Events can seriously affect the compatibility between cultures. This book reveals this characteristic to us by narrating the dramatic impact that 9/11 had on the life of the main character, Changez, a Pakistani, as he pursues the American dream in the United States.
Before 9/11, Changez was a successful man, born in Lahore in a decadent aristocratic family. He studied in the United States at the age of 18, graduated with straight A’s from Princeton University and went on to a promising career as a financial analyst for a major firm on Wall Street. He also fell in love with a American named Erica. He said he loved America, and that America had fulfilled his hopes in life. 9/11 occurred when Changez was on a business trip to the Philippines, and then returned to the United States, where he was insulted at the airport for having a Muslim face. This type of racial disparity led to frequent conflicts, which made Changez deeply realized that America was not his country. After all these spiritual crisis and a tortuous struggle to redeem himself, Changez gave up everything he had in the United States and returned to Pakistan.
The 9/11 attacks changed the status of Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. The communication barrier in Changez’s relationship with Erica, who was the reflection of America, seemed to foreshadow the fact that America’s acceptance of heterogeneous cultures is not complete, and it has its own core of patterns that it adheres to(Omer 6). Looking at the effects of 9/11 from the perspective of the Other, not only Changez, but also Arab and Muslim countries were labeled as terrorist, then for the United States all people belonging to that race were classified as the Other. In the aftermath of 9/11, not only had hostility and discrimination of American against Arabs and Muslims increased, but there was a continuing resentment and concern among Americans about Arabs and Muslims(Costas 1), and the label of Other had not been removed. Changez was the victim of it. The book ends with Erica suffering from schizophrenia, which might give a hint to why the effects are lasting and severe – post-9/11 America was overly immersed in its own suffering and refused to communicate rationally with other cultures(Chen 6). This lead to the conflict between cultures never decreased.
Costas Panagopoulos,“Trends: Arab and Muslim Americans and Islam in the Aftermath of 9/11”,Winter 2006, The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 608-624 (17 pages), retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4124213
Jie Chen, “Strangers in Lahore Tea House”, 17 Oct 2013, Sanlian Life Weekly, retrieved from: https://book.douban.com/review/3460462/
Omer Morzzafar, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, 25 Apr 2013, RogerEbert, retrieved from: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-reluctant-fundamentalist-2013
Great presentation! Very well thought out, combining both a summary of the book with application to topics we have learned about in class. Your analysis of the result of 9/11 and the othering that occurred was well done and helpful. Also loved how you included information of the lasting impact 9/11 has had on some individuals. Overall, very nice job!
Loved your presentation! I liked your further analysis of the events that proceeded 9/11. I feel that it was important to acknowledge how race relations have changed since the events of 9/11 and this is reflected in both the summary of the book you did and the info you gathered. I also liked how you tied in the other as I feel this is a big contributor to race issues with Muslim peoples in the united states.
I just wanted to applaud you on writing such a well thought-out and organized context presentation. Including the authors background really gives the reader a better understanding of what the intentions behind writing the short story were. I enjoyed reading how you connected this story back to the Other that we had previously talked about early in the semester. The summary of the story gives me a really good basis of what I am about to read. Great job, I enjoyed reading what you wrote!
You wrote a great presentation! Everything you said was clearly planned out which makes it so much easier to understand and helps me understand the novel. I also appreciated how you incorporated the concept of the Other in your presentation and related it to the novel. I think that is a very prevalent concept in the novel as well and represents America’s relationship with other cultures, especially after 9/11.
Very good context presentation. You describe the experience and emotional changes of the protagonist Changez. Your presentation is very comprehensive and detailed. At the same time, you also describe the impact of 9/11 very well. You said that the incident would affect the compatibility between cultures, which is indeed the case. From a successful person full of hope for the United States to be extremely disappointed with the United States, Changez had to leave the United States and return to his motherland Pakistan. It can be seen that the impact of the 9/11 incident has led to discrimination and persecution against many Muslims and Arabs, who have been labeled as terrorists. You mentioned at the end that Eric’s refusal to communicate with Changez implies that Americans are too immersed in grief and refuse to communicate with other cultures. This is a very good point of view. Overall, a very excellent presentation.
What a great and detailed context presentation. This will definitely help me understand the novel. I found it very interesting how you looked at the affects and the concept of the Other after 9/11, I have thought about it in the past but now with your presentation and this class I can understand and see it more clearly.
You did a great job on this presentation. I found your summary to be very engaging and I believe it will be very helpful in helping me understand the book. I really liked how you related this novel to the otherin, very nice job overall!
Great presentation! Wonderful approach with bringing in the concept of “The Other.” Your ability to reiterate this week’s reading was very educational and enlightening for your peers. You beautifully combined what you’ve taken from the course and applied it to this week’s reading. Discussing 9/11 can be a sensitive topic but you tastefully approached it. Thanks for sharing!
This was a very well put together contextc presentation. I enjoyed how well you organized your work. This will definitely help others understand the book. Your inclusion of the concept of other relates very well with the story. You also did a great job with the information you talked about around 9/11. Great job.
Nice job on your context presentation. Looking at the 9/11 attack and then being able to apply it to Othering helped create better insight to the novel. Overall, this helps formulate a great summary for the book. Looking at the after effects of the attack was also a great way to add and provide more information.
You did a great job with your presentation. This really helped me to further understand this reading and provided some insightful information. One quote that you wrote that really stuck out to me was “Looking at the effects of 9/11 from the perspective of the Other, not only Changez, but also Arab and Muslim countries were labeled as terrorist, then for the United States all people belonging to that race were classified as the Other.” This gave me a new perspective on how Arab and Muslims are seen and made me reevaluate how they are looked at. Overall I think that you did a very good job.
Great job on this presentation! This post did a nice job of analyzing the text and helped me better understand how difficult it was for Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. post 9/11. Changez did absolutely nothing wrong but was now looked at and judged differently because of his culture. Like you said this relates directly to one specific group being seen as lesser or the “other” in society. Overall, nice work I think you did a good job of highlighting the most important details.
Great presentation, you did a great job analyzing Hamid’s novel. The final component of your presentation, where you mentioned Erica’s schizophrenia, was very helpful in further understanding the novel. That was a really good point, that I didn’t completely recognize when reading; that it could be in reference to as you said “America [being] overly immersed in its own suffering and [refusal] to communicate rationally with other cultures”. That definitely changed my perspective with not just that point, but being able to look at other aspects of the novel more indepthly. Overall, great job!
I think you wrote an amazing presentation. You combined our reading well with the information we have learned from the modules and your own research as well. I enjoyed how well thought of your writing is and how easy It is to understand, we can easily understand the context of some fundamentals listed here, which we did in some of our work.
Great presentation! You did a very good job in summarizing the novel, which will definitely help me better understand it. The identity recognition problem of Changaze after 9/11 you described is very interesting to me. Before 9/11, he could get along with Americans well, but after 9/11 happens, he finally realize that humans are never able to truly embrace “others” with different characteristics.
This is a great presentation! You presented a detailed summary of the book and successfully connected it to how seriously an event can affect the compatibility between cultures. It is hard for people to maintain the relationship after 9/11, but people should unite to fight against terrorist attacks and try to avoid “others”.
I absolutely loved your presentation over The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I thought that your tie between how Changez’s relationship with Erica clashes with the homogeneous push in American society was quite thought provoking. Additionally, I wanted to mention that you did a spectacular job of connecting how the aftermath of 9/11 contributed greatly to how individuals like Changez were treated throughout society. Even today, we can see the toll that prejudice can take on marginalized groups.