Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel the Namesake portrays the life of Bengali immigrant couple adapted to their new homeland. The novel skillfully reflects the situation of the Diaspora. As men they can easily merge with the new culture and place. But as women they can’t stick because their identity depends on the sense of displacement, loss of home, longing to return, culture, ethnic consciousness, religion, language and so on. The importance of Namesake and identity brought in the novel. It also describes the cultural dilemmas and displacement of Indian people. Shifting is not merely with geographical or physical but it is a shifting of their inner self. Bengali women overcome with the feeling of alienation. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the psychiatric definition of alienation is “a state of depersonalization or loss of identity in which the self seems unreal, thought to cause by difficulties in relating to society and the resulting prolonged inhibition of emotion”. The author depicts the loneliness, isolation and nostalgia in the lives of foreigners. Nostalgia is sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Volume 11 | 11-Special Issue
Pages: 1184-1189
DOI: 10.5373/JARDCS/V11SP11/20193150