My Son The Fanatic

2003 Words9 Pages
‘’My Son the Fanatic‘’ Religion is a delicate subject. Some people are Christians, some are Muslims, some people believe in Buddha and some people do not care about religion. Especially Muslims who immigrate to the Western world might find it difficult to preserve their rituals and to maintain their beliefs. By moving away from their usual surroundings and culture it can be complicated knowing what they are allowed to and supposed to according to their religion. Furthermore, when coming to a new country and different culture it can be difficult to be accepted while being an orthodox Muslim. In ‘’My Son the Fanatic’’ by Hanif Kureishi, we meet the Pakistani immigrant called Parvez. Parvez lives in England with his son Ali. He grew up in Lahore and he has been a taxi-driver for twenty tears. He experiences some of the difficulties of coming from another culture. In the following I will discuss subjects like settings, point of view and themes. Moreover, I want to, by characterizing Parvez and Ali, analyse and discuss the relationship between the two of them. There is no specific time given of when the story takes place. Therefore it is likely that the short story “My Son the Fanatic” has taken place somewhere between Second World War and now, after immigrants from the Middle East came to the United Kingdom. The title makes the reader guess who the main character is and from which point of view the story is told. “My son” suggests that it is one of the parents, in this case the father, who is looking at his son. The second part of the title, “the fanatic”, suggests that the father is describing his son. Though, is it a third-person narrative and the narrator is an omniscient narrator, but we do not know his identity. This can be concluded based on the fact that neither Parvez nor Ali is the narrator. Furthermore, the narrators posture is not
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