As Gogol grows up, we can use his name as a window into his psyche. When Gogol is young he doesn't care about his name. On page 59, when he goes for his first day of school, he doesn't want to be called Nikhil or anything. He knows himself only as Gogol and that is what he claims to be called. This is important because it is the first time he has been presented with the option of changing his name. Gogol has a strong sense of self at this point and knows no other influences. Once exposed to the school's outside influence, he begins to realize that his name is strange. This is where Gogol begins to have doubts about his name. He is experiencing the typical doubts and resulting paranoia that accompany puberty. It's typical of adolescence to believe that everyone will choose you because you stray from normality. However, Gogol does not realize that the most that an unusual name will evoke is a fleeting thought. As a result Gogol does a very normal thing, he starts changing things about himself to test whether his environment will respond positively or negatively. The anomaly is that Gogol has the option to change his name while most wouldn't even seriously consider it. It is at this point that the problem of identity begins to develop. On page 95 He has a positive experience with the girl he meets in the college dorm after telling her that his name is Nikhil, along with some other lies about choosing. In a way, this is his first real step out of his shell and he takes it like Nikhil. As a result, he never gives Gogol a chance. If the situation was some sort of experiment, it was tainted by the change in more than one variable. He changed his extroversion and his name in the same experiment. This confusion leaves the possibility that...... middle of paper ......ip. He likes how free he feels. Then he sees a train passing by and thinks about the consequences of what he is doing. Then he feels bad because he realizes that having no treatment and no choice can be as negative as it is liberating. Looking back, this theme of indecision is foreshadowed by the rice ceremony scene on page 40. Gogol chooses nothing as a life path and instead when forced to choose he breaks down and cries. This is a microcosm of Gogol's life. It is divided into two different directions. On the one hand there is family and tradition, on the other he tries to distinguish himself from his family by being typically American. During this war for control of Gogol's wages, it would seem that the real Gogol, the person defined and distinct from those two expectations, the person that that child had the potential to be, has fallen by the wayside, at least until now...