HEADING IN YOUR BOOK: ‘THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST CHAPTER 1’

Cut & paste the box below into your book and write out the 6 questions under the headings provided
before answering them.

LITERARY DEVICES: Literary devices are the strategies that an author uses to construct and add
layers of meaning. Some examples of literary devices from Chapter 1 are provided below.

Framed narrative: a story within a story, with the narrative shifting back and forth between the
present storyteller and the story they tell.

Dramatic Monologue: a long, uninterrupted speech from one character directly addressing another
character or an audience.

•It seems as though Changez is speaking directly to the reader but ALSO silences the American point
of view → The American voice, which has been the loudest, most pervasive voice in the
international media since 2001, is silenced.

Foreshadowing: When the author hints at plot developments that will come later in the story.

e.g. ‘Every fall, Princeton raised her skirt for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and –
as you say in America – showed them some skin.’ (4)

This quote foreshadows the disillusionment and cynicism Changez comes to feel for America later in
the novel.

Setting

1. What is the effect of the cafe setting (what do you associate with cafes – their sense of space,
their atmosphere, their volume, etc.)?

The notion of ‘cultural dialogue’ is central to the novel’s themes. Are dialogues between cultures
possible, or are they always constrained and constituted by existing power relations between
countries? This is true for Changez as an individual throughout the novel as well as the broader,
implied cultural dialogue between the West and the East.

This notion of dialogue is ironically complicated by the fact that the novel is presented in monologue
form. The American, the correspondent in the dialogue, is never able to speak!

Lahore, in the western imagination, is perhaps not typically associated with ‘café culture’. ‘Café
culture’ is perhaps Eurocentrically associated with Europe. Does the narrative thus subvert the
reader’s cultural expectations of such settings?

Specific Language used

2. What do you think are the implications of the word ‘mission’ used on page 1? Why do you think
Changez uses it? (It also has a religious meaning – look up the definition!)
The ambiguity of the word ‘misssion’ is central to its usage here. It may refer to a religious ‘mission’,
as in the mission to convert (to Christianity? Or simply to convert Changez to the American’s point
of view?) It may refer to a military mission, thus implying the American’s possible status as a secret
agent of some sort. It may also refer to the more generalist definition of ‘mission’ as it applies to the
individual i.e. an individual engaging in a project in pursuit of a goal. Changez is an ambiguous
figure, in an ambiguous setting, relating an ambiguous story to an ambiguous correspondent. All of
these ambiguities need to be ‘decoded’ in some form by the American and the reader, and we
decode things in line with our biases and prejudices. This too is a key metafictional theme in the
novel.

3. Why do you think would the American be ‘frightened’ of Changez’s beard?

In post 9/11 America, there was an increase in Islamophobia. Beards on men of a middle Eastern
appearance are stereotypically associated with Islamic tradition. Post 9/11, some would argue that
America’s retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan and later invasion of Iraq was a clash between
civilisations – West versus East, Christian versus Muslim. Changez is insinuating that the American
may read the ‘surface’ of his presentation, and is implying that he should look less at appearance
and more at the character of his presentation.

Characters - Changez

4. ‘What I saw as shame, he (Jim) saw as opportunity” (p. 12)

What do you think Changez mean by this? What do you think it says about America? Consider also
the initials of the firm, Underwood Samson.

‘Underwood Samson’ or US might allegorically suggest US society, thus Changez’s capacity to

‘succeed’ at Underwood Samson allegorically correlates to his ability to ‘successfully’ assimilate or
succeed within US culture.

Regarding the above quote, Jim sees ‘opportunity’ in Changez’s capacity to work hard. Jim is
perhaps aware that public pursuit and attainment of the American dream – the car, the lifestyle, the
family – is illusory, and that this is a façade he practises himself (see later quotes). This knowingness
about the use of facades to achieve consumer/national fanatasies likewise ties Changez and Jim to
the character of Jay Gatsby in ‘The Great Gatsby’, who is perhaps American’ literature’s most famous
or archetypal huckster in pursuit of the American Dream.

5. ‘Thank you, God!’ he cries after being offered a job at Underwood Samson. (P.14) Why do you
think this quote is significant/ironic? Consider the title.

‘God’ is the name of the Christian deity. It suggests Changez’s adoption of a Christian worldview or
sensibility or cultural outlook at this point in time (were he Muslim, he would have said, ‘Thank you,
Allah!’). Thus, with this exclamation, our narrator Changez further blurs the reader’s sense of his
allegiances. Is he sincere in his adherence to the American/Christian sensibility in offering this
exclamation? Or is he merely presenting a ‘persona’ to the America, garnering his sympathy as a
means of seducing him? See the comments above about the notion of ‘ambiguity’ as a central theme
of the novel.
Characters - The American

6. Who is he, do you think? Or rather, who does Changez think he is? Find quotes to support your
interpretation. e.g. p.1-2, p.5, p.11

With the quote ‘More than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission...’, Changez
alludes to the American’s possible status as a member of the US military. See the answers
to question 1 above about the ambiguity of this assertion.

"Your hair, short-cropped, and your expansive chest..of a man who bench-presses regularly"

These references further imply that the American is perhaps a member of the military (‘short
cropped’ hair is a stereotypical feature of members of the US military; he also appears to have an
elite military man’s well-developed physique.

Bear in mind, however, that Changez does not come out directly and say to the American (or the
reader) that he must be a military man. He is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American and
with the reader. With these references Changez employs the same ‘stereotypical’ gaze that the
American may be employing in regarding Changez (‘do not be frightened of my beard’). Thus the
reader, too, is posited as the American – American in sensibility and perhaps post 9/11 ‘American’ in
their mistrust of the figure Changez presents. But it is Changez who controls and portrays the
American (reader) in this text and the American (reader) who remains silent, not the other way
around. On a metafictional level, Changez is suibordinating and disempowering his American
correspondent in the same way as Eastern peoples have traditionally been subordinated, objectified,
marginalised and ‘silenced’ by Western narratives (see for example most twentieth-century
Hollywood films with a Middle Eastern setting).

(The above questions should take approximately 40 mins to complete)