Ben Arneson's ASTU Blog

Over the past few months in our ASTU class, we analyzed The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid.  Last blog I took a relatively focused look at the way race was expressed in TRF by specifically examining how Hamid contrasted the US and Pakistan.  I hope to continue on that theme with this blog, but with a greater emphasis on the role characterization, especially of Changez and his American companions, plays in developing race as a theme in TRF.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist represents race by emphasizing the contrasts between the personalities of Changez and the people he meets in America.  Hamid represents race this way in order to invite the reader to rethink his own views on race and evaluate his own prejudices about differences based on ethnicity and culture.

Changez is most frequently and starkly contrasted with his fellow “Princetonians” (17) when they travel through Europe.  Changez remarks on the “details” that “annoyed” him, emphasizing “the ease with which they parted with money” and their “self-righteousness.”  He directly compares these qualities to his own, describing himself as having, in contrast, a “finite and depleting reserve of cash” and a “traditional sense of deference.”  Along with this, Erica describes Changez as “polite,” (25) comparing him with other people “[their] age,” presumably also Americans.  Hamid uses these comparisons to present an opinion that should clash with the reader’s presuppositions:  that Pakistani culture is more economically responsible and polite than American culture.  In doing so, Hamid exposes several potential issues with contemporary American culture, and invites the reader to analyze his own culture.  Just as importantly, however, Hamid presents all of the unnamed Americans in The Reluctant Fundamentalist essentially as common stereotypes of American culture.  They are presented as rich, disrespectful, and impolite.  Many of these stereotypes become more apparent later on in the novel.

Changez’s personality continues to differ from his American companions from Underwood Samson as well.  Changez attempts to present an American personality in Manila by “telling executives [his] father’s age “I need it now“;” (65) and by “cut[ting] to the front of lines with an extraterritorial smile.”  Hamid presents these qualities as distasteful by describing how Changez was “often ashamed” of this behaviour.  Here the stereotypes are more clear, in the sense that they are more clearly stereotypes.  While the reader would probably have very little knowledge of how American businessmen conduct themselves in foreign countries, the image of the rich American “cut[ting] to the front of lines with an extraterritorial smile” is an especially jarring image.  Even Changez himself realizes that he is “inclined to exaggerate these irritants” (21) due to his dislike of the US.  This use of American stereotypes is strategically employed by Hamid to encourage the reader to think about his own prejudices by giving him a stereotype about his own culture that he might find offensive, or at the very least off-putting and untrue.

Over the past month in our ASTU class, we analyzed The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid.  The book tackled a number of themes that are becoming more and more important, including racism, prejudice, cultural difference, and the idea of other-ness.  For my blog today I will briefly look at just one of those themes, the theme of race.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist represents race mainly through highlighting the contrasts between Changez’s ideas about the West and Western philosophy and his ideas about Pakistan and “Third World” philosophy.  By representing race in this way, Hamid invites the reader to rethink her own views on race and evaluate her own prejudices about differences based on ethnicity and culture.

Direct contrasts between the West and Pakistan, or more specifically America and Pakistan, are abundant throughout The Reluctant Fundamentalist.  Despite claiming to be a “lover of America” (1), Changez takes every opportunity to subtly insult it through frequent degrading comparisons between it and Pakistan.  He describes the US almost as an upstart nation, with artificial Gothic architecture that is “younger… than many of the mosques in (Lahore)” (3), a culture that deals with minor accidents with “protracted bout[s] of litigation” (47), which should require only an “evening of crying,” a country with “sanitized, sterilized, processed” (101) food as opposed to the “predatory delicacies, delicacies imbued with a hint of luxury” found in Pakistani markets.  These comparisons, while somewhat jarring and abrasive to someone who identifies with Western culture, have two effects.  Firstly, they demonstrate how the Western perspective is not always objectively correct, as its rationalized, pragmatic philosophy might suggest, but is subject to value-based judgements as well.  Essentially, these comparisons allow it to be understood that other opinions exist and are similarly valid.  Secondly, the heavily subjective opinions presented by Changez are intended to be fairly weak.  Had Hamid wished to, he could have easily provided a case for Pakistan’s superiority that rode on something more than how “predatory” their food is, or how old their mosques are.  Instead, Changez’s belief that Pakistan is superior to America is almost entirely opinion based.  This is to allow the reader to understand the effects of prejudices and stereotypes that go against their narrative, and thereby become more able to put themselves in the shoes of Changez when his views are similarly at odds with Western stereotypes.  In short, Changez’s views are presented as clearly prejudiced because it allows the reader to better grasp the experience of having their own views attacked by prejudice.

In our ASTU class lately, we read and discussed Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, a graphic novel about the war in Eastern Bosnia from 1992-1995.  In it, Sacco employs a number of elements to allow the reader to empathize and emotionally connect with the characters in the book.  This blog entry will specifically explore his use of a realistic art style and highly developed characters.

Joe Sacco uses a  realistic art style to create an emotional connection between the reader and the characters in Safe Area Gorazde.  The realism used by Sacco is exemplified throughout the book, but is exceptionally visible with the images of victims of war (181), the image of Edin’s farm (33), and the image of the devastated town (132).  The exceptional level of detail and attention to perspective that these images demonstrate show how Sacco allows the reader to realize that these events happened, and that the places exist.  In presenting his book in this way, Sacco intends the reader to involve themselves completely in the lives and stories of his characters, a main focus in his writing the book.

Sacco also establishes this connection between the reader and the novel by creating complex and well-developed characters.  Edin frequently narrates past events (18), (133), (162), has a relatively complete backstory (88), and because of this is presented as much more than a faceless victim of conflict, but rather as a human being with a story.  The story of the Bosnian War is contained by him, not the other way around.  In establishing characters in this way, Sacco demonstrates how the focus of journalism and wartime reporting should be on the humans involved in the conflict, not the conflict itself.  Even the corpses of Edin’s friends “Senad” and “Rofa” (93) are given stories, shown to have “gone to school” with Edin for “12 years” (93).  By granting these even these lifeless bodies personalities and personal lives, Sacco grants recognition and permanence to the individual tragedies of the war, and simultaneously brings the reader even closer to the victims of conflict.

In order to allow the reader to empathize and emotionally connect with the characters and narrative of the Bosnian War, Sacco utilizes a realistic art style and well developed characters.  This allowed the reader to see themselves in the locations and even the stories of Edin, Riki, and the war in general, and to shift their focus from the impersonal aspects of the war to the specific, individual stories of the many victims of the tragedy.

In the past week of our Arts Studies class, we read and studied Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa’s Obasan.  This book tells the story of a young Japanese-Canadian girl who is taken from her home as part of the Japanese internment policy committed by the British Columbian government in the midst of the Second World War.  Upon analyzing the book, I began to notice some similarities between it and a book we read at the beginning of the semester, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.

A common theme in all publications concerned with raising awareness of the plight of a minority group is the humanization of the group.  In terms of a book, this involves expressing characters in a way that makes them understandable to a modern, Western audience.  The main characters especially are often crafted to draw sympathy and allow the reader to put themselves “in the character’s shoes.”  The effect of humanization is created through the detail that the authors use to describe the characters, and the use of mundanity and behaviour the reader would consider ordinary.

Using seemingly extreme and unnecessary detail when describing the life of a character is one way of humanizing them.  The main character in Obasan, Naomi, reads handwriting on a letter that is “as even as waves along a beach, row on row of neat curls and dots, perfect pebbles and shells on an ordered shore.”  (Kogawa, 147)  This level of detail allows the reader to experience the letter in the same way she would in real life, enabling her to better connect with the characters and by extent, better understand the subject of Japanese internment.  Satrapi uses a similar method to make Persepolis’ main character Marji more relatable.  4 whole pages are dedicated to Marji’s childhood fantasies about being a prophet and her religiousity.  Great detail is given to the specifics of her religion, such as the fact that she had a “holy book,” in which “the first three rules came from Zarathustra,”  and the rituals, such as the “fire ceremony” (Satrapi, 12).  While Marji’s religion does not play a remarkably important part of the book’s plot, it shows the reader that she is a child with a powerful imagination that is just as complex and human as the reader.  This is not the only technique that authors frequently employ to humanize their characters, however.

Authors can also humanize characters by adding ordinary and everyday aspects to their characters.  This allows the reader to better understand both the character and the struggles that they face.  Marji goofs off at school (8), argues with her parents (21), plays with her family (33) and friends (49).  All of these activities are typical childhood actions that a reader can relate to and might even be able to remember themselves doing at some point in their lives.  In similarity, Naomi states that “inside the house in Vancouver there is music and mealtimes, laughter and storytelling.”  (Kogawa, 62)  In doing so, Kogawa eliminates any other-ness a reader might be feeling towards Naomi, and instead invites the reader to envision their own experiences and Naomis as similar.

In the past week, our Arts Studies class studied author Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, a memoir of the author’s return to Sri Lanka to discover the identity of his father and in part himself.  Unlike traditional memoirs however, Running in the Family breaks many of the norms of the genre by violating the presupposition of truth with interjections of impossibilities and fantastical descriptions of real events.  In similarity, Persepolis, a graphic memoir by author Marjane Satrapi, also reaches out of the boundaries of its genre.  Persepolis, despite being a graphic novel, demonstrates a stylized but realistic view of historically important events.  The literary use of identity is a major theme in both of these publications, but the exact way in which each work expresses this theme varies in many ways, with each way providing us with further knowledge and insight into how identity is formed.

Both Persepolis and Running in the Family are about real events, and therefore the identities of characters share some common roles and purposes:  as both books are intended to be memoirs that use their personal stories to expand upon the baseline memoir, the identities of the characters Marji and Michael Ondaatje have some similarities.  Both Marji and Michael are presented as observers.  Marji witnesses the “Cultural Revolution” (Satrapi, 8), the “demonstrations for and against the veil” (9), but as a child, Satrapi didn’t even “know what to think about the veil” (10).  In a similar vein, the goal that Michael expresses in Running, the reason for his return to Sri Lanka, is to “trace the maze of relationships in [his] ancestry” (Ondaatje, 7).  Throughout Running, Michael rarely interacts with any of the characters directly, and instead has implied conversations and meetings.  In this way, the identities of the main characters are very similar; they are presented as observers.

However, there are some differences between the identities of Marji and Michael.  Marji’s identity is tied very strongly with her home of Iran and its politics, but Michael’s identity, while still strongly associated with his mother country of Sri Lanka, is much more divorced from the political aspects of the modern nation itself.  In the very introduction to Persepolis, Satrapi states that “[Iran] has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth” (Satrapi).  Ondaatje goes the opposite direction in Running, sparking English scholar Matthew Bolton’s assertion that “readers who evaluate the book in terms of Ondaatje’s flesh-and-blood ethnic and political identity ignore the complex process of identity formation occurring in the text itself” (Bolton, 222).  Where the characters’ identities in Persepolis are heavily involved with expressing a political opinion, Running in the Family is less concerned with politics and more with “creat[ing] a porous and fluctuating identity using a variety of narrative techniques” (Bolton, 226).

Persepolis and Running in the Family are very different works, from the characterization to the themes to the very medium through which they are expressed, and this difference is reflected in the way the two author’s have formulated the identities of their main characters.  Despite the differences, however, Marji and Michael Ondaatje do have their similarities, and these too are reflected in their identities as both fictional and non-fictional characters.

Over the past week in our Arts Studies class, we’ve read and analyzed Persepolis, by author Marjane Satrapi.  The introduction to this graphic narrative deals with the issue of misinformation and confusion surrounding the world’s, and more specifically the West’s, view of Iran and the Iranian people.  In writing this introduction, Satrapi directs her readers to this increasingly prominent topic.  As a person who has seen these stereotypes in action, I personally found it fascinating to see how Satrapi incorporated this issue into her narrative writing, and how she uses individual characters to represent the mentality of a nation.

Satrapi tackles a number of misconceptions, generalizations, and stereotypes about Iran in Persepolis, primarily the association of the country with “fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism.”  Satrapi seeks to inform us about Iran by humanizing the Iranian people, providing a detailed explanation and reasoning behind their actions.  Satrapi, throughout Persepolis, gives the reader fine details about Marji and her life.  Eccentricities like her punk phase, or moments of childish naivete such as when Marji claims that “99% of the population voted for the Islamic Republic,” are not excluded from the story, but rather included, and this fleshed-out and complete characterization that appears to leave nothing out encourages the reader to empathize with her and draw parallels between themselves and the character.

More importantly than simply including them in her character development, however, Satrapi repeatedly explains Marji’s actions and why she does them, allowing for a greater understanding of the actions of the Iranian people as a whole.  When Marji’s father explains that “The elections were faked and [the Iranian people] believe the results,” Satrapi provides the reader with information and allows them to understand why not only Marji but the Iranian people as a whole might support an apparently corrupt regime.  A similar effect is generated when Marji and her friends decide to lynch another child, Ramin, to punish him for his father’s actions as a member of the Iranian Secret Police.  The act itself is savage and cruel, and on the surface appears to be almost a twisted game.  By digging deeper into the motivations of the kids, however, Satrapi allows the reader to experience the power of mob mentality and the blindness to sympathy that can occur in difficult times.  Instead of seeing cruel and immature children, the reader can envision the fear, confusion, and desperation that drove some of the Iranian people into the arms of fundamentalism and religious rule, and the more moderate (and more accurately portrayed) Iranians out of the global spotlight.

Satrapi uses both the characterization of Marji and the opportunities provided by her development to shed light on the mindsets and perspectives of the Iranian people.  The reader is able to associate themselves with Marji and the honest, apparently exclusion-free, depiction of her, and are able to better understand and sympathize with the Iranian people by extension.  Satrapi also uses Marji to represent the extreme examples of Iranians that the readers draw their stereotypes from: videos of violence and reports of widespread fundamentalism are terrifying without context, but when Marji, a character the reader can relate to, is seen performing these activities, and her thoughts, feelings, and motivations are clearly laid out, the reader can understand that the issues facing Iran and its people are much more complicated than a simple stereotype can express.

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!