In literature, a symbol can be used to help express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. This literary strategy is utilized in Jhumpa Lahiri’s contemporary fiction novel "The Namesake" with "The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol" serving as its symbol. Constructed as an important basis for the entire story, this symbol serves to shape Gogol’s life, to assist his father Ashoke in forming a new opinion about his dark past, and also to demonstrate that expunging a part of oneself ultimately has no merit. Before the book of short stories is even physically enters his life, it has a significant impact on the person Gogol will become. Ashoke survives a catastrophe back in India with the words of Nikolai Gogol clenched in his fist, thus leading to Gogol being named after him, as well as leading to the struggles that Gogol has with his name, which for most of his early adult life he perceives to be “absurd and obscure” (Lahiri 76). His father, quoting another Russian author, tells Gogol that “‘we all came out of Gogol’s overcoat’” (Lahiri 78), which applies itself twofold in Gogol’s case. "The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol" functions in this novel to lay groundwork for the protagonist’s name and the conflicts that arise from it. In addition to providing for Gogol’s name, this book helps affect a change in Ashoke’s point of view of his accident. Certainly, Ashoke associates dreadful memories of his train wreck with "The Short Stories"; however, these memories are put into a different perspective when he selects Gogol to be his son’s name, “[Ashoke] remembers the page crumbled tightly in his fingers but for the first time, he thinks of that moment not with terror, but with gratitude” (Lahiri 28). With Gogol as a new, positive connection to his past, Ashoke is able to better accept what happened to him, and to appreciate having his life saved. "The Short Stories’s" domain allows Gogol to stand as a