Identity Crisis in The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Integration and Alienation DOCX

Title	Identity Crisis in The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Integration and Alienation
Author	Mai Ibrahim
Pages	14
File Size	125.5 KB
File Type	DOCX
Total Downloads	385
Total Views	812

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Ibrahim 1 Mai Ibrahim Dr. Amira Nowaira Contemporary Novel 15 May 2017 Identity Crisis in The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Integration and Alienation In a multicultural and postcolonial world, identities cease to become rigid and permanently fixed entities. Due to the transnational and transcultural movements all around the world, identities belonging to postcolonial subjects and third world countries, in particular, become rather fluid, hybrid and liable to frequent change. Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist captures the impact of cultural hybridity on non-white immigrants in America, and how it eventually leads to their identity crisis, through his protagonist, Changez, a Muslim, non-white Pakistani immigrant in America. In her review of the novel, Marina Budhos states that "What makes this novel such an absorbing read is the unsettling dialogue it creates within the reader. Its minimalism, which leaves so much room for argument, also renders our complicity, forcing us to actively talk back, unable to retreat to our national borders with their complacent certainties. Changez's discomfort becomes our own discomfort". The aim of the paper at hand is to trace Changez's journey from infatuation to disillusionment with America, while exploring the factors that lead to his identity crisis. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a juxtaposition of both American and Pakistani culture in attempt to reveal the identity struggle which non-white immigrants in America face, in terms of race, class and nationality. Although, Pakistan was not subjected to direct colonization by America, however, being a third world country it is bound to be affected by American neo-colonialism. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Hamid presents America as a neo-colonial power which has adopted the attitude of a colonialist country. Even after...