While both Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close use remembrance to help the reader understand the characters, they use it in different ways and for different reasons. Lahiri uses remembrance to show how different environments and cultures affected the members of the Ganguli family. Jonathan Safran Foer’s use of remembrance involves the impact of tragic historical events on the lives of the characters in his novel.
In The Namesake, Ashima and Ashoke move to the United States from India and their family must try to find the right balance between the two different cultures in their lives. Ashima and Ashoke, having grown up in India, miss parts of its culture while they are in America. Their memories of the members their families and many aspects of their life and culture in India provide them with a source of comfort as they try to accept their lives in a new land. Their children, on the other hand, are confused about what their own culture is. It is only through many different experiences and remembering events from his family’s past that Gogol is able to find the right balance for himself. Remembrance allows the members of the family to look back and adapt their lifestyle to the right balance of the two cultures and allows them to keep parts of their old lives that they miss close to their hearts.
In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell must face the tragedy of his father’s death in the September 11 terrorist attacks. He spends the entire novel trying to remember his father and searching for someone who can tell him more about his father. Throughout his journey he meets many people and a number of them have experienced losses or other calamities as well. They talk about their experiences and attempt to move on with their lives. One of the people Oskar meets is a man from his building who lost his wife and has not left his apartment since. After listening to stories about the man’s life, many of which involve his wife, Oskar convinces the man to leave his apartment for the first time in twenty-four years to accompany him on his journey. The novel also includes the stories of Oskar’s grandparents, who lost their families in the bombing of Dresden. Oskar’s grandfather lost the love of his life, the sister of Oskar’s grandmother. The two of them spend their lives remembering the horrific events as well as those that they lost. By the end of the novel, remembrance allows Oskar and his grandparents to accept the deaths that have impacted them so profoundly.
Both books portray the ways in which remembrance can allow people to change and move on but also keep a part of their old culture or loved ones with them. They invoke remembrance of both cultural experiences and tragic experiences to allow the reader to understand the characters and the changes they go through in the novels.
