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.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, Namesake, are similar in their ability to evoke remembrance within a reader but the way in which they do it is quite different. Foer relies on tangible objects and events to remind the reader of similar situations. Lahiri, on the other hand, incorporates the idea of roots and origins into Namesake. These themes help illuminate the past and, consequently, the future for the main characters in both novels.

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar clings to objects to remember his father and his journey. Oskar’s obsession with the key he found in his father’s vase drives him to explore, by himself or accompanied by old Mr. Black, the urban jungle that is New York City. As Oskar continues his journey he catalogs his memories in photographs that he adds to his scrapbook. This scrapbook serves as his link to the adventures he had and the people he met. The idea of physical remembrance is not only expressed through Oskar but by a few other characters as well. Mr. Black’s apartment is a collection of his travels and adventures with the most important piece being his catalog of names with one-word descriptions. Oskar’s grandfather remembers his pain for the loss of his first true love with his “yes” and “no” tattoos and by marrying Oskar’s grandmother because of the physical similarities she shares with her sister (the first true love). These tokens of the past are the character’s want to hold on to something lost whether it be youth, love, adventures, or even a father.

In Namesake, a major theme arises that centers on the idea of a person’s cultural roots: their family, their culture, and their home country. Gogol is mentally torn between India, the country where his family is from and the heritage they attempt to raise him with, and the United States, where he was born and raised. He feels different and chooses his girlfriend and her American family over his own, Indian family. He eventually realizes that he must embrace both the Indian and American aspect of himself, which sends the message of self-understanding. Gogol is also ashamed of his name once he learns that he was named after Nicolai Gogal, a well-known Russian poet who lost his mind. Remembrance does not always have to be a memory, but can also be a reawakening through understanding who you are and where you came from.

Both Jhuma Lahiri and Jonathan Safran Foer evoke remembrance within the reader but in two different ways. Foer writes about loss and sadness, which everyone can relate to in a specific way. In this sense he is bringing up specific memories with general circumstances in the book. Lahiri evokes remembrance through self-understanding and tracing one’s roots and heritage to different countries and cultures. Although they use different themes, Foer and Lahiri both emphasize the affects that the past can have on a person and their actions in the present.

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Gogol Ganguli is a conflicted young man, torn between the values of his Indian parents and his own desires to be American. In his confusion, he foolishly cuts himself off from his family and culture to lead an All-American life. Then, Gogol’s father dies a sudden death. Shocked and overcome with grief, he intensely regrets not having appreciated his father more. Gogol recalls a particularly moving memory of his father from a family trip they made a long time ago. His father had said, “How long do I have to remember it?”…”Try to remember it always,” he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. “Remember that you and I made this journey, that went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go” (187*) This memory reflects shared memories between father and son, a bond that even transcends the father’s death. As he looks back on this and other memories, Gogol finally reaches a level of acceptance about his father’s death. The book concludes with a significant scene where Gogol picks up a book by his namesake, the Russian author, Nikolai Gogol, a book given to him by his father. He will remember his father by honoring the values he passed on to his son and family and in doing so attempt to atone for past mistakes.

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell is a precocious nine-year-old who has lost his father in the 9/11 attacks. The incident has affected him deeply, his pain intensified by regret. Oskar’s regrets his inability on that fateful day to pick up the phone when his father called just moments before he died. It is clear that he idolizes his father, “I loved having a Dad who was smarter than the New York Times, and I loved how my cheek could feel the hairs on his chest through his T-shirt, and how he always smelled like shaving, even at the end of the day. Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing” (12) Now, after his death, Oskar wishes everyone else to idolize his father too – he is worried when his mom meets a new man Ron and appears to have gotten over his father’s death, outraged when Mr. Black did not have a card for Thomas Schell in his biological directory, desperate when he pleads with William Black to recollect every single detail about his father on the day that he bought the blue vase. But, unlike Gogol’s private remembrance and realization in The Namesake, Oskar’s remembrance of his father takes on a larger significance when he goes on a hunt for the mysterious lock. Various other characters in the novel such as Abby Black, who regrets her broken marriage, Mr. Black who regrets not having stayed home and appreciated his wife more while she lived, Grandpa Schell who regrets a life not lived and Oskar’s grandmother who regrets not having the courage to ask for respect and love from her husband confess their regrets, each of them having their own fond and bitter memories to hold on to. In the end, Oskar has yet to fully come to terms with his father’s death. However, he seems to have gained a degree of acceptance and maturity, bolstered by the numerous memories he has of his father.

In Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, the protagonists go through the painful process of losing their fathers and then rediscovering themselves through remembrance. Both Gogol and Oskar appreciate life more as result of their memories of their fathers, especially since both boys lost their fathers abruptly and with quite a lot left to be said. In both novels, remembrance is synonymous with regret, anger, and disappointment and leads the characters on a journey that changes them forever.

*The page number is according to the First Mariner Books edition of the novel published in 2004

In the stories Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Namesake, the authors Jonathan Foer and Jhumpa Lahiri draw their audience in through the strong invocation of memory and remembrance in very similar ways. Throughout the stories, the authors continuously alternate and focus on the point of views and thoughts of several characters. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, we read from Oskars’ point of view, and his grandmothers, and his grandfathers, and so on. We are able to learn and understand each character(why Oskar is looking for the key owner or why his grandfather cannot speak) as they constantly refer to their past. In The Namesake, we meet the characters Ashima and Ashoke and Gogol, as Ashima constantly reminisces about her life and family back in Bengali, Ashoke constantly thinks about his life right before his accident and Gogol learns about his fathers past and reasoning behind his name. As so many characters each reminisce about their past, whether remorseful or grateful, it creates a stronger sense of nostalgia and remembrance in the reader as well, that somewhat just radiates throughout the book as you read.

The authors also use a very specific memory of the characters to create an extremely familiarized, recurring feeling in the reader with whatever associated thoughts and memories we will have when the memory comes up. For Oskar, his 9/11 experience about his father is constant and repetitive. Ashoke constantly refers back to the night of his accident on the train ride. We see how the emotions and impact of the certain event have an effect on the growth and action of the character. Because of the September 11 terrorist attack, Oskar spends much of his time looking for closure about his father, searching the city through an entire list of ‘Blacks’. As Ashoke had an almost death experience, he feels grateful for the paper that he thinks saved his life, therefore naming his child Gogol after the author of that book. These authors use major topics in which many readers can relate to: the 9/11 terrorist attack and death itself. By doing so, every time the reader reads about the characters’ recurring memory, it will trigger whatever strong feelings, thoughts, and memories we have associated with these topics.

The books are centered around the remembrance and growth of the characters for the progression of the story. Taking it a step further, the author draws the reader in by evoking remembrance and feelings in the reader yourself, making you think and relate as you read.

Throughout one’s life, memories are created and stored within the your brain. As life goes on, these memories stay within you and occasionally are brought back out in the open. Certain tastes, sounds, sights, touches, and smells trigger the brain and invoke remembrance. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close both give light to the hardships people face in reality by using perspective to illustrate different scenes in the protagonist’s life.

In The Namesake, Gogol Ganguli has trouble finding his identity. Gogol is the nickname that his parents had given him, which becomes his first name. For eighteen years of his life, he believed that his name was too strange and grew up disliking it.  Traditions his parents upheld became an embarrassment as he tried to fit in the American society. Readers watch Gogol’s life unfold from the third perspective, getting a sense of his feelings as the story unravels. By viewing his life from the third perspective, readers are able to compare their own lives to the events that occur in Gogol’s life without being too drawn to his emotions. For example, when Gogol finds out how he got his name, I remembered a story one of my elementary school teachers told me of how she was named after her mother’s favorite character in a book. Different moments in Gogol’s life, with the emotions and words Lahiri uses, triggers a memory within a person, be it small or big.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, illustrates the life of a child who had lost his father on 9/11. Oskar Schell sets out on a journey to find the owner of a key that was hidden in a vase, believing that the owner of the key would be able to tell him something about his father. In a way, this adventure that Oskar goes on is a him trying to find closure on the death of his father. Like Lahiri, Foer illustrates Oskar’s story from the third perspective. Readers watch Oskar travel on his journey to find the owner of the key, having their own emotions brought to the surface as Oskar struggles to find closure. Foer creates different scenes of Oskar talking with different people, which can trigger a reader’s memory of past conversations they had before. This may be due to the similarities in the conversation, or the words that were being used in the conversation.

Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan Safran Foer both use third perspective to illustrate their novel’s protagonist’s life. The different events they created are different from reality, yet similar. There are different people who are able to sympathize with these characters, making them similar; however, the path their story takes differs from those of Gogol and aOskar. Even so, the stories of Gogol and Oskar triggers, in some way, a memory.