Hegemony In The Reluctant Fundamentalist

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Creating a mind, which gives the consent (accepts the hegemony), is never a simple act. It indeed results from the social structures and the cultural designs. The code of conduct, moral value and education standards are the designed by the ruling classes and followed by the rest, both in social and global scenario. This social and cultural scenario dictates each group or its subordinate societies to what should be its behavior. Each and every institutions (social, cultural, political and economic) it prescribes its practices too. But often in the history of mankind, we have read and seen that the western world have succeeded in achieving this goal and maintained its hegemonic force. The monopoly on the standardization has remained in the hands…show more content…
This is hegemony indeed. But, the initial projection and setting up of this hegemonic force is calculated so judiciously, that it seems justified in itself. Thus, this force hovers around the globe today and influenced every individual from every society. Nevertheless, in this novella, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, we shall also looks at how the protagonist, biologically a Pakistani guy, is being trapped in the web of hegemonic influence of America. The protagonist of the novel, Changez, has a very common view as that of the masses about the West, especially the United States of America. Many of us feel that we define our own life despite being born in any society or community, but it is not the ultimate truth. Raymond William points that, “To say that ‘men’ define and shape their whole lives is true only in abstraction. In many actual societies there are specific inequalities in means and therefore in capacity to realize this process. In a class society, these are primarily inequalities between classes” (108). When the leading protagonist, Mr. Changez, reaches Princeton for his studies, he feels very different. He gets a new status in the New York City, though he belongs to Lahore, the Eastern region of…show more content…
Princeton inspired in me the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible. I had access to this beautiful campus, I thought, to professors who are titans in their fields and fellow students who are philosopher-kings in the making” (Hamid 3). Every man of the East dreams to visit and be a part of the western world at least once in a life. When the protagonist uses the phrase, “this is a dream come true”, it suffices the argument that he considers his own land is inferior and deprived in terms every sphere of life, unlike America. But the protagonist doesn’t realize the facts as stated by, Chimamanda Ngoiz Adichie, a Nigerian-American author said America sells dreams and Eastern buys it and follows it blindly. In fact, Chengez is also a prey of this dot-less lie. Like millions of the other Easterners, he takes American life as most preferred and most dauntlessly his own, with a hope to mingle and be one amongst them. The force of hegemony engulfs the many not only physically but also mentally and make them the prey of it, as Raymond observes, “Hegemony…it is a whole body of practices and expectations, over the whole of living: our sense and assignments of energy, our
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