“The Namesake” by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri: Why does protagonist have two names, one being Gogol, author of “The Overcoat”?

The title character, Gogol/Nikhil Ganguli, is born in the USA of parents from India. The name given to him by his parents, before his traditional Indian name is chosen, is “Gogol,” because his father’s favorite story as a child had been “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol, and his father had been rereading that story when he once, miraculously, survived a train wreck. The Indian name that his parents choose for him is “Nikhil,” but he does not use it until he is about to start college and a girl asks him his name:

“ ‘ I’m Nikhil,’ he says for the first time in his life…he is brave that evening, kissing her lightly on the mouth…It is the first time he’s kissed anyone, the first time he’s felt a girl’s face and body and breath so close to his own. ‘I can’t believe you kissed her, Gogol,’ his friends exclaim as they drive home from the party. He shakes his head in a daze, as astonished as they are…‘It wasn’t me,’ he nearly says. But he doesn’t tell them that it hadn’t been Gogol who’d kissed Kim. That Gogol had had nothing to do with it” (1, p. 96).

Thus, the title and first third of this novel would seem to be an elaborate setup for The Namesake to be understood as a multiple personality story. The protagonist’s alternate names would seem carefully chosen to bar an immigration, two-culture interpretation, since the names are not Indian and American, but Indian and Russian. And as discussed in my recent post, “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol may itself be a multiple personality story.

Nevertheless, as I continue to read this novel, I do not expect the remaining two thirds to acknowledge multiple personality, because I have not seen any major reviews of this novel or interviews with the author that raise the issue.

1. Jhumpa Lahiri. The Namesake. New York, Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003/2004.