This essay will explore how these concepts of belonging are demonstrated within Jhumpa Lahiris novel The Namesake, and the given text for comparison which is an article called From Alienation to Belonging, by Randa Jarrar.
by
hiiluka (student)
English Standard and Advanced Area of Study Task No. 2
12 English
Belonging can be interpreted and perceived in different ways. An individual may be perceived as either belonging or not belonging from an outsider, yet that individual might, or might not feel like they belong on the inside. These perceptions can be shaped into four main contexts; personal, cultural, historical and social.
For any individual to belong, many elements must work together to sustain a close relationship.
An individual’s sense of connection and belonging to a place or another individual can grow out of positive experiences.
Additionally, when an individual has shared experiences with other individuals or groups, they can lead to them feeling a strong connection with each other, but it occasionally drives them apart.
Furthermore, sometimes feelings of belonging are inevitable, despite that individuals desire to establish themselves as a separate individual.
This essay will explore how these concepts of belonging are demonstrated within Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel ‘The Namesake’, and the given text for comparison which is an article called ‘From Alienation to Belonging’, by Randa Jarrar.
In ‘The Namesake’, Ashima seems to have the biggest turnabout in her sense of belonging. Ashima was taken out of her warm and lively home in India where she spent her entire childhood and where she experienced all of her favourite memories. Ashima’s parents arranged her marriage to a man named Ashoke who had been studying engineering at MIT in America. Ashima was asked whether she would be able to let go of her home in India to live in America with Ashoke, which she agreed to do. When she reaches America, it is in the midst of winter, and everything seems strange and foreign to her. It was very cold and had an obvious language barrier which makes it hard for Ashima to assimilate into the American culture and way of life. Lahiri mentions in The Namesake that “Being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realise, is a sort of a lifelong pregnancy—a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts.” p. 49. This is a metaphor which compares being pregnant - the nine months feel like an eternity of pain and immense anticipation- with the agony of being away from your home country. Eventually, Ashima’s faith in America is strengthened when she accidentally leaves her bags on the subway and the next day when Ashoke calls the lost and found, they find that someone was nice enough to turn the bags in, without anything missing.
In the same sense, from Randa Jarrar’s ‘From Alienation to Belonging’, Jarrar’s faith in America was strengthened when she realised that there are others in America of similar background, aspirations, and experiences. Her first attempts of finding people similar to herself when she was a teenage had failed. So she compensated for this lack of cultural background by studying Egyptian and African-American woman’s fiction which gave her a “kind of mirror experience”, that substituted for what she actually wanted to know about, which were Arab-Americans. At this time, Jarrar is feeling isolated and ‘alienated’, as the title states, because she cannot find any history of Arab-Americans literature. As time passes, Jarrar finds a book called “Arabian Jazz” which is a novel about people from her culture. This amazes her and so she tries to look up her culture again, yet this time she has “A new world opened up” to her. In turn, she noticed that, “In a house of mirrors, I had found a glass slate that accurately reflected me.” The mirrors are used as an extended metaphor from which we can deduct that in finding more information about her own culture, she has found out more about herself. Having found bits of her past in books, she now feels as if she is not alienated from the country, and belongs to a large group of Arab-American living in America.
