Previous
Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Detachment:
In Chapter 2, Ashima must rush to the hospital to deliver baby Gogol. Once the doctors deliver Gogol, Ashoke and Ashima both utilize the same simile to describe their new son:
When Ashoke arrives, Patty is taking Ashima's blood pressure, and Ashima is reclining against a pile of pillows, the child wrapped like an oblong white parcel in her arms. [...] Ashoke lifts the minuscule parcel higher, closer to his chest.
When Ashima gives birth to Gogol, her and Ashoke's first child, the couple experience a certain amount of detachment from the event. Gogol is born in an American hospital—not at home, with the mother surrounded by female relatives, as is customary in Bengali culture. As a result, both Ashima and Ashoke feel ill at ease during the childbirth process, lacking older family members to advise and care for them. They are detached from the experience because they lack cultural connection to it; thus, the couple find it difficult to emotionally connect with their newborn child. The baby's birth only feels "half true" to Ashima and Ashoke: he is a parcel, not a child; a package, not a human being. The two warm up to him, but only once they take the child home into an environment over which they have more control.
Related Themes:
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Shedding Time:
In Chapter 4, Gogol and his sister must contend with cultural upset as they move from America, temporarily to India, and back again. In the following passage, the Ganguli family returns from India to arrive back in suburban New England. For Gogol this homecoming is relieving—he is eager to shed the time spent in his parents' home country for America's familiar comforts. To address Gogol's feelings (and to a certain extent, his sister's), Lahiri compares the memories of his time spent in India to clothing, shed conveniently when he no longer has occasion to "wear" them:
And so the eight months are put behind them, quickly shed, quickly forgotten, like clothes worn for a special occasion, or for a season that has passed, suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives.
The Ganguli children resent the entire situation: as children born and raised in America, they are accustomed to American individualism and American luxuries. For Gogol and Sonia, engaging with Bengali culture and daily life requires effort—it is "cumbersome," rather than comforting, something to "shed" in favor of more comfortable American clothes. For Ashoke and Ashima, the opposite is true: traveling back to Calcutta relieves the constant mental strain of living in a foreign country and provides the couple with a relief their children only feel once they are back in America.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Scratchy Tag:
In Chapter 4, Gogol expresses increasing aversion to his name and cultural traditions, experiencing a greater affinity with American culture as he grows into adolescence and young adulthood. In the following passage, Lahiri uses simile to describe Gogol's relationship with his own name, comparing it to a physical source of irritation:
At times [Gogol's] name, an entity shapeless and weightless, manages nevertheless to distress him physically, like the scratchy tag of a shirt he has been forced permanently to wear. At times he wishes he could disguise it, shorten it somehow.
Gogol compares the distress his unconventional name causes him to a scratchy clothing tag. His name is a constant source of irritation, omnipresent, like a thorn in his side. This simile reveals Gogol's feelings of alienation both within American and Bengali culture. Gogol is a Russian name, after all—one that, despite its significance for Ashoke, bears no resemblance to any traditional Bengali name, or White American name. Gogol feels himself at odds with both cultures, uncomfortable with his own singularity. Many teenagers wish desperately to fit in, to be regarded highly by their peers. To stand out is a form of emotional discomfort made keenly physical by this simile. Teenage Gogol constantly feels this discomfort as a needling, ceaseless irritation—the constant scratching of a clothing tag.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Acting in a Play:
In Chapter 5, Gogol reflects on his decision to abandon "Gogol" for "Nikhil" once he moves away to college, a choice equivalent to abandoning one character to play another. Gogol has never felt like "Gogol," but "Nikhil" is certainly not an authentic representation of Gogol's identity, either. In the following passage, Lahiri uses simile to contend with this identity crisis:
[A]fter eighteen years of Gogol, two months of Nikhil feel scant, inconsequential. At times he feels as if he’s cast himself in a play, acting the part of twins, indistinguishable to the naked eye yet fundamentally different.
Gogol compares his existence to that of an actor, playing twins named "Nikhil" and "Gogol." While Nikhil and Gogol may appear to be the same person, Gogol asserts that these two names embody fundamentally different personas for him, delineating his American upbringing from his Bengali roots. "Gogol" and "Nikhil" are "indistinguishable to the naked eye"—twins in a play—because no one, save Gogol himself, can perceive the minutiae that make up his cultural identity. White Americans, in particular, may perceive "Gogol" and "Nikhil" as one and the same because both are "foreign" to them. Many people view foreignness as a monolith, condensing a diverse range of people into one singular "out group."
Related Themes:
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Building Collapse:
In the following passage from Chapter 12, Gogol reflects back on his relationship with Moushumi, recently collapsed due to their incompatibility and her infidelity. He takes the time to compare his relationship to his profession, using simile to relate the two in an attempt to make sense of his current circumstances:
It is as if a building he’d been responsible for designing had collapsed for all to see. And yet he can’t really blame her. They had both acted on the same impulse, that was their mistake. They had both sought comfort in each other, in their shared world, perhaps for the sake of novelty, or out of fear
that that world was slowly dying.
Gogol compares the collapse of his relationship to the collapse of a building. As an architect, he designs buildings; as a married man, he should "design," or invest time and creative energy in, his relationship with his wife. The mistake, Gogol goes on to explain, was in his and Moushumi's intentions. Both sought out a relationship with the other not out of the desire for love and companionship, but as a means of re-tethering themselves to their cultural heritage. Once they grow to resent said heritage, they grow to resent one another.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Time and Names:
In the following passage from Chapter 12, Lahiri uses simile to relate Gogol and Moushumi's relationship to naming—a central theme in the novel.
His time with her seems like a permanent part of him that no longer has any relevance, or currency. As if that time were a name he’d ceased to use.
Gogol compares his time with Moushumi to a name that "he'd ceased to use," connecting time and naming as thematic concepts. Gogol tends to conceptualize stages of his life based on the name he used during said time period, tying identity and memory directly to naming. When Gogol leaves to attend university, he abandons "Gogol," paradoxically abandoning his ties to Bengali culture even as he adopts the more traditional Bengali name, "Nikhil." Gogol views identity as something one can remove and don again at will, like a jacket, or even a name. When he abandons a part of his identity as a married man, Gogol conceptualizes that period of his life as a "name" he disidentifies with, because he views that period as irrelevant. Gogol discards parts of his past the way he discards unwanted names, unaware of the fact that the past has a cumulative effect on identity.
Related Themes:
