Prompt: 2010, Form B. “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you.” —Sonsyrea Tate. Sonsyrea Tate’s statement suggests that “home” may be conceived of as a dwelling, a place, or a state of mind. It may have positive or negative associations, but in either case, it may have a considerable influence on an individual. Choose a novel or play in which a central character leaves home yet finds that home remains significant. Write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the importance of “home” to this character and the reasons for its continuing influence. Explain how the character’s idea of home illuminates the larger meaning of the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.
In The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol Ganguli spends most of his adult life trying to escape his home, which he associates with his childhood and his Bengali culture. Gogol doesn't like his name because it is neither an American nor an Indian name and tries to reinvent himself by changing his name to Nikhil in an attempt to establish a new identity as he goes off to college and into his career. Every time Gogol tries to escape from the confines of his childhood and culture, however, he finds himself inevitably brought back to his Bengali background and the culture and ideas that he has grown accustomed to. Home, to Gogol, represents a part of his identity that he is still not ready to let go of.
While Gogol does not acknowledge the impact that home has had on his life until the latter part of the novel, he is drawn by his culture in every step of his adulthood journey. When Gogol moves to New York City to work at an architecture firm after college and create his new identity, he meets a girl named Maxine who introduces Gogol to his parents. Upon meeting Maxine's parents, Gogol constantly compares his parents with Maxine's parents. He finds that certain behaviors that the Ratliffs allow in the house during dinner time would never be allowed in his house at Pemberton Way. In an effort to create his own identity, he embraces the guidelines and rules (or lack thereof) that the Ratliff have because they are so different from his parents. He acknowledges their differences and eagerly accepts it when he describes Maxine's parents as offering "a different brand of hospitality from what he is used to" and that their life will appeal to him" (Lahiri 136). But while he accepts this new lifestyle that is presented before him, he is reminded of his culture every time he goes back home for birthday celebrations, holidays, and calls from his parents.
Throughout this novel, we can also see that Gogol still places his intermediate family and home higher than the other people that Gogol meet in his life. For Gogol, home is a safe haven from all the unfortunate events that he encounters while he is away from home trying to establish his new identity. After breaking up with Maxine and returning to his own lonely apartment, he decides to move back in with Ashima, his mother, to comfort her after her husband's passing. But he also comes back because he knows that he is always welcome at home, the base of his identity.
In the final chapter of the novel, Gogol comes back to his house on Pemberton Way one last time to celebrate the holidays and try to get his mind off his recent divorce with Moushumi, his former wife. He is once again immersed into his childhood and the identity that he tried to escape from but approaches it with a different light. Instead of wanting to stray away from the home that has been established by his culture and childhood, he embraces the familiarity of the "artificial seven-foot tree" with "branches color-coded at their base" that he and his sister used to put up as children (Lahiri, 284). Towards the very end of the novel, the reader is left with a picture of Gogol reading "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol. From this final scene, we can see that Gogol finally embraces his identity and the culture and childhood memories associated with it. He learns that no name change, location change, or relationship change can alter his identity that has already been molded by the home he has grown up in.
Reflection
Even after analyzing what we had to do in class for the prompt, I still found myself struggling to organize my thoughts coherently. While I wanted to express home as a representation of the culture and childhood that Gogol and tie that in with how it has shaped his identity, I feel like I kept equating home with identity. Looking at scoring guidelines for this prompt, I would say that this essay would probably be a 5/9 because of how heavily my essay relied on the plot summary and general textual references. The vast majority of my essay seems to be me recounting the story without a lot of deep analysis and recognition of complexities which also lead to a seemingly "simplistic understanding of the home".
For me, the most significant issue was not deepening my analysis or having no analysis at all. Looking through my essay, I can see a few times where I have inserted a quote or a textual reference but I have just merely restated what the quote meant after the quote in a boring and repetitive way without addressing some of the possible complexities that might be involved. As a next step, I need to start recognizing the overall themes that can contribute to how home has been significant to the character and use that in my analysis to show how the character has been influences by this significant influence. In addition, I want to focus on one event in the plot that seems to highlight my point so I can avoid summarizing plot details that are not necessary for the analysis of the textual reference and/or quotes. By doing this, I can also avoid references from the text that may be too general and do not offer specific support to the passage.
It also seems like I am having trouble with connecting my thoughts and ideas with effective transitions. Even though I use transition words like "while", the ideas that I present are awkwardly dropped into the essay without a connecting thought. As a next step, I am going to start implementing the strategy I learned last year In AP Language and Composition and that is also in the 5 Steps to a 5 book to create smoother transitions. I will start using connector words or ideas found in the last sentence of the previous of paragraph and incorporate in the first sentence of the following paragraph to create a more logical flow of ideas which can lead to smoother transitions throughout the essay.
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