Self-Discovery-Identity Compromise In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake And Unaccustomed Earth

Identity mystery always haunts people with immigrant and ethnic heritage, including Asian Americans. Typical Indian-Americans are American citizens with Indian immigrant parents. Their growing-up process is full of self-discovery and exploration of self identity. Jhumpa Lahiri has a deepest understanding on Indian-American identity dilemma. Therefore, as an Indian-American writer, she enlivens her works with her life experiences, making her sympathetic identification dilemma recognized by many ethnic readers as well as the mainstream society in one way or another. Her first full-length work of fiction, The Namesake, which narrates an Indian immigrant family’s adaptation in the United States and specifies a second-generation Indian American Gogol Ganguli’s frustration about naming dislocation, which causes his identity frustration, sparked a lot of discussion and re-examination of identity as soon as it came out. In2008, Lahiri got Unaccustomed Earth published, which contains eight stories about immigrants’experiences and Indian Americans’ dilemma between the unaccustomed earth and Indian cultural heritage.This thesis intends to explore three stories, namely The Namesake,"Unaccustomed Earth" and the trio "Hema and Kaushik", from the perspective of identification process. Identity is fluid and can never be prescribed; identification reveals the subjectivity in identifying oneself with a certain social entity. It shows the relationship between identification and psychological as well as acquisitive transformation, and explores how the second-generation Indian Americans fumble to locate their identity niche through analyzing their personal experiences with the assistance of assimilation theory and hybridity.This thesis is divided into five chapters. After a brief introduction of Jhumpa Lahiri and related historical background, the first chapter focuses on previous studies about Jhumpa Lahiri’s works especially The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth, as well as the theoretical framework applied in the thesis, including assimilation theory and hybridity. The body part consists of three chapters. The second chapter exhibits three characters’ personal frustrations between two cultures. The third then discusses their apparent assimilation to American culture through cultural assimilation, structural assimilation and marital assimilation. The fourth chapter is about the characters’psychological recognition of Indian culture and behavioral transformation. Through a detailed interpretation of their attitudes and behaviors in The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth, their assimilation process and their recognition of ethnic identity will be exposed. Moreover, hopefully the analysis of such processes would reveal some favorable factors, which in turn would bring more inspiration for ethnic readers confronted with identity dilemma.