Hello readers!

This week in my ASTU class, we have been analyzing Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It provides a fictional account of twenty-two year old narrator, Changez’s, experience as a Pakistani in New York City before and after the traumatic events of 9/11. Changez attends Princeton University, obtains a job at the prestigious valuation firm Underwood Sampson & Company, and falls in love with an American girl named Erica all before returning home to Pakistan. Throughout the novel, Changez struggles to find his identity — is he Pakistani or American? What does it mean to be one or the other? This point is especially prevalent in the structure of the novel itself.

The novel takes the form of a dramatic monologue. In other words, the story is told through a one-sided conversation between Changez and an American in a Lahore café in Pakistan. Literary scholar Peter Morey discusses the novel’s form in his essay, arguing that this particular structure allows Changez’s character to exemplify the contrast between our pre-conceived assumptions and perceptions as readers — with regards to “war on terror” discourse — and reality (139). Morey focuses on this “deterritorialization” and destabilization of both the reader and Changez throughout his essay (138). That is to say, The Reluctant Fundamentalist challenges the assumptions of “war on terror” rhetoric, opening up the space for new interpretations to take place (Morey 138). This point is exemplified by the title of the novel itself. As readers, we would assume that Changez would be a “religious fundamentalist”, confirming our pre-conceived ideas about Muslims in a post-9/11 era. However, as Morey points out, this is not the case (139). Religion, in fact, is not the main focus of the novel. Once this point is identified, we — as readers — can choose to see Changez’s character in a new way. Changez no longer adheres to the stereotypes that plague society’s discourse; we are therefore “destabilized”. 

With regards to the dramatic monologue as the form of the novel, it makes Changez appear to be a relatable character, giving him a sense of authority to tell the story. However, the one-sided nature of the dramatic monologue also means that Changez’s narration could be unreliable. In other words, it is unclear as to whether or not Changez is making up his story or telling the truth. Are the characters he describes real? Are they allegorical? What happens at the end of the novel? Many questions are left unanswered.

After our discussions in class, I realized that Hamid may have chosen the dramatic monologue for the very purpose of not answering these questions. In other words, there is not supposed to be a “right” answer; that is not the point. Changez’s character and the form of the novel are meant to destabilize our assumptions. How we interpret the potential answers to these questions shows the extent to which we opened ourselves up to new perspectives, if we chose to do so at all. I found this to be an effective method and found The Reluctant Fundamentalist to be much more impactful as a result.

This is my last blog post, readers! It has been quite the year; thank you for participating. I hope you enjoyed our journey together as much as I did!

All the best,

Taylor K.

Work Cited

Morey, Peter. “The Rules of the Game have Changed:” Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Post-9/11 Fiction.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47. 2 (2011): 135-146. Web. Taylor & Francis. 18 Dec. 2015.

Hello readers!

This past week in my ASTU class, we analyzed a section of Phil Klay’s book Redeployment (the section we looked at is also entitled “Redeployment”). It provides an account of the Iraq war, solely from the perspective of Sgt. Price — a soldier returning home to his wife and dog after seven months of combat.

Sgt. Price describes his experiences in flashbacks, remembering his friends perishing and the odd sensation of returning home. Through his narration, it becomes evident that the alert mindset one must obtain in order to survive during times of war is hard to turn off when reacquainted with peaceful civilization. This point is exemplified when Sgt. Price and his wife, Cheryl, go shopping at an American Eagle Outfitters (12). He describes how there is a “colour code of mental awareness” that soldiers use, which acts as a preparedness scale. “White” is equivalent to unawareness. In other words, one is a “potential victim”; this is the state that most civilians are in all the time. Cheryl is one of these people. She walks around completely oblivious to any and all threats that may be apparent in the mall (12). Sgt. Price, on the other hand, can only think of Iraq as he obligingly heads to the change room with a pile of clothes to try on. He can no longer communicate with his wife, for he cannot turn off the militarized mindset that he acquired in combat (12). He knows that as much as she tries, Cheryl will never understand what he has gone through.

Through this experience, “Redeployment” shows the traumatic effects that warfare has from the soldier’s perspective, both on the battlefield and during the return home. Sgt. Price can no longer go back to his old sense of unawareness that is described as “white”. He struggles to communicate with his wife, who will most likely never move up on the preparedness scale and be able to understand the constant fear and stress that embodies soldiers 24/7 while in battle. In contrast to this, Johnathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — which I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts — focuses on the civilian aspect of warfare. It does so specifically through Grandma and Grandpa’s accounts of the Dresden bombings and the events of 9/11.

The grandparents’ inability to communicate with each other is especially exemplified by the fact that both characters write unsent letters — Grandpa writes to his son and Grandma writes to Oskar — because they do not feel capable of discussing their traumas with each other. The death of Anna and the longing for Grandma to be Anna, as experienced by both Grandparents, is a major absence throughout the novel that ultimately leads to unspeakability between this couple.

The overall feeling that encompasses Foer’s characters, especially the grandparents, is one of victimhood and the asking of ‘why did this happen to me?’. In contrast, Sgt. Price feels more involved in the process of warfare, as he was fighting on the battlefield. Although this may be the case, both Foer’s characters and Sgt. Price obtain a sense of unspeakability after experiencing the traumatic impacts that warfare places on them. Both books may address the issues associated with incommunicability from different perspectives — the soldier versus the civilian. However, the residual feelings and memories that result from the trauma afflicted on these individuals remain similar, as Sgt. Price fails to communicate with his wife and the grandparents fail to communicate with each other. Ultimately, the reactions that these characters have to traumatic experiences associated with warfare leave me with a question: is unspeakability inevitable with regards to trauma and war? Further discussion and analysis will be needed to answer this question.

Until next time, readers!