New York’s World Trade Center WTC collapsed” Hamid 2007, 72
The occurrence of attacks on 11 September 2001 as a sign of boundary between the culture in which Changez grew up with a new
culture offerred by Europe. The boundary of the culture reveals an essentialist cultural identity, which makes it difficult both cultures to
dialogue. “I wonder now, sir, whether I believed at all in the firmness of
the foundations of the new life I was attempting to construct for my self in New York. Certainly I wanted to believe; at least I
wanted not to disbelieve with such an intensity that I prevented myself as much as was possible from making the obvious
conection between the crumbling of the world and the impending destruction of my personal American dream” Hamid 2007, 93
Attacks on 11 September 2001 marked the gaps in The Reluctant Fundamentalists as a regional development strategy provides a place for
self or a hybrid identity is formed, there is an area which should be sought. The development of main character search would be Between
Space, or the development itself in the understanding of hybrid identity, can be seen from the actions he did after the incident on 11 September
2001 attacks on the WTC. This can be interpreted that at that period of cultural conflict within Changez very big. European culture and as if the
two worlds apart for him.
4.3 Memory and Novel Structure
Changez’s meeting with Europe is a meeting that made Changez essentialist identity as a Pakistani to be brokensplit personality. Pieces of
her identity must now be prepared. This process is a process that never
stops. Reconstruction Changez identity can be seen from the follow- positioning himself between past and present, between tradition and
modernity, between Pakistan and Europe United States. According to Bhabha
4
“Memory as the necessary and hazardous bridge between colonialism and cultural identity. It is never a quiet act of
introspections or retrospections. It is a painful remembering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the
trauma of the present”
Changez Positioning action can be seen from the way he positioned the memories in the autobiographical narrative of this novel. This can be
revealed from a series of events that tend spoken with flashback style. “I recall the Americannes of my own gaze when I returned to
Lahore…. I was shamed. This was where I came from, this was my provenance, and it smacked of lowliness…. I had changed; I
was looking about me with the eyes of a foreigner, and not just that particular type entitled and unsympathetic American”
Hamid 2007, 124
The tendency of expression in the style flashback shows the narrator wants to look at the events as something that has been completed.
In memory of sequences, we also find the game of the time. Reluctant fundamentalist word story in general the use of past tense.
The events in The Reluctant Fundamentalist is told in bits and pieces of selective memories. The events and specific descriptions exist that are
spoken using a repetition, an impressive Changez desire to remember or
4
Bhaba, Homi K. 1994. Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse. The location of culture, 85-92. London and New York: Routledge. accessed via
http:prelectur.stanford.edulecturersbhabhalocation1.html on July 6, 2010 at 20:34, p. 63
forget the incident. Repetition of the same events, which appear in these memories, do not always provide new information on the details of the
incident. To get the frame story and understand the events in The Reluctant
Fundamentalist as disconnected and unrelated, the pieces of the events should be arranged like puzzle. There are events that can be found to do,
but some are not. The story of Changez thoughts about Erika, and a meeting with the new old man clearly as Changez reason why he should
go home. “we assembled in Athens, having arrived on different flights, and
when I first saw Erica” Hamid 2007, 17 “the chief of the publishing company was an old man by the
name of Juan –Bautista” Hamid 2007, 141
Changez meeting with parents proved to be an event that is lost, not related to other events that affect the skeleton of the story.
There are elements of his past that is lost discontinuity because of the occupation, and there are elements that continued continuity form of
identity now. There are events, the colonial experience, and experience a painful tradition and want to be forgotten.
4.4 Odyssey and Nostalgia
