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.