Displaced Protagonists in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

Abstract

As a diasporic writer, Jhumpa Lahiri deals with multicultural society – partly from inside and partly from outside. She strives for her native identity and simultaneously endeavours to evolve a new identity in an adopted Anglo-American cultural landscape. However, in this clash of cultures, she faces an immigrant’s dislocation and displacement. She regards dislocation as a permanent condition of human existence. Hence the sense of belonging to a particular place and culture and at the same time being an outsider to it creates tension in her characters.

The basic problem of diasporic writings is the feeling of dislocation without roots. The Diasporas feel homeless and alienated in the foreign land. Dispersal of roots involves pain, alienation, identity crisis and other feelings to the accultured ones. The Indo-American Diasporas Jhumpa Lahiri document the trauma of her protagonists in different contexts. The former in The Namesake describes the struggles and hardships of a Bengali couple who immigrants to the United States of America. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake located in America, brings her character’s struggle in assimilation.