Wednesday, September 17, 2014

In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez claims he is a lover of America, but he hints at a more complex and conflicted relationship. What...

Changez loves America because it has offered him opportunities he may not have had in his home country of Pakistan. Throughout the book he travels to America for university, and is hired as a businessman and becomes very successful. He has a great apartment and even meets and falls in love with a girl- Erica. Changez has a great life in America that is very different from the one he would have had if he had stayed in Pakistan. So, yes, Changez loves America.


This love is complicated, though. At the same time, America has offered Changez lots of opportunity, wealth, and friendship, he is viewed as an outsider and sometimes an enemy. This book is very much about the attitudes towards Muslim and Muslim-passing people in the United States after the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. Changez is a Pakistani man with dark skin and a beard- the very caricature of what most Americans thought "the enemy" looked like. Even though Changez has a successful life, he feels like an outsider and a threat because he knows he looks like what people think the enemy looks like. Amidst all the opportunity and wealth, which would normally foster happiness, he can't help but feel uncomfortable.


On another level, it is difficult for Changez to entirely embrace his life in America when his family remains in Pakistan. He isn't sure he should give himself so wholeheartedly to a country that is suspicious of him.

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