, SNPLUSROCKS20 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. You'll also receive an email with the link. Ashima thinks the same, though for different reasons. His second relationship, with Maxine Ratliff, becomes so serious that Gogol begins living with Maxine and her parents while barely seeing his own family. Like Sterne before him, Gogol was a great destroyer of prohibitions and of romantic illusions. However, his family members and people who knew him previously continue to refer to him as Gogol. Their contact until tonight has been artificial, imposed, something like his relationship to his cousins in India but lacking even the justification of blood ties. [36], The aspect under which the mature Gogol sees reality is expressed by the Russian word poshlost', which means something similar to "triviality, banality, inferiority", moral and spiritual, widespread in some group or society. For as grateful as she feels for the company these acquaintances are only substitutes for the people who really ought to be surrounding them. Until theyd met tonight, he had never seen her outside the context of her family, or she his. He cannot imagine his parents sitting at Lydia and Geralds table, enjoying Lydias cooking, appreciating Geralds selection of wine. This does not mean that numerous influences cannot be discerned in his work. This is mostly due to the feeling that he is caught between his parents' world and his own. 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