Chapter 5 Summary and Personal response

Chapter 5 summary

In the chapter 5 from the novel” The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri the author said that In 1986, Gogol had changed his name before left his home, and he pursued his ungraduated studies at Yale. In his first semester, he took five courses and the last one was drawing because he likes architecture, but he didn’t say anything about this course to his parents. When he was in his second year of studies, he met Ruth in the train going to visit home, and they continued their relation cheap until Ruth went to London and left alone Gogol. Also, Gogol attends a panel discussion, where the panelist talks about ABC’s (American-born confused deshis) . For him everything that was talking in this panel was very familiar, so he asked himself maybe he is an ABCD too. After that, in his senior year, he was traveling to his home to celebrated thanksgiving whit his father because his mother and Sonia were in India, but the train got delayed because one person committed suicide. Finally he arrived to the train station, where his father was waiting for him, this incident made that Ashoke told Gogol the real story about his name; Gogol finally knew the true about his name.

Personal Response

Gogol decides change his names because people don’t take him seriously and make fanny of him, it is not Bengali name, and he knows about the mental problems of Nikolai Gogol. Finally, Gogol changes his name and this made he felt more confident with himself.  For a teenager is hard tolerated that people make funny of his or her name, sometimes it can cause psychological problems for teenager. I like Gogol‘s decision because his name makes feel him sadly and hates it. I have an uncommon last name for my country Perú because my grandfather was born in Italy; for that, when I was in elementary and high school, I hated my last name because sometimes my classmates and my new teachers made funny of its. Many times, I said my mother that I wanted to change it, but in my country this was impossible to do ,Fortunately, everything changed in the University where my teachers and classmates ask me about the correctly pronunciation of it. Now I love my last name