Good afternoon readers,
In this week’s blog I be discussing the novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid. First off, I’d like to say that I really enjoyed this novel and that Hamid’s work took me off guard. The novel ends leaving readers with many mixed emotions and many unanswered questions. In this post I’m going to be discussing the impact of Erica’s death. Erica is a main character throughout the novel who is both the main character’s, Changez, love interest, and dearest friend. Heavily burdened by the death of her highschool boyfriend, she struggles to find meaning in her life, eventually taking her own, or at least it is heavily alluded to that she does. Hamid rights with such purpose throughout his novel, therefor I do not believe he purely wrote this in to develop pathos. Perhaps her death is a physical representation of Changez’s love for America dying. Or maybe Hamid’s meaning is even more complex, and the death of Erica represents 9/11s impact of Muslim people in United States of America, resulting in the event isolating Changez. But why? Personally I believe Erica’s death is incorporated in the novel both in order to mirror and balance the dominant themes of 9/11. By balance I am referring to how Hamid perfectly renders both the political and the personal aspects of the novel and the relationship between them. I would suggest that Erica’s death is used as a tool to create the balance.
What troubles me most about Erica’s death, is that it is unconfirmed. The doubt created brings Changez a miniscule amount of hope in Erica’s possible reappearance. Changez explains how he emails her year after year until finally her account is disabled. He also desperately reads her manuscript for “the conviction that [she] was dead or alive”(pg. 167). What does Hamid aim to show the reader by leaving Changez tortured by the unknown?
Works Cited
Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Orlan