What's In A Name

The Namesake "the movie" came out recently, so it inspired me to re-read the book and and here is the outcome of the re-reading.

My mother got my name from a book she read in her eighth month of pregnancy. Today, as an English major, I can’t help but think that naming me from a book might have had some sort of unexplained influence over my life. I have always believed that names are very powerful things. As the title of the book would suggest, The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a novel whose central theme is the importance and the power of names. Lahiri shows just how powerful names are by encompassing many of the important themes of the entire novel in the ways her characters are affected by names— their meanings, cultural significances, memory associations, ownership implications, and their abilities to bring people together and also to alienate.

The meaning of Ashoke and Ashima’s names represent the trauma’s that have served to shape their characters. “Ashima means ‘she who is limitless, without borders’” (16). And it is Ashima who makes a huge step in her life moving from her homeland to a place she doesn’t know anything about and is not comfortable in, but she turns it into her home and establishes a family. At the same time she works to maintain a connection and a relationship with her family back home in India. In the end she literally lives a life “without borders” as she doesn’t have an official home and will travel back and forth from America and India. Ashoke’s name means “he who transcends grief” (16). Ashoke not only transcends grief but death itself as he survives a horrific train accident and then gains closure with the trauma by naming his son Gogol thereby turning his grief into something positive.

Culture, the embracing and keeping of, is a very important theme in the novel. Names are very important in Indian culture. “In India parents take their time. It wasn’t unusual for years to pass before the right name, the best possible name, was determined” (25). There are also many rules when it comes to name calling in their culture. Indian children are given two names. Their “good name” which they use “for identification purposes in the outside world” (26) and most importantly they are given a “pet name.” A pet name is like a nick-name, it is used by family and close friends in private and personal settings. The very first time that a cultural reference is made in the novel is through the use (or lack of use) of a name. Lahiri explains how Ashima doesn’t ever use her husband’s good name. “When she calls out to Ashoke, she doesn’t say his name… It’s not the type of thing Bengali wives do”(2). It is no coincidence that, through Ashima, Lahiri shows the reader an introduction to Indian culture, because through Ashima the family itself maintains its connection to their heritage. She keeps traditions alive in the home and, often times, even forces her children to celebrate their culture as she organizes celebrations with their Bengali friends and organizing trips back to their homeland.

Not only is keeping culture alive an important theme in the novel but so is keeping memory alive. The name that Ashoke gives to his first son is representative of keeping memory alive through names. The name Gogol encompasses so many memories and experiences of Ahoke’s life. Gogol is the last name of one of the Russian authors that Ashoke grows up reading. It is the name of the author of The Overcoat, the story Ashoke was reading when he had his near fatal accident. And it was a page from that story that saved his life. The fact that his name is so powerful that it can contain all of these important memories becomes apparent to Gogol when his father finally tells him the truth about how he got his name. “And suddenly the sound of his pet name… means something completely new, bound up with a catastrophe he has unwittingly embodied for years” (124). Gogol’s name is also a symbol of the how the loss of memory can affect a life. He reflects on how he had changed his name and that only a few people left call him by the name of Gogol. When those people are gone, so will his name and the memories it embodied. “Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so cease to exist” (289). Lahiri writes about a time when Gogol is little and he takes a school trip to a cemetery where they do grave rubbings. The cemetery also shows how names carry on memory. The names on the graves stand as testaments to the lives of the people buried beneath them. Gogol finds himself drawn to the names. “But Gogol is attached to them… these ancient Puritan spirits, these very first immigrants to America, these bearers of unthinkable, obsolete names, have spoken to him, so much so that in spite of his mother’s disgust he refuses to throw the rubbings away” (71). In this way the memories of those dead people live on for a while in Gogol’s mind as he tucks away their grave rubbings in a safe place that his mother can’t get to.

Ownership is another important idea to the family. Many times in the novel Lahiri makes references to who owns
particular objects or who had purchased what. “…his father was wearing… a gray L.L. Bean sweater vest that Gogol and Sonia had gotten him for Christmas one year” (173). More importantly Lahiri uses names to establish ownership. “…the book had been bought used, a stranger’s name, Roy Goodwin, is written inside” (173). Even people can be owned— “…She wears a plastic bracelet with a typed label identifying her as a patient of the hospital” (4). Another way names are used to connote ownership is through the use of nicknames. Like pet names, nicknames are only used by people who are in intimate relationships with one another. Perhaps the best example of this is when Moushumi is given the nick-name “Mouse” by the man she has an affair with. “The nickname had irritated and pleased her at the same time. It made her feel foolish, but she was aware that in renaming her he had claimed her somehow, already made her his own” (258). To symbolize how Moushumi never actually turns her whole self over to her husband, Gogol, Lahiri writes, “Only she is not Mrs. Ganguli. Moushumi has kept her last name. She doesn’t adopt Ganguli, not even with a hyphen” (227). Moushumi, in a way, looks at taking his last name as giving herself up to him which, it becomes apparent by the affair, she is not truly willing to do.

One of the powers that names have is their ability to bring people together. Taking a husband’s last name is one way a name can bring two lives together. Also having a general name to describe a group of people is another way. The name “Bengali” refers to an ethnic group. It is the way that Ashima and Ashoke gain support and a kind of second family in America. All these people brought together because they identify with the same name. Another type of name in the novel, an acronym, does this same thing. Gogol attends a talk where he learns the acronym “ABCDs,” “American-born confused deshi” (118). This name is a way to explain a group of people all going through the same thing. “‘Teleologically speaking, ABCDs are unable to answer the question, ‘Where are you from?’’” (118). When Gogol thinks further about this he sees how he too could fit in this category. But he, purposely avoids this group. “He avoids them, for they remind him too much of the way his parents chose to live, befriending people not so much because they like them, but because of a past they happen to share” (119). But when he gets older Gogol feels a special connection to Moushumi because of the fact that she shares that Indian culture he tried so hard as a youth to avoid. At a party one night he feels that bond more than ever when the conversation turns to baby names. As the guest look through a book Gogol thinks about how both he and Moushumi’s names are absent from that book and “for the first time all evening he feels a hint of that odd bond that had first drawn them together” (240). Gogol also feels closer to Moushumi because she knew him when he was still Gogol which is something none of his other girlfriends shared.

As much as names can bring people together they can also alienate them. As mentioned before, Gogol’s girlfriends never knew him as Gogol and this makes it hard for Gogol to every let himself get too close to them. He thinks about how his girlfriend Maxine never really thought about the fact that he was once Gogol, “this essential fact about his life slipping from her mind as so many others did” (156). Because of this and what it represents to him, his relationship with her can not last. Interestingly enough he changes his name because of his sense of alienation he feels that it brings him. He starts to develop this the day at the cemetery. As the kids find last names that match their own “the peculiarity of his name becomes apparent” (68). He starts to feel different from the other kids and becomes embarrassed of his name.

“The sight of [his name] printed in capital letter on the crinkly page upsets him viscerally. It’s as though the name were a particularly unflattering snapshot of himself that makes him want to say in his defense ‘That’s not really me.’” (89)

And because of the embarrassment his name gives him he starts to voluntarily alienate himself from his peers.

Gogol wants to excuse himself, to raise his hand and take a trip to the lavatory, but at the same time he wants to draw as little attention to himself as possible. And so he sits, avoiding eye contact with any of his classmates, and pages through the book. (89)

The way that Gogol seeks to have the confidence to matriculate back into normal society is to change his name. And when he does change it he feels powerful and confident enough to become social again.

In Lahiri’s novel names have all the power to not only change personalities but to encompass all of the themes in her novel. Through the meanings of Ashoke’s and Ashima’s names she shows the central conflicts in their lives, their personal traumas. Through the tradition of naming she shows the importance of maintaining culture and how it can be represented and thrive even in foreign lands. Gogol’s name represents Lahiri’s theme of memory and how it is kept, dealt with and celebrated. Through things like nicknames she shows how names can often signify ownership. And not only proper names, but group names can both bring people together and also serve to make a person feel alienated. I believe that my name coming from a book had a meaningful influence in shaping my love of books. Names are powerful forces and so much can be found in their meanings and their significances, this is what Lahiri wanted to communicated by showcasing names in her novel.

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2005

Cultural Histories Influences on Narratives

I often feel as if I have no history. That probably comes from the fact that I feel as if I have no culture either. My ethnic friends often call me a “WASP” (white, Anglo-saxon, protestant), which is just the slang term for “ridiculously white.” I don’t really have a cultural identity. There are no clubs or groups for people like me at school. I don’t really face much discrimination and/or problems because of my ethnicity to warrant support from others of my “race.” So reading cultural-based novels really makess me realize how much history a person carries with them, based on their ethnicity or race, and how little cultural history I seemed to have. Most cultural-based novels touch upon the idea of cultural histories- how it is passed down, re-told, remembered and forgotten— and how these histories affect the characters and impact the narratives.

Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire is a book that deals very much with the importance of history. It was one of the only books that dealt with my “WASP” history at all, though not in a very good light. I got to read about how my “history” was shaped by the slaughter of other people’s cultures. Memory of Fire is the perfect example of how history shapes a narrative. In Galeano’s work he uses history to form his linear narrative. Before the narrative even starts Galeano writes a description of exactly how he uses history to shape the narrative of his book (and even the ones to follow) in a section titled “This Book.”

This book is the first of a trilogy. It is divided into to parts. In one indigenous creation myths raise the curtain on pre-Columbian America. In the other, the history of America unfolds from the end of the fifteenth century to the year 1700. The second volume… will cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The third volume will reach up to our times. (Galeano, xvi)

In this way Galeano fashions his novel in an historical chronological order starting from stories about the creation of the world that were, for specific cultures, taken to be historical accounts and, eventually, ending his historical accounts in present day America.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Indian culture-based novel The Namesake, like Galeano’s novel, is arranged in sections according to date. Chapter one is seemingly entitled 1968 and it ends in Chapter twelve which shows that the book has made the journey to 2000. It becomes obvious that Lahiri thought it important to show the time in which this novel takes place. But the narrative is not linear such as Galeano’s. The reader gets glimpses into the past of the characters before the year it starts and even into the future. In the last chapter Lahiri switches from narrating present tense to future tense. “He wonders if he will be married again one day, if he will ever have a child to name. A month from now, he will begin a new job at a smaller architectural practice, producing his own designs” (Lahiri, 289). Lahiri does not stay in the lines of the linear narrative to tell the histories of the characters. She shifts from past to present to future. This is because it takes all of these elements for the characters to come to terms with their cultural histories, new and old.

Toni Morrison, in her novel that deals with African-American culture, Song of Solomon, uses history to shape her narrative as well. In Morrison’s novel the idea of forgetting history or the absence of knowledge in regards to a familial or cultural history shape the events of the novel. Morrison takes the reader along on the same journey as the character, Milk Man, to find the truth of his family’s history. As Milk Man learns things, so does the reader. History does not reveal itself to the reader until it is revealed to a specific character. In this way history, much like in Momaday’s book, is not told in a direct linear fashion. History affects the narrative because the discovery or the recovery of forgotten or hidden stories or histories, pull the novel along. Additions the Dead’s family history and Milk Man’s cultural history serves to drive the narrative further. The best example of this is how Milk Man, from a small child, had a habit of always looking behind him. “It was becoming a habit—this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had” (35). But Milk Man’s future actually exists in his past.

It wasn’t true what he’d said… that it wasn’t important to find his people. Ever since Danville, his interest in his own people, not just the ones he men, had been growing… Who were they, and what were they like? …why did she want to keep that awful name? To wipe out the past? Slavery? His slave past? And why didn’t his own father, and Pilate, know any of their own relatives? (293)

He has to find out his history, familial, personal and cultural before he can become a man and deal with his future. The book mimics this idea by constantly moving forward aided by details of the past.

N. Scott Momaday’s autobiography The Names: A Memoir is also a story that is concerned with coming to terms with ones past cultural histories. The Names is created from his personal history as a Native American, and not (as in Galeano’s book) concerned with retelling the history in a linear fashion. This is because Momaday is not concerned with the actual order of how things happened historically as much as he is concerned with how he remembers, or even imagines, it. “In general my narrative is an autobiographical account. Specifically it is an act of the imagination… This is one way to tell a story. In this instance it is my way, and it is the way of my people” (Momaday, i). Momaday is explaining that, to re-tell a history in a non-linear fashion as he does in his novel, is to remain true to and to fully represent his culture. And as far as history is concerned in his narrative, Momaday believes that his history is shaped fully by him and not, as Galeano is concerned with, by the specific placement in time an event actually occurred. Therefore, there is no true linear version of history neither in his mind nor in his book.

I invented history… The past and the future were simply the large contingencies of a given moment; they bore upon the present and gave it shape. One does not pass through time, but time enters upon him in his place… Notions of the past and future are essentially notions of the present. In the same ay an idea of one’s ancestry and posterity is really an idea of the self. (Momaday, 97)

Since Momaday feels that history doesn’t just exist in dates, rather in memories and are as much in the present as it is in the past, so then does his narrative. Momaday is the perfect example of cultural histories shaping a narrative. His Indian culture doesn’t follow traditional, linear patterned narratives. Rather they allow their stories lines to flow and intermingle the present with the past.

As a person with a feeling of disconnect from a particular culture, I find myself being drawn into the various re-tellings of cultural histories from various novels. In Memory of Fire Galeano uses actual events to form his linear re-telling of history from a particular culture’s perspective. In the The Namesake Lahiri follows a linear narrative in her chapters, but within those chapters the narrative slips from present to past to highlight the journey her characters take to find their cultural identities. The narrative of Song of Solomon is guided by the discovery of cultural/personal history. And then, of course, N. Scott Momoday’s autobiography The Names follows his cultural idea of history by not retelling his story in any sort of linear fashion. Culture has a profound effect on the telling of a person’s history. As I feel stripped of culture I also feel stripped of history. But, if Momaday is correct and we, as individuals, can make our own history I am not without hope of one day having my own history to discover and then, hopefully one day, to narrate for future generations.

You Are What You Order; The Starbucks Universe

Cultural analysis using Marxist theories for a Pop-culture class.

Comedian Lewis Black once said “the end of the universe is in Houston, Texas, where there is a Starbucks across from a Starbucks.” Is it the end of the Universe, or the beginning of a new one? The Starbucks Universe. It seems that today Starbucks are as prominent as gas stations and 7-11’s- there is one on every corner in every town. Love it or hate it, Starbucks is the king of coffee, which has become a hot commodity in this day and age (pun intended). The question is how and why Starbucks Coffee became such a pop culture icon. Perhaps one can look to Marxist theories to find the answer to this question. Several of Marx’s followers offer many interesting insightful analyses of why Starbucks is what it is; not necessarily a symbol of the end of our universe, but the symbol of our cultural universe.

The first Starbucks Coffee opened in 1971 in Seattle, Washington. The name Starbuck came from a coffee lover from the novel Moby Dick. The name of the coffee shop has become so ingrained into our culture that in the 2nd editon of the Norton Critical Edition of Melville’s novel Moby Dick there is a footnote that addressed Starbucks name that reads “In a triumph of modern marketing, the name of the ascetic Starbuck has become associated with exotic coffees and voluptuous additives, as well as baked goods that shame the nautical ‘duff’ or hardtack of Melville’s whale ships” (Parker 101). A friend of the owner designed the iconic logo— the mermaid with two tails encircled by the stores name. By 1980, Starbucks was a success in the Seattle area. In 1982, the owners named Howard Schultz, a man who foresaw the vast potential or the company, director or retail operations. The neighborhood coffee shop with modest beginnings was now on the path to reshape the way America ordered their coffee. From the Windy City to La La Land to the Big Apple, Starbucks fever was running rampant throughout the country. At present there are people who cannot even consider starting their day without a stop at their closest Starbucks on the way to work. It has become so ingrained not only in popular culture but in the day to day activities in our society that the whole concept of “getting a cup of coffee” now means “going to Starbucks.” (Cleary)

One of the first questions that comes to mind when analyzing Starbucks is; why is it so popular?

Why is it that the majority of the population would rather pay close to two dollars for a “venti” coffee at Starbucks then sixty-nine cents for a large coffee at 7-11? It could relate to the fact that purchasing one’s coffee at a prestigious café is a declaration of one’s social status, which we place a lot of emphasis on in this country. Maybe Americans figure that paying more for what is advertised as a gourmet brew is seen as a simple, inexpensive luxury. In Marx’s theory, the essential logic of class relations is one of exploitation through political and ideological domination (Burris). Starbucks has made itself the dominant name in coffee and coffee accessories. It is the most numerous of the coffee establishments thereby the most frequented. Because of the cultural domination by Starbucks it has become not only an icon but also a symbol of cultural status. You’re someone who is in the “in crowd” if you unrecognizable status if you are carrying around an unrecognizable Styrofoam cup. Starbucks is now buying out the locations of smaller cafés, just as it once was, to become the dominant and most exploitative coffee selling establishment (Cleary).

But is dominance by sheer number the only way that Starbucks got to be so recognized?

It quite possibly could be due to influence from the mass media; a Starbucks-type coffee shop was glorified in Friends, the most popular TV show for the past ten years. Friends portrayed coffee shops as trendy places to frequent and also great places to meet people, business contacts, family members, etc. This is not to say that Friends and Starbucks were working together to capitalize on the coffee shop market, but the people who benefited from both their successes were, overwhelmingly, upper-class, rich, white people (the actors and producers of the show and the owners of Starbucks’). The dominance of this one type of social group being involved in all aspects illustrates on of the basic ideas of Marxism, that cultural products “implicitly or explicitly support the interests of the dominant groups who, socially, politically, economically and culturally, benefit from the economic organization of society” (Storey, 3). In Marxism, media is also seen as an amplifier. Media institutions “act largely in tandem with the dominant institutions in society.” Media reflects and at the same time influences society. (Chandler)

Why is it that society is so ready to follow the media or each other for that matter?

From a Tall-Decaf-Non-Fat-Latte to a Grande-Caramel-Macchiato, at Starbucks one can place orders for beverages as individual as their tastes are. People can get a sense of being an individual while at the same time be an active participant in the latest cultural fad. Theodor Adorno would argue that the reason a place like Starbucks becomes popular is because of that false sense of individualism. His argument is that culture industry standardizes everything and then gets people to purchase products under the false assumption that they are individual or original (Story, 3). If we feel like we are being treated like an individual that means we will feel special and then want to come back to keep getting that feeling of being different than other people, however false that sense might be.

Has Starbucks been so ingrained in popular culture that it has become part of our identities?

After placing ones order with the Starbucks employee behind the counter the next step is to wait until the “barista” calls out “Grande Mocha!” or “Soy-Milk-Chai-Latte!” Upon hearing one’s order the Grande Mocha Man or the Soy-Milk-Chai-Latte Woman steps up to the bar and receives their coffee. This is a prime example of Louis Althusser’s original concept of interpellation, otherwise known as hailing. He argued that “ideological state apparatuses” (Storey, 102) hailed persons into certain positions. It is mostly used for things such as class or race. In this case it works mostly to hail someone as a particular class, the class identity of a person who is willing to pay two dollars for a cup of coffee. But it is also a way of associating a person in the position of a Starbucks customer. You are what you order. You are no longer a person or a name, you are a coffee, and not just any coffee, you are a Starbucks brewed coffee.

In the Starbucks Universe there are no small people, only tall. There is no such thing as medium coffee, but there are “grande drips” which use both Italian and French descriptors. You can express yourself through the way you like your morning, afternoon, or late evening coffee. You can feel like an individual surrounded by people searching for the same feeling. Starbucks has dominated the coffee shop scene for many years now, it has become a national phenomenon. It has created a, seemingly, universal need for its product. Karl Marx and his followers over the years have given us many theories to help us analyze and figure out why, exactly, Starbucks has become such a pop culture icon. There is not just one reason this has happened, there are several, all working together to influence culture. Its vast popularity is partly due to the fact that Starbucks has integrated itself with the representation of high cultural status. It also has been helped by the mass media representations of name brand coffee establishments as being a “cool” place to frequent. Starbucks illustrates Adorno’s idea that people are searching for originality and that is why they are drawn to the idea of Starbucks-- because it gives them a place to feel different because of their “made to your tastes” orders. Lastly it demonstrates how Starbucks has integrated itself into our culture by Althusser’s concept of interpellation. We have become what we order at Starbucks. In the Starbucks Universe I am a Grande-Non-Fat-No-Foam-Latte.


Works Cited

Black, Lewis. “The End of the Universe.” Audio cd. Stand up Records, 07 01 02.
Burrie, Val. 1987. The Neo-Marxist Synthesis of Marx and Weber on Class. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~vburris/soc617/ marxweb.htm
Chandler, Daniel. “Marxist Media Theory.” 4 10 02. www. aber.ac.uk/media/documents/marxism/marxism05.html
Cleary, Ellen. “Starbucks Case Study.” 1999. www.mhhe.com/ business/management/thompson/11e/case/starbucks.html
Parker, Hershel, ed. Moby Dick. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.
Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Cutlure. 3rd ed. Prentice Hall, 2001.

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2004