Throughout the story The Namesake, the protagonist Gogol Ganguli, or otherwise known
at Nikhil, has a seriously tough time with finding his true identity. In the beginning of the story,
the Ganguli’s give birth to their first child, an exciting moment that could only be celebrated by
three of their Bengali friends, due to being living in America. Due to their being no telephone
contact with their family in Calcutta, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli wait in the hospital for three
extra days waiting on a letter send from the grandmother, containing the contents of their new
born baby’s name. The letter never arrives, so now what? They decide on naming their child
“Gogol” after Nikolai Gogol the author of the book that saved Ashoke’s life in a near death
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Gogol was not amused by this in the slightest bit and only made
him more self-conscious about his name, this incident may have pushed him over the edge and
internally and lead to the decision that he would one day legally change his name.
The first instance in which Gogol uses his “good name” is when his family leaves him
alone at the house for a trip to Connecticut. It’s a Saturday night, so what does Gogol do? He
goes out with his friends to a party at the university that his father teaches at. He uses a second
identity for the night telling everyone that he is a freshman at Amherst. While at this university
he wanders off to a floor that was basically deserted and encounters this girl named Kim. They
both head back downstairs to the party and sit on the couch. On the couch, Gogol is faced with a
decision he had to make; to tell Kim his real name or to lie to her and tell her his name is
anything but Gogol. Gogol personally does not want to tell Kim his real name because “he
doesn’t want to endure her reaction, to watch her lovely blue eyes grow wide” (Lahiri 95).