The Feeling of Alienation in the Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Abstract

Alienation is an unavoidable aspect of modern life. Nevertheless, it is as old as human beings themselves. The analysis of the interaction between the two sides (the oppressors -the oppressed, thesis-antithesis) sheds lights on the emergence of alienation and the ways it exists. The outhors most of whom have experienced the feelings of alienation in the consequence of their culture having been colonized try to explain this relationship through novels and short stories. A daughter of an immigrant couple, Jhumpa Lahiri is one of these postcolonial writers who have been torn between the two cultures. The Namesake, her first novel, skillfully reflects the situation of the diaspora and the feeling of alienation through its Bengali immigrant couple and their son, Gogol. Lahiri lays down certain types of alienation through her characters’ lives adventures. Characters from The Namesake show some certain symptoms of having experienced the feeling of alienation in various form. Considering the postcolonial theory, the main interest of this article is to examine the theme of alienation and how it is manifested itself in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake in the light of Fichte, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Albert Camus and M. Seeman’s approaches to the term of alienation.

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