Family - Themes, The Namesake | The Namesake - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Since the main character of The Namesake is named after a Russian novelist, we'll take the liberty of recalling something that the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

We're not sure whether The Namesake agrees, but it certainly does explore many different types of families: the extended Bengali family and its customs; American families; smaller nuclear families; families with divorced parents; families with mixed race parents; young parents and their children. Each generation has its own way of being happy or unhappy, with each succeeding generation deciding whether to stick with their parents' customs, or to come up with a few of their own.

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Gogol does not fall in love with Maxine; rather, he falls in love with her family, and only because it's so different from his own, and so much more glamorous. 

The novel does not take a stance on which type of family, Bengali or Anglo-American, functions better.