Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

For HSC Standard English course Language, identity and culture and for EAL/D: Language, identity and culture: Stage 6 English syllabus for 2027 and 2028
Complement your study of this text with our Year 12 texts and study guides, Year 11 texts and study guides, and English Years 11–12 Study Guides at Five Senses Education.

Brief description of The Namesake

Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli migrate from Calcutta, India to the USA in the 1960s and the novel opens with the birth of their first child. Flashbacks tell the reader about the brutal accident that Ashoke experienced when, as a young electrical engineer he was involved in an horrific train crash. The flashback also explains the nature of the place in his life of the Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol. It was because a rescuer saw the white pages of the Russian short stories fluttering in his hand in the torchlight, that Ashoke was discovered still alive in the crash. When their son is born both parents are waiting for a letter from the matriarch of the family with a chosen name for the boy. However, the letter never arrives and in the USA a baby cannot leave hospital without a name being formally registered. Bengali culture involves two names - a ‘pet’ name used in the family and a ‘good’ name used in public. The parents must decide on a name so Ashoke selects Gogol as a temporary name. However, when Gogol starts school, he does not respond to his newly-decided name Nikhil and the school insists on calling him Gogol. When he becomes a teenager, he finds his name an embarrassment and comes to hate his name and to reject his culture, feeling that both do not reflect him. As an adult he changes his name to Nikhil. While this dismays his parents, they love him dearly and do try to use Nikhil when they are in the company of his friends.

As the family have settled permanently in the USA, trips back to Calcutta to see family and friends are a very important part of the family life, especially for Ashoke and Ashima. Over the years Ashima builds up a large group of Bengali friends in the USA; she is responsible for many of the regular meetings and celebrations. Nikhil goes to university and becomes involved with two American women, first Ruth, then Maxine and finally marries another Bengali and family friend, Moushumi. However, they separate after she confesses to having an affair and at 32 years old, he finds himself divorced.

Ashoke has become a professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology but suffers a fatal heart attack which brings the family back together in sorrow and grief and to the comfort of their culture and their friends.  Ashima after being at home for her children begins a part time job at the public library and makes her first American friends. When Sonia, Gogol’s sister, becomes engaged it occasions the last celebration of the novel as Ashima has decided to sell the family home and spend six months in India and six months in the states at a flat in Salt Lake, becoming ‘a person without borders, a resident everywhere and nowhere.’

Life appears to have come full circle when, at the end of the book during the celebrations, Nikhil/Gogol is about to finally read the short story ‘The Overcoat’ by his namesake for the first time.

Distinctive features of The Namesake

• Explores the immigrant experience, the cultural differences, and the homesickness, loneliness and the generational conflict that is often part of the transformation to another place and culture
• The third person present tense, the sparsity of dialogue and the omniscient point of view of the author gives the impression of a life meandering by, like a slow river flowing or as spool of film unwinding
• Use of flashbacks to life in India and in particular the train crash that resulted in the name of Ashoke and Ashima’s son
• The nuances of life are revealed through the author’s eye for detail and careful descriptions of places, events, feelings and reactions
• Clothing, cuisine, celebrations, and language forms and features are strong indicators of culture and identity
• Intertextuality links to the Russian writer
• The novel reminds readers of the power of language and the importance that a name can have in determining your identity

Ways to use The Namesake in the classroom

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Some ‘ways in’ to teaching The Namesake (novel) in the classroom in English Standard: Language, identity and culture

In this Focus Area Language, identity and culture, students study ONE prescribed text in detail and a range of textual material to explore, analyse and assess the ways in which meaning about individual and community identity and cultural perspectives is shaped in and through texts.

Cultural background

When people leave a home, a place or a country they leave behind so much: family, friends, familiar customs, food and language.  The first generation to leave suffer homesickness, loneliness and dislocation. The next generation, while born in a new country also have to straddle two cultures as well.   

What we eat, what we wear, what we say, how we celebrate, reflects our own identity ad our cultural background. Think about what you would select as iconic of your own culture. In groups discuss some common and different aspects of the cultures in the classroom. 

Complete the table below to clarify cultural differences between the generations: use quotations and your own response to the characters and issues in the novel 

Examining naming and identity 

When Jhumpa Lahiri went to kindergarten the teacher decided to call by her familiar name as it was easier to pronounce. Lahiri said "I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are...” and her ambivalence over her name/identity was the inspiration for her character Gogol/Nikhil and his difficulties in coming to terms with who he really is. 

Reread the section in the novel (pages 24-29) about the naming dilemma that face Gogol’s parents and their solution. Next read the section about his first day at school (pages 56-60) and the confusion about his name. Then consider Gogol’s decision to change his name and the reasons he gives (pages 97-103) to his parents and to the judge at the courthouse. 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines identity as “a person’s name and other facts about who they are”. So, you can appreciate that Gogol’s dilemma about his name could be a source of confusion and conflict for his understanding of his identity. 

At the end of the novel, (pages 285-291) with his father dead and his mother about to spend half the year in India, Gogol reflects that: 

‘Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exist.’

Such thought brings him no solace and it is then, after finding the book of Russian short stories by Nikolai Gogol that his father gave him long ago, that he decides to read ‘The Overcoat’, the story his father was reading when he was badly injured in a train crash in India.

Group discussion and report: After re-reading the sections listed above prepare a class report on The naming of the son of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, its history and its consequences for that child and his identity, both as a student and an adult.

Additional material: ‘The Overcoat’ can be found for a free download at Fountainhead Press.

Task reading and group discussion: Read this short story (only 8 pages) and then in groups consider why it had such an impact on Ashoke Ganguli that he named his son after the author. Also consider would Gogol/Nikhil find any connection to this story about a poor government clerk and copyist often bullied by his workmates and rarely recognised for the hard work he did, whose name is equally influential in establishing his identity.  

Use the Standard English Syllabus description of Language, identity and culture to guide your exploration of The Namesake.

“Through understanding and responding to texts, students deepen their understanding of how language can affirm, ignore, challenge and disrupt prevailing assumptions and beliefs about themselves, individuals and culturally connected groups.”

Small group task: In groups choose 5 different events/episodes in the novel and use the  table below to list examples of Lahiri’s language which affirms, challenges, disrupts or ignores specific assumptions and beliefs about culture and identity. 

Essay tasks

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

1. When Jhumpa Lahiri said in an interview that she "felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new” she was expressing a common feeling for migrants straddling two countries and two cultures.

   To what extent do you think The Namesake explores individual and community identity and cultural perspectives? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text and to other textual material you have explored.

2. How does the language of the novel The Namesake explore individual identity and what does it say about culturally connected groups? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text and to other textual material you have explored.

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English Stage 6 HSC syllabus

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

There are requirements for particular types of texts to be selected from the prescribed texts list for different courses. Great care must be taken in selecting a pathway of texts that meets all the requirements.

In the Standard English course students are required to closely study 3 prescribed texts, with ONE drawn from each of the following categories:

• prose fiction
• poetry
• drama OR film OR media OR nonfiction.

 The novel, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, includes a range of cultural, social and gender perspectives.

Possible pathways for HSC Standard English course