Tracing the Unnameable: Gogol’s Quest for the Real Self in The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

This paper examines Gogol’s identity formation in The Namesake through Lacan’s three registers: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. In the Imaginary, his fragmented self oscillates between the Russian writer’s name and his adopted American identity, revealing a fractured self-shaped by external validation. Within the Symbolic, his dual names “Gogol” and “Nikhil” represent competing cultural codes that generate linguistic and psychic conflict. Encounters with the Real, through his father’s death and marital breakdown, expose the limits of language and identity, confronting him with what resists representation. His shifting relation to names and desire underscores an ongoing search for coherence that remains unattainable. Integrating Lacanian theory with textual analysis, the paper argues that Gogol’s struggle transcends cultural adaptation; it is an ontological pursuit of selfhood marked by loss, longing, and the impossibility of closure.