Gogol seeks to escape his name and his past by re-naming himself, but when he does he gives himself another Russian rather than an Indian name -- Nikhil (and his sister is named Sonya) and the more he rejects his Indian heritage, the more it haunts him. Like the Namesake, Amitav Ghosh's novel, the Hungry Tide is mainly populated by members of the Bengali community. However, Ghosh's novel is set

Being away from one's family is hard; it takes time to get used to it. The newly married woman did know how to face this difficult situation and no one to counsel her on the subject. The wife moved away from her parents' house, then she got two children a boy and a girl. The choice they made for the boy's name was unfortunate. They called him Gogol, like the

Father and Son Relationships Though written from very different perspectives, "Death of a Salesman" and the Namesake share a number of important similarities, particularly with regard to similar messages about fathers and sons. The conflicts and complexities of father/son relationships are explored by both Arthur Miller and Jhumpa Lahiri in their characters Willy, Biff, and Happy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" and Ashoke and Gogol Ganguli in the Namesake. Yet,

The use of various artifacts as symbols is also important in showing the transference and transformation of values in many texts. In Whale Rider, a whale's tooth that has been cast into the ocean serves as a symbol of leadership, and the protagonist's retrieval eventually cements her ascendance to the role of a tribal leader. Her positive arc moving away from traditional values is shown in her appropriation of certain

It seems to this reviewer that the practices of the white workers that Roediger describes are not far removed from this. Though they did not own the blacks, they worked to hold them down so that they themselves could be made to feel superior. Roediger may want to call such behavior prepolitical, apparently in the belief that only when class distinctions enter does the relationship become political. However, class and

Physical Comedy on Film Sophisticated, Funny and Physical: The Romances of Astaire and Rogers Physical comedy brings to mind Moe, Larry and Curly bopping each other over the head. Or it might suggest Lucille Ball stuffing chocolates into her mouth, her blouse or anyplace except on the conveyor belt in the neat little rows the candy-making supervisor intended. (Or better, her boozy bout with VitaMeataVegamin, the Peppy Picker-Upper.) A thousand reruns of