How is "The Overcoat" analogous to any of Soon after Ashima births what will be known as “Gogol” they would like to return home, but in Bengali culture the grandparents must name the child. Just as I'm about to kiss her, she looks at me and she says, "What's your name?" They've learned their lesson after Gogol. They've learned that schools in America will ignore parents' instructions and register a child under his pet name. The only way to avoid such confusion, they have concluded, is to do away with the pet name altogether, as many of their Bengali friends have done. GOGOL'S NAMESAKE: IDENTITY AND RELATIONSHIPS IN JHUMPA LAHIRI'S THE NAMESAKE Judith Caesar Allusions to Nikolai V. Gogol and his short story "The Overcoat" permeate Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake, beginning with Gogol's being the name the protagonist is called through most of the book. Gogol Ganguli: So I'm two inches away from her. Ashima and Ashoke wait for the letter to arrive to America, but it Lahiri also emphases the similarity between Gogol and his namesake, since even his namesake had changed his name. Gogol also feels alienated sometimes in his marriage to Moushumi. Not even the source of his namesake." Gogol Ganguli: End of seduction … Gogol does not understand the point of having two names, Ashima replies saying “It’s our way”, it almost implies that Gogol does not know understand the Bengali way and does not want to follow it, however it is still the “way” of his parents. At the beginning of the book the Ganguli’s are in the hospital. It must have been a pivotal moment in young Ashoke's life, because he wound up naming his son after the book that saved his life from the train. Gogol also feels alienated, especially when he realizes that "no one he knows in the world, in Russia or India or America or anywhere, shares his name. That's something Gogol doesn't quite seem to understand about his own pop. Gogol's resistance to being called Nikhil represents his resistance to traditional Bengali values, a … Now, a tradition he doesn't understand demands of him that he become, in his mind, a different person. Connecting "the Namesake" with "the Overcoat" By: Alex Kasolapkina, Danielle Link, & Jaida Barnes What is the significance of Gogol Ganguli reading Nikolai Gogol's work, not as an adolescent, but as an adult at the end of "The Namesake"? Her luscious lips part. For much of the book, Gogol also does not know about his father's tragic past, you know, the one that led to Gogol's quirky name. Yet few of the reviewers of the novel mentioned Nikolai Nikolai Gogol Man Soul Power Path The higher truths are, the more cautious one must be with them; otherwise, they are converted into common things, and common things are not believed. Gogol has been brought up in the United States and called Gogol by everyone. Marc: Gogol Ganguli.