To What Extent Is ‘the Reluctant Fundamentalist’ About Nostalgia? Low Scoring Mark

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To what extent is ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ about nostalgia? Nostalgia is one of the pivotal issues and key themes within the Moshin Hamid novel ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’. Nostalgia within the novel encompasses and engrosses everyone and everything from characters to countries. Hamid shows how crippling and dangerous nostalgia can be, how it can render us to live in a time-warp and distort both our sensibilities and views of the world. Hamid also addresses the idea of nostalgia breeding superiority, nostalgia for a time when Pakistan and not America dominated the world, has led Changez to feel resentment for the new power and to maintain a view of cultural superiority. Further instances of nostalgia within ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ include; the relationship between Chris and Erica, Erica and Changez and all three of these characters in relation to American and the sensibilities of the old, the new and the third worlds. Changez through yearning for a bygone era of Pakistani superiority becomes trapped in nostalgia and unable to progress. To Hamid, nostalgia is a state of mind best left unattended, a state which engulfs its inhabitants and destroys any chance they may have had of moving forward and living an illustrious life or continuing to better themselves. Through the use of allusions Hamid illustrates to the reader the extent to which Changez is nostalgic towards a past that happened over a thousand years ago (I still need to find the quote though I believe its 3,000 years ago) and how this same nostalgia has trapped him inside of a world of nationalistic fundamentalism and has led to him holding a resentment of others and a feeling of cultural superiority. The ambiguity of the novel established through the use of a framed narrative leads to its ultimate failure in truly addressing the feelings of Changez in relation to foreigners.

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