From Lahiri's The Namesake, how can I analyze the first two chapters in accordance to my project?

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Ashley Kannan eNotes educator | Certified Educator

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I think that more specific detail about what your project is to contain is going to be critical.  In the first two chapters, I think that focusing on the fundamental different experience of child birth in both traditional Bengal India and the cosmopolitan vision offered in America.  I think that contrasting the experience of childbirth in both settings might be an appropriate point to examine in the first two chapters.  For example, in America, the hospital as the setting in birth is in stark contrast to Bengal, where the woman would be surrounded by other women in the family.  The clinical approach to child birth collides with the ceremonial notion.  Along these lines, the naming of the child as something that has to be done rather immediately in the West, as opposed to holding a specific ceremony after some time has passed would be an additional point of difference brought out early in the text.

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