Postcolonialism in Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist
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Abstract
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is examined in this research using a postcolonialist perspective. The study aims to examine the major characters from the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist within the context of postcolonial theory, taking into consideration the influences of racism, identity, and otherness on Changez and Ander's personalities. The study chooses a qualitative methodology and examines the different characters in the book, including Oona's mother, Eric, and Ander's father, using the descriptive analytical technique. This study has carefully examined and cited the works of postcolonial literary critics such as Edward Said's Orientalism, Leela Gandhi's Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks, and Homi K. Baba's Sign Taken for Wonders. Verbal data, including texts, is used for fundamental analysis and the solving of study problems. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Hamid successfully illustrates postcolonial concerns of identity, otherness, and racism, according to the findings. The protagonists of these stories can be used to identify identity as a construction process that follows colonization. To interpret tradition and Europe as a part of their identity and as a framework of resistance against European control, the characters' viewpoints within their painful pasts could be seen as a critique of essentialism. This study can be used to analyze additional novels like Exit West from a postcolonial perspective in the future.