An individual’s perceptions of belonging evolve in response to the passage of time and interaction with
their world.
In what ways is this view of belonging represented in your prescribed text and at least one other related
text of your own choosing?
Sample response: Prose fiction
Prescribed text:
Related text:
The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri, 2003
‘Journey of the Magi’, TS Eliot, 1930
Immediately
addresses the
question and
shows how the
two texts will be
discussed
Whether or not we feel we belong is dependent on many factors, with the passing of
time and the ways we interact with places and people having a significant effect on
how we might perceive that we belong. In the novel, The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
explores how Gogol and his family negotiate the difficulties of belonging to more
than one country and culture, showing how time and interaction can both help people
feel that they belong and also have little or no effect on how they perceive
connections. TS Eliot’s poem, ‘Journey of the Magi’, explores how the passage of time
causes one of the wise men to realise that the world has changed and he no longer
belongs in the new world he helped to create. Here, the interactions highlight a sense
of difference and alienation.
The use of time in
the novel’s
structure
The main character in The Namesake is Gogol Ganguli, who is born in America to
Bengali immigrant parents. The novel spans more than thirty years, from his parents’
marriage in India, to the final family Christmas before Ashima returns to India to
begin her new routine of life in two countries. Time is an important feature of the
novel, which is divided into sections labelled by year, beginning with Gogol’s birth in
1968 and finishing at Christmas 2000. Through the passing of time, we see how the
children, Gogol and Sonia, negotiate the tricky business of belonging to two cultures
and growing to understand their own place in both worlds. We also see how their
parents, Ashima and Ashoke, remain predominantly Bengali in their connections and
customs, despite living and working in the US all their adult lives. In 1994, just before
she learns of Ashoke’s death, Ashima still thinks of America as a “foreign land”, and
her address books are filled with the names of people in India and from the expatriate
Bengali community in Cambridge. For Ashima, especially, the perception of belonging
does not extend to being part of the wider American community; she sees herself as a
Bengali expatriate whose belonging to America will only ever be partial. This is
reinforced when she decides at the end of the novel to divide her time between her
relatives in India and her son and daughter in the US. She is returning to India
without ever really having embraced American life.
Belonging through
interaction with
people and places
The passing of time and how this affects their sense of belonging is different for
Gogol and Sonia. As US citizens, they think of themselves as Americans, which
sometimes alienates them from their parents. Gogol’s fourteenth birthday, for
example, is a traditional Bengali celebration and “another excuse for his parents to
throw a party for their Bengali friends.” His parents don’t see Gogol at all as an
American teenager and fail to recognise that his interactions with his friends and with
American culture make him more American than Bengali. He is not the confused,
conflicted “ABCD” described by his Indian cousin, Amit – Gogol never thinks of
India as his homeland, but simply as India. He derives his sense of belonging to
America from having been born there and growing up with Americans, and he
reinforces this sense of belonging to the US by breaking away from his parents, living
in New York and keeping his relationships secret from his parents. For Gogol, India
is the foreign land, and he realises when he is holidaying with Maxine that he has
never really felt that he belonged in India. Unlike his experiences at the lake house, the
countless childhood trips to India all seem like “overwhelming, disorienting
expeditions” where he could never really relax or feel at home.
Time helps us
understand
aspects of
belonging
However, by the end of the novel, the passing of time helps Gogol to understand
more about Bengali culture. This is especially so with the traditional mourning rituals;
what seemed pointless or irritating when he was younger and enacting traditional
mourning for distant relatives, takes on a special significance and meaning when, as a
young man, he mourns his father’s death and understands how certain elements bring
him, his mother and his sister closer together, to draw comfort from each other and
share each others’ grief. He also understands by the final Christmas how his parents
have tried to merge the old and the new, not only so the family could feel that they
belonged in the American community, but also so that new Bengali expatriates could
feel a sense of belonging in their new land.
The related text is
discussed
In contrast, ‘Journey of the Magi’ begins with a sense of discomfort and unease which
has grown to unsettling alienation by the end of the poem. The narrator is one of the
wise men, who recounts the difficulties of the journey to witness the birth of Christ.
He “would do it again”, but nevertheless is full of doubt about the meaning of what
they saw, feeling that, at the end of his life, he has had a role in the death of his own
culture and way of life. Eliot establishes the sense of not belonging in the first line,
with “cold”, and reinforces the difficulty and tedium of the journey throughout the
first stanza. It is the “worst time of the year”, the journey “long” and in “the very
dead of winter”. They regret trading their comfortable lives for a lack of shelter,
hostile receptions in “unfriendly” towns and the nagging sense that “this was all
folly.” Here, their interaction with the world is painful and arduous, creating a sense
that the magi are on a doomed mission and do not belong in the hostile landscape.
How language
conveys meaning
A sense of not
belonging is
created through
hostile interaction
The tone shift
from negative –
not belonging – to
positive –
belonging – is
discussed
The tone shift at the beginning of the second stanza makes us feel that the journey
was worthwhile, after all. Words like “temperate”, “vegetation” and “running stream”
are positive and soothing, creating a sense that the magi have left behind their
difficulties and have been welcomed into the new landscape. Eliot uses biblical
symbolism here – “three trees on the low sky”, “dicing for pieces of silver” – to tell us
that the magi have reached their destination. They find the place “satisfactory”,
suggesting that at the time, having succeeded in finding the new “king”, they do not
regret the journey.
A discussion of
how the poem
shows that
perceptions about
belonging change
over time
The third stanza begins with, “All this was a long time ago”, so we know that much
time has passed and the old magus is now reflecting on the importance of their
journey. His perceptions about belonging have changed considerably over this length
of time. While he does not regret the journey – “I would do it again” – over the years
he has developed strong doubts about the meaning of what they found. He feels that
they found both birth and death. The birth is literally Christ’s birth, and figuratively
the birth of a new religion and world order. This means the death of the old religions
and the old ways of life of the magus and others like him. He recognises the irony of
the situation, that by heralding the birth so long ago, he has been responsible for the
death of his own traditional cultural beliefs and practices. He does not belong in the
new world, being “no longer at ease here”, and he is part of an “alien people”. The
worrying omens from the start of the journey have been fulfilled. Having seen the
death of the old way of life and no longer belonging, he wishes for his physical death.
Conclusion briefly
states how both
texts fit the
question
Both texts deal with how people’s feelings about belonging and not belonging change
over time and through interacting with the world around them. There is a generational
difference about these feelings in The Namesake, where over time the parents feel
some belonging in America, while remaining strongly Bengali, while their children feel
predominantly American and develop some affinity with India over time. In ‘Journey
of the Magi”, we see how time and events show the magus that he does not belong in
the new world that he has helped to reveal.