The Reluctant Fundamentalist Play Analysis

The book The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the play Jabber have two main themes that are similar. The main themes in these works are the main characters not knowing their identity and also being stereotyped. All of the main characters didn’t know their identity for a different reason. Changez was being stereotyped as a terrorist from an event, Fatima didn’t fit in because of her hijab, and Jorah didn’t know how to get out of the shadow of his father. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez struggles to find who he really is. When he goes to the Philippines he doesn’t act like he is from Pakistan. He acts like an American because he wants to feel like he fits in. He hates that he didn’t embrace his Pakistani roots, but wants to fit in and not feel different from the rest of the people. “I attempted to act and speak, as much as my dignity would permit, more like an American”(Hamid 65). He also feels like he fits in when he is in New York. “On

Changez started to be stereotyped after 9/11. The definition of a stereotype is “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or an idea of a particular type of person or thing”(Dictionary.com). A stereotype of Muslims is they are all violent. After 9/11 workers at the airport were very skeptical of Changez and they didn’t let him on the plane right away. They wouldn’t even accept the fact that he lived in the United States. On page 75 Changez has a conversation with an airport security guard about how he lived in the United States, and he was just trying to get back to where he lived to work. She would not accept that this is why he wanted to go to the United States, and this caused him to be the last person on the plane. This is an example of how an event led people to speculate and stereotype Changez and all people from the Middle East. Changez is not the only example of a Muslim being stereotyped. Fatima was stereotyped in the play