Allegorical dimensions in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

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Essay 1 – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Units: 16,362
Mirjeta Ceraja Elmazi
1
Allegorical dimensions in Mohsin Hamid’s
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
1. INTRODUCTION
Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist is anything but simple. According to The
Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (4th edition), a dramatic monologue is the type of
monologue that a single fictional or historical character speaks to a silent audience of one
person or more. We, as readers, only become aware of the audience’s presence from the clues
given to us by the speaker. During the monologue, the speaker’s character is revealed to us
unwittingly, and we, as readers, are included as judges – in this case, not of a crime, but of
political culpability and character. Since The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a monologue
disguised as dialogue, and since it fits the abovementioned criteria, we can safely assume that
the novel is also a dramatic monologue. This is, nevertheless, not where the layering of genres
and literary devices ends. The novel has also been included in the category of post-9/11
fiction, while at the same time being considered postcolonial, not only because of the inclusion
of America’s colonial past in Asia, but also due to how the war on terror is presented,
allegorically, as “… a repetition of the European colonial project.”
1
The allegorical dimensions of The Reluctant Fundamentalist will be the focus point of this
paper. First, we will dive into a definition and description of what allegory is, before we,
secondly, discuss the allegories in the novel, and how they are used to symbolise the
relationship between the United States and Asia (West and East), the changing world
economy, America’s relationship with the “Old World”, and so forth.
2. ALLEGORY
The Cambridge English Dictionary offers a very basic definition of “allegory”, namely “a story,
play, poem, picture, or other work in which the characters and events represent particular
qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion or politics”. As something that can be traced
back to medieval times
2
, there is nothing basic about allegory, however.
According to Maureen Quilligan in her book The Language of Allegory, allegory is not merely
a literary device, but “… in fact, a class, a genre”
3
. Both Jeremy Tambling (Allegory) and
Kathleen Kuiper (“Fable, Parable, and Allegory”) distance themselves from this estimation as
1
Hartnell, ”Moving through America: Race, place and resistance in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 337.
2
Tambling, Allegory.
3
Quilligan, “Foreword: Defining the Genre”, 14.

Essay 1 – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Units: 16,362
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they each explain how far allegory, as a device, in fact stretches: “The range of allegorical
literature is so wide that to consider allegory as a fixed literary genre is less useful than to
regard it as a dimension, or mode, of controlled indirectness and double meaning…”
4
.
In the introduction to Allegory, Tambling connects allegory to other literary terms, such as
metaphors, wordplay, irony, similes, deception, etc., while also describing that one of the
important aspects of allegory is how it “… makes abstract ideas appear real”
5
. More notably,
Tambling similarly stresses that allegory is not only an aspect of a text, but also a certain way
of reading a text that contrasts a literal one. Kuiper agrees on this assertion, by stating that
allegory encourages “… the readers or listeners… to look for meanings hidden beneath the
literal surface of the fiction.”
6
The important aspect of allegory, according to Kuiper, is that the
details of the story told, when interpreted, “… are found to correspond to the details of some
other system of relations (its hidden, allegorical sense)”
7
. As we will explore now, The
Reluctant Fundamentalist certainly fulfils the abovementioned aspects.
3. ALLEGORICAL DIMENSIONS IN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST
Not only do the allegories in Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist correspond to the details
of another system of relations, but also they are also anything but subtle. It is thus no wonder
that many “… critics point to the allegorical subtext of The Reluctant Fundamentalist…”
8
.
The names used in the story have very clearly been selected to offer the reader a double
meaning. The initials of the prestigious firm that recruits Changez (“changes”), Underwood
Samson (U.S.), clearly are those of the United States. Underwood Samson teaches Changez
their guiding principle, which is to “Focus on the fundamentals”
9
, the fundamentals being
efficiency, systematic pragmatism, and maximum return. Combined with the fact that the
future oriented (something they stress many times) Underwood Samson is a firm in a “… rush
to increase profit margins…”
10
, their merciless economic/capitalistic drive might itself be
considered a sort of fundamentalism in itself. This, ultimately, makes Changez a “reluctant”
practitioner of economic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, or perhaps both. Changez
truly rejects focusing on the economic fundamentals when he gains a broader political picture,
realising that the U.S. is only financially preserved and built by “… repressive global
4
Kuiper and Britannica Educational Publishing, “Fable, Parable, and Allegory”, 70.
5
Tambling, Allegory, 12.
6
Kuiper and Britannica Educational Publishing, Prose: Literary Terms and Concepts, 69.
7
Ibid.
8
Darda, ”Precarious World: Rethinking Global Fiction in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 118.
9
Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 122 (chapter 7).
10
Morey, ”’The rules of the game have changed’: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and post-9/11 fiction”, 143.

Essay 1 – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Units: 16,362
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practices…”
11
, such as constantly interfering “… in the affairs of others…”
12
– and in the case of
his home, Pakistan, not at all, since it does not suit the government to get involved in the
tensions between Pakistan and India. Underwood Samson thus “… seems to represent the
pragmatic face of American state power.”
13
Needless to say, “… Changez grows increasingly
disgusted at the exercise of US state power, not only via the war on terror but also via the
state’s economic arm as embodied in Underwood Samson...”
14
A great example of this is when
he returns to his home in Pakistan where he, at first, sees nothing but poverty and shabbiness:
But as I reacclimatized and my surroundings once again became familiar, it occurred
to me that the house had not changed in my absence. I had changed; I was looking
about me with the eyes of a foreigner, and not just any foreigner, but that particular
type of entitled and unsympathetic American who so annoyed me when I encountered
him…
15
He had become “… possessed…”
16
by American capitalism, which constantly strives for capital
value, and was thus unable to recognise the historic value of his home.
The person who fully and truly awakens Changez (although Changez becomes slightly
conscious on his trip to the Philippines) is Juan-Bautista, a Chilean publisher, whose name
resembles John the Baptist’s. Juan-Bautista becomes the “… wise prophet figure…”
17
, who in a
sense baptises Changez into blinding insight by comparing Changez’s work at Underwood
Samson to that of the janissaries, who were Christian boys captured by the Ottoman Empire,
and trained to become Ottoman soldiers: “They were ferocious and utterly loyal: they had
fought to erase their own civilizations, so they had nothing else to turn to.”
18
Changez is
pushed into deep introspection, and his American life is completely reframed: “I was a
modern-day janissary, a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a
country with a kinship to mine and was perhaps even colluding to ensure that my own
country faced the threat of war.”
19
The war and soldier comparisons are very common in Changez’s story. Although the recruits
employed by Underwood Samson seem diverse in terms of gender and race, Changez notes
that they are in fact not different: “… shorn of hair and dressed in battle fatigues, we would
11
Ibid.
12
Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 189 (chapter 11).
13
Hartnell, ”Moving through America: Race, place and resistance in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 340.
14
Ibid., 344.
15
Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 152 (chapter 9).
16
Ibid.
17
Illot, ”Generic frameworks and active readership in The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 580.
18
Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 183 (chapter 10).
19
Ibid., 184 (chapter 10).

Essay 1 – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Units: 16,362
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have been virtually indistinguishable.”
20
Furthermore, following 9/11, when Changez grows
his beard out in protest and to mark his Pakistani identity, it is so that he does not “… blend in
with the army of clean-shaven youngsters…”
21
, who are his co-workers. It seems, however,
that integration into U.S. becomes impossible for Changez at this point. His beard makes his
colleagues uncomfortable, he is stared at, and one colleague even advises Changez to shave it
off, and to be careful, since the “… whole corporate collegiality veneer only goes so deep.”
22
This “… dramatizes the absolute claim that American culture places on its newly arrived
immigrants...”
23
Changez’s appearance suddenly provokes abuse on the once welcoming,
multicultural streets of New York, and awakes suspicion and questioning at airports. He could
easily shave his beard off and “… don the uniform of the corporate American empire…”
24
, but
he, instead, embraces his Pakistani background and, thus, by not focusing on the
fundamentals anymore, he distances himself from his role as an American janissary.
Erica, Changez’s love interest, is another prominent allegorical figure in the novel. She “…
personifies the narrator’s romantic national investments, his ill-fated love affair with
American life.”
25
Changez falls in love with Erica in the same way he falls in love with domestic
America (and the American dream) upon arrival, but their relationship is doomed from the
very beginning due to Erica’s all-consuming nostalgia. She is caught in a past in where her
dead boyfriend, Chris, a “… good-looking boy with… an Old World appeal…”
26
, rules. The fact
that Chris has “Old World appeal” connects him both to Christ/Christianity and Christopher
Columbus, who is considered “… the symbol of America’s colonization…”
27
and the old world
that once was. In this sense, (Am)Erica is in a nostalgic relationship with Europe that cannot
be torn apart by what the postcolonial Changez offers – or in a nostalgic relationship with the
Christian country that once was, which cannot be disrupted by the Muslim Changez. The fact
that Changez then suggests that (Am)Erica imagines that he is Chris(tianity), so that she is
willing to have sex with him, consequently provides “… a weak imitation of the great passion
of Am/Erica and the Old World Chris…”
28
, and Changez is, thus, only allowed a role in the
relationship, if he impersonates a dead rival. Newness is hence not welcome in domestic
20
Ibid., 51 (chapter 3).
21
Ibid., 159 (chapter 9).
22
Ibid., 160 (chapter 9).
23
Hartnell, ”Moving through America: Race, place and resistance in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 342.
24
Illot, ”Generic frameworks and active readership in The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 580.
25
Medovoi, ”Terminal Crisis? From the Worlding of American Literature to World-System Literature”, 654.
26
Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 38 (chapter 2).
27
Illot, ”Generic frameworks and active readership in The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 579.
28
Ibid., 580.

Essay 1 – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Units: 16,362
Mirjeta Ceraja Elmazi
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America, and assimilation is demanded, demonstrating, once more, the demands given to
immigrants in America.
Although one expects Changez’s relationship with (Am)Erica to collapse alongside his
relationship with Underwood Samson and the United States, it does not. While Erica’s mental
breakdown after 9/11 detaches her from Changez, he continuously returns to or thinks of her,
hoping that she has gotten better, and, later, that she has not committed suicide.
In a sense, Erica embodies “… the whole fate of her home nation after September 11.”
29
To
begin with, there is a flowering relationship between the East and the West in the
cosmopolitan spaces of New York, but following 9/11, she, like the rest of America, disappears
into nostalgia. Erica is, in this aspect, directly linked to America by Changez: “[I]t seemed to
me that America, too, was increasingly giving itself over to a dangerous nostalgia at that
time… I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I
was struck by its determination to look back.”
30
Changez finds himself stuck in an (Am)Erica,
which longs for the national and cultural certainties of the past, making it “… insular and
unwelcoming.”
31
Although Jim, Changez’s boss (who himself is the embodiment of the
American dream), faces the future and lives in a minimalistic, trendy, modern loft during the
week, he himself is also unable to let go of the past. He owns a property in the Hamptons that
makes Changez “… think of The Great Gatsby.”
32
This suggests that Jim is “… chasing the status
that only ‘old money’ – the one thing that cannot be bought or invented – can bring…”
33
,
meaning that the meritocratic, elite society that Underwood Samson represents denounces
outsiders like Changez and Jim. The “American dream”, which includes a vision of a classless
society, thus collapses.
4. CONCLUSION
The fact that the story is told as a contemporary dramatic monologue, and due to statements
such as “…I cannot now recall many of the details of the events I have been relating…”
34
, we
question the reliability of Changez as a narrator, so much so that we might even wonder
whether he is nostalgic for the idea of an America he himself grew up with, and the idea of the
immigrant American dream, and thus whether he creates the allegories himself. The fact that
29
Morey, ”’The rules of the game have changed’: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and post-9/11 fiction”, 140.
30
Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 142 (chapter 8).
31
Morey, ”’The rules of the game have changed’: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and post-9/11 fiction”, 138.
32
Mohsin, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 57 (chapter 3).
33
Hartnell, ”Moving through America: Race, place and resistance in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 342.
34
Ibid., 146 (chapter 8).

Essay 1 – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Units: 16,362
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he is unchallenged, the fact that he is able to include and exclude whatever he desires, and the
fact that the allegories are extremely obvious, makes it a possibility. But it also plays with the
notion of how one-sided and controlled history writing usually is: “But surely it is the gist that
matters; I am, after all, telling you a history, and in history, as I suspect you – and American –
will agree, it is the thrust of one’s narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one’s details.”
35
In
a way, Changez is suggesting that America, very much like Erica, is good at romanticising
American history, something which Changez points out: “Perhaps the reality of their time
together was as wonderful as she had, on more than one occasion, described to me. Or
perhaps theirs was a past all the more potent for its being imaginary.”
36
Regardless, in this open-ended, allegorical story, it is very much up to the reader to interpret
and judge. Changez leaves economic fundamentalism behind, but is he, then, instead, greeted
by Islamic fundamentalism? Does capitalism and the manner in which the United States
exercises their state power drive Changez into Islamic fundamentalism? If Chris resembles
Christianity/the Old World, which is dead, does Erica die, because she is caught in nostalgia
and unable to look forward, or does she die because a homogenous America dies slowly with
Christianity/the Old World, thus leaving a multi-ethnic America in its place? We, as readers,
are left with several questions upon finishing the novel. Although the clever doubling found in
the text is very palpable, which means that the reader barely has to make an effort to draw the
allegorical parallels, we still have to make many active choices as to whether we truly hear the
voices of Jim, Erica, Juan-Bautista, or whether Changez is the ventriloquist, whether we
believe Changez, whether Changez is an Islamic fundamentalist, or whether the silent,
nameless listener is a CIA agent. Ultimately, we have to end the novel ourselves, or accept a
novel without an end. This active way of reading and understanding a well-written text
through allegories is perhaps the appeal of The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid., 140-141 (chapter 8).

Essay 1 – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Units: 16,362
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