The article will focus on the different impulses of loneliness and exile in The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid that Changez, the central character and narrator, he crosses into the United States of America while working as an employee at the Underwood Samson company and his subsequent return to Pakistan, his native country where he supposedly appears extremely nationalistic. This is to argue that Changez's desperate attempt to assume this position has its cultural roots in the cultural alienation and racism he is subjected to while in America and his futility to naturally integrate with the style of a Pakistani. This essay will describe how Changez's analysis of American corporate fundamentalism branches out from his absence of a sense of belonging to a foreign culture and a feeling of displaced identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get the original essay “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid is a perfect example of how an author can create an inevitable situation of artistic terror and verbal control. It is also a laudable example of how an endless tension between identical polarities of understanding and alienation can be continued across the pages by altering the narrative voice in terms of tone, structure, and reliability. The literary work is occupied exclusively by the overwhelming voice of Changez, its narrator and main character. The charming openness of her personality and the fresh charm of her appearance ensure a fascinating one-sided exchange. His monologue begins with a dutiful and seemingly kind offer to help an American, who slowly settles into the role of a silent speaker and whose ethnicity is brought into play in the first three lines of the novel: “Excuse me, sir, but I can be of help to you? Ah, I see I've alarmed you. Don't be scared by my beard: I'm a lover of America." A set of conventions, involving racial stereotypes prevalent in a post-9/11 world, are ignored in the space of a few sentences. Changez appropriately recognizes the man as American by his "carriage," not by the color of his skin or his dressing inclinations. It seems to Changez that the latter is on a "mission". Both of these words – “bearing” and “mission” – take on powerful nationalistic implications as the novel progresses. Changez meets the American foreigner in a tea shop in Lahore and takes him on a fabulous journey into Changez's past and tells him about his time at Princeton, his profession at Underwood Samson, his trip with associates to Greece, his love story with Erica, of Erica's late concubine, Chris, his latest disappointment with his career and with America in general, his return to Pakistan and subsequent role as a university professor and severe promoter of disinterest from part of America. The themes of integration and exile constitute the root of the novel. Towards the beginning of his familiarity with America, Changez's desire to assimilate into America is evident, but this ambition is linked to a peculiar motivation to distinguish himself – to remarkably proclaim his attitude with an air of official correctness. He reports with composure: "At Princeton I behaved in public like a young prince, generous and carefree." Furthermore, he states with a certain amount of pride and presumption: "I have never, as far as I know, been afraid of loneliness." His contented happiness at being accepted by the people at Princeton is manifested through the phrase, "Most of the people I have met have been deceived by my public persona." These attributes in him change and the rest of thenovel overshadows the story of Changez's growing loneliness in a number of areas of life. For starters, Changez's story makes it clear that he is hard-working, chivalrous, and generally recognized. He, as a narrator, may not be reliable. Through her one voice, we are obliged to listen to her. In telling the American about his Underwood Samson interview, he creates a slightly arrogant detour. The fact that Changez delivers his story in real time makes it even more compelling. There is a continuous parallel between the actions taking place in the Lahore teahouse in the present moment and the America of Changez's past, which gives the plot a feeling of unified timelessness. Furthermore, the distinctive way in which Changez describes the city of Lahore, with the sketchy attacks and separations of anonymous and unidentified figures, is fascinating and also articulates his knowledge of the place in detail. On the contrary, there is an unflappable impartiality in his description of America, with the probable exception of New York – a city with which he still seems to be nostalgically associated. His excitement at landing a job at Underwood Samson and the freedom and economic madness it offers is complemented by a nagging feeling of cultural dislocation: “In a subway car, my skin usually falls in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners tourists asked me for directions. In four and a half years I have never been American; I was immediately a New Yorker” (33). Furthermore, it soon leads to dissatisfaction with the gross dissimilarity in scientific and industrial progress between America and Pakistan, which leads him to induce, with a certain degree of emotional nostalgia, the past splendors of the country that would be Pakistan. Ironically, the primordial civilization of the Indus Valley is forced to compare itself with modern America: often, during my stay in your country, such comparisons troubled me. In fact, they did more than bother me: they made me resentful. Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities laid out on grids and equipped with underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians. Now our cities were largely unplanned and unsanitary, and America had universities with individual endowments larger than our national education budget. There is undoubtedly no reason to think that the modern populations of Lahore are the same people who once occupied the Indus River basin. '. Changez then takes a broad view and attempts to forge an invented identity. Contrary also to what it progressively identifies as the intrusion of supremacy of American neo-imperialism, it needs to associate itself with the alternative standard to be able to resist it. The disconnections that occur between assimilation and isolation in Changez's essence are: Changez, therefore, is not only a victim of one national identity, but of multiple and contrasting identities. As he moves through life, when he moves, he cannot help but think of himself as a member of some "we" - but he cannot, for that matter, seem to decide on a "we" to adopt, or even on a coherent whole. of them. At various points in the novel he is a Third Worlder, a Muslim, a Pakistani, a member of the Indus River Basin Civilization, a New Yorker, and a Princetonian. Nonetheless, Changez may not be as scared of isolation as he claims. no doubt he doesn't feel comfortable, helpless as he is to move forward in life alone. While working at Underwood Samson, he gains gratitude and is normally appreciated. However, he seems to be constantly alienated from the way the company worked and the fundamentals on which his was basedpoint of view. Perhaps he begins to discover the hidden qualities of colonialism in Underwood Samson and attempts to free himself from it. Therefore, when he says: «I could, if I wanted, take my colleagues out for a drink after work – an activity classified as “new hire cultivation” – and spend with impunity more in an hour than my father earned in a day! ', he does so not only with childish excitement but also with a feeling of mild regret. At the same time, the cultural boundary is further widened when he is directed towards Manila where he finds himself torn between the desire to be observed by Filipinos as one of the "members of the official class of global business" and the reluctance to do so. he regularly tells Philippine officials his father's age, "I need it now." He is not accepted as either American or Asian, which prompts him to reflect on the differences in how polite speech is made to an older person in English as well as in Urdu. Furthermore, Changez's feelings of loneliness and exile are heightened due to the American invasion of Afghanistan in the latter part of October of that same year. He is mostly elusive, "preferring not to look at the partisan, sports-type coverage given to the discrepancy between American bombers with their twenty-first century weapons and the ill-equipped, ill-fed Afghan tribesmen below." His evasion suggests his reluctance to take a stand on this political event. In a deeper sense, he expresses his anguish at having to choose between America and Afghanistan, a country he compassionately calls "Pakistan's neighbor, our friend and another Muslim nation." At this moment he begins to dismantle the American side of his individuality. Anger accelerates the progression of Changez's dismantling of American identity, and this procedure concludes with a response to the event of 9/11 that shocks Changez as much as it surprises the reader. This reaction distances Changez from the reader's point of view, particularly the American one. This climactic passage deserves to be quoted in its entirety: The following evening was to be our last in Manila. I was in my room and I was preparing my things. I turned on the television and watched what I had initially thought was a movie. But as I continued to watch, I realized that it was not fiction but news. I looked at first one - and then the other - of the collapsed twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. And then I smiled. Yes, as despicable as it sounds, my initial reaction was to be extraordinarily pleased. Furthermore, the important point here is the bluntness and frankness with which he says this to an American listener. He refers to his surprise at the thought of feeling 'happy': "So when I tell you that I felt pleasure at the massacre of thousands of innocent people, I do so with a profound sense of perplexity." However, he briefly states that he was dedicated to depicting the incident – ​​his desire stemmed from the idea that “someone had so visibly brought America to its knees.” The inability to detach the real from the representative is an additional attribute that personifies Changez's inner feelings. However, the writer shapes the story to this level so that the reader, despite having lost compassion for Changez, does not find him unreliable as a character. Furthermore, during the disastrous September 11th, his affiliation with Erica also changes. To an excessive degree, Changez feels fascinated by Erica because of her subtlety, density and subtle opposition. The homesickness, which they both experience, offers them an unconscious basis for joint identification that ultimately leads to an acquaintance, but it is precisely the desirewhich ends any possibility of a stable relationship. Erica and Changez are both imprisoned in their personal pasts. Changez claims to have matured "with a poor boy's sense of longing" and the refuge that solitude offers him can be perceived as an elicitation of "imaginary memories" that he sensed some of his parents adhering to while he was budding . Reminiscing, Changez declares: "Nostalgia was their crack, if you will, and my childhood was littered with the consequences of their addiction..." Changez and Erica's initial problems in having sex symbolically show Changez's helplessness to "penetrate" a foreign culture that is not his and an enigmatic past in which Erica is imprisoned. His desirability to her stems in part from his amiable demeanor and charming uniqueness. He exemplifies for him all that is past, detached, isolated, splendid and finally exiled. However, there is a wall that divides them due to the difference in their cultural upbringing and the difference in their private life of solitude. As the novel progresses, Changez is more and more attracted by the feeling of the country to which he belongs. Additionally, Erica is progressively troubled by the memory of her deceased lover, Chris. It is these opposing impulses that isolate them. Erica discovered, or at least struggled to discover, Chris in Changez. The thing is, Changez looked for “A-erica” in Erica. It is not only Changez whose idea is hindered by loneliness but perhaps Erica's idea regarding his fall is also extremely symbolic and indicative. The constant demise of their affiliation suggests the collapse between the two cultures. Erica's infatuated identification with Chris increases as the novel progresses and she desires him with a passion that limits a severe feeling of loneliness. Because of this, her struggle in interacting with the outside world increases and she descends into unhappiness. Unfortunately, Changez finds her cold and insensitive. Chris's passing caused the end of his sexuality: 'His sexuality, she said, had been mostly dormant since his death. She had reached orgasm only once, and that too while fantasizing about him." Try to compensate for the lack of sexuality with energetic creative activity. Erica's document for her novel also provides no clues to her situation and Changez is unable to "locate Erica in the rhythms or sounds of what she had written". Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Erica wears Chris's shirt on a beach vacation in Greece and these images are unmistakable. He refuses to believe that Chris is dead and therefore feels the constant urge to metaphorically resurrect him. She transforms into Chris and her own person is incorporated into this transformation: “Suffice it to say that theirs had been an unusual love, with such a mix of identities that when Chris died, Erica felt she had lost herself; even now, she said, she did not know whether she would be found.” According to Erica, Chris was “a handsome guy with what she described as Old World charm.” So, it's very obvious from this why Changez comes to momentarily fill the void left by Chris's disappearance in Erica's life. Changez, whose belief in the "fundamentals" of Underwood Samson has been gradually fading, finds himself doubly alienated by taking on the role of a dead lover. The realization that Erica has her own set of exile traces that are conflicting or apathetic to Changez's historical tract occurs after Changez examines Erica's literary work. When he had begun to understand this, he had been anxious that this might be the final stage he was in.