How The Character Gogol/Nikhil Struggle With Identity Crisis In The Namesake

I sat in my room reading the book “The Namesake” in the book the main character Gogol/Nikhil struggles with identity crisis. Throughout the book he is trying to live up to his parents’ expectations of him and not ruining his parents’ name in society. While doing all that, he forgets to follow his own dreams and be his ownself. However, during the last couple of chapters in the book he realizes who he really is, what his own beliefs and values are compared to his parents. I believe that literature can promote authentic self reflection and reconsideration of our beliefs and values to a limited extent. Due to the fact, that I personally have been brought up with a stereotypical mindest and because of that, the way the characters in books are created and their way of percieveing certain ideas are different than

For example, my parents have always taught me right from wrong and because of that, when I read certain passages in novels, I can clearly see the right from wrong and I question why the character would do that in the first place.

“No one ever reads a book, he reads himself through the book”.(Romain Rolland). In general, this quote means that when we sit down and read a book, we do not really read the book, yet, we read ourselves as the characters develop throughout the book. However I personally don’t agree with this thought because when we read books we tend to visualize ourselves in the positions the characters are in the book, and in some cases we have a hard time doing so. In my ISU novel “All The Bright Places”, the main characters Finch and Violet meet eachother on a school ledge six stories above the ground trying to commit suicide. When reading further in to the book, I got to learn more about why both