In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namsake and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, many of the characters have experiences that shape how they are today. Both novels are told in the point of view of multiple people, showing us how each of the experiences they have not only shape their own lives, but the lives of the people around them.

In The Namesake, we have the Gangulis, a couple who entered this new world carrying many burdens: a new romance and traumatic pasts. The newlyweds are to learn things about each other after marriage when traditionally, people date before they wed. In turn, us as the readers also learn about these two individuals and see the lives they started not only for themselves, but for their children also. The event that ties this whole story together seems to be Ashoke’s train accident. The train accident that defines Ashoke life also happens to define Gogol’s life too, turning anger into compassion and pity.  Gogol’s name means so much to Ashoke; it reminds him of the accident, how the book saved his life, and how he was given the chance to create life. Yet Gogol is oblivious to all this and secretly despises his parents for giving him that name. Gogol lives for 18 years, wishing to be someone else, wishing to have another name. When he learns of his father’s accident and the meaning behind his name, he gains a new level of respect for his father and learns to accept himself.

Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, also draws attention to one’s experience and how it affects the people around oneself. The “renter”, or Oskar’s grandpa, lived a life of regret and sadness. From his first love leaving him to chosing to abandon his family, he’s done things he wished he didn’t do. After letting down Oskar’s grandmother many times, he wants to try to be there for his grandson, to make up for all the lost time. In playing the part as the “renter”, he is able to cure his own loneliness while curing Osker’s loneliness too. By realizing his past mistakes, he’s able to not make history repeat itself and be there for a loved one when he is needed. Oskar doesn’t know how to deal with the loss of his father and speaking to the “renter” allowed him to finally open up and get rid of his “heavy boots”. Oskar has someone to finally play the voice messages for and someone to speak his feelings to.

When we look back on our past, the bad memories seems to stick out more than the good memories. We then push ourselves to fix those bad memories and make up for the past by affecting loved ones in the present. In doing so, both Ashoke Ganguli and Oskar’s grandfather both changed the lives of the people around them.

Death is an evident theme in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Jonathan Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Death causes people to reminisce on the deceased, how they died, and the last time they spoke.  In both novels whether or not the deceased died alone affects the closure of the living.

            In Extremely Loud and incredibly Close, Oskar Schell returns home from school to five messages left by his father.  The phone rings, but Oskar doesn’t pick up, causing a sixth message to be made.  His inability to pick up the phone causes him to feel as if his father died alone, without any loved ones around him.  Feeling like he let his father die alone, Oskar is unable to find a sense of closure.  He imagines all the ways his father could have died and tries desperately to figure out how his father actually died.  His sense of closure is delayed until he is able to admit his mistake.

            Similar to Oskar Schell’s father, Gogol Ganguli’s father died alone.  When Gogol cleans his father’s room “he cannot remember the last time he and his father had spoken.” (177).  Gogol then proceeds to imagine the daily routine of his father and what his father did the day he died.  Like Oskar, Gogol’s path to closure is a long one, due to the belief that he abandoned his father while he was alive.  After hearing the story behind his name, Gogol feels like he abandoned his father, but as he begins to accept the name he is able to gain closure.

            In The Namesake, Ashima Ganguli receives a phone call and expects it to be about the death of her grandmother. Upon receiving the news that her father is dead, Ashima doesn’t imagine what her father did before he died like Gogol and Oskar did.  She doesn’t have their feelings of abandonment because she followed the practices of her culture as her father wanted.  Since she felt like she followed her father’s wishes and that he father died around loved ones, Ashima acquires a sense of closure allowing her to move on.

            In the end, dying around loved ones makes closure more feasible.  When people feel they abandoned the deceased, like Oskar and Gogol, they take longer to gain closure.

In “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” author John Safran Foer invokes remembrance with many devices. First, he intertwines pieces of letters that Oscar’s grandfather wrote to his father and that Oscar’s grandmother wrote to himself in between the main plot. This gives the story a nostalgic feeling overall as pieces of the letters reveal Oscar’s grandparents’ past and how does it affect every member in the family. Moreover, the author scatters pictures throughout the book that relate to past events including Oscar’s grandfather’s doorknob, his hands with the yes and no on it, and pictures of a falling man on 9/11. He brings out remembrance in these pictures and constantly reminds the readers of how memory in the book affects one’s past, present, and future. On the other hand, Jhumpa Lahiri in “The namesake” conjures up remembrance with other approaches. The first to be pointed out is how the story is narrated in chronological order, from the beginning of Ashoke’s train accident, to Ashima’s marriage to Ashoke, then to how they started in Boston, up until they gave birth to Gogol and Sonita, and then how they too grew up, went to college, and lived life of their own, and so on. Jhumpa invokes remembrance by making the whole life story of the Ganguli go by so fast, that we as readers think back to the beginning and how long has it been since it happened; this effect by turn generates a feeling of bittersweet reminiscence. What makes Jhumpa’s approach to remembrance special is how she makes the whole story revolves around the namesake of Gogol Ganguli, thus the title “the namesake.” Each time Gogol has a struggle between his pet name and his good name with his parents, friends, or even between himself rouses the reader back to the origin of his name, to the train accident that almost killed Ashoke, and to the Russian poet Nikhil Gogol that had inspired Ashoke from the beginning in Calcutta. In conclusion, both novels, although using different methods and devices, trigger in the readers a sense of the past and of reminiscence, a theme which our class will be concentrated on this semester.