I'm going to analyze to analyse a passage taken from chapter 3 of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In the extract, Changez tells his American host about Lahore’s new districts, but there is an hidden symbolism.

The novelist chose the dramatic monologue to silence his interlocutor (the stranger): it consists in giving the reader a unic point of view, allowing him to identify with the Pakistani narrator.

Changez uses irony to compare the new districts of Lahore with Manhattan: indeed, while apparently he's telling about the similarities between them, he underlines the differences. It appears clear with the use of exclamation marks, which gave the protagonist’s terms an ironical tone, such as “like Manhattan? Yes, precisely!”.

The narrator’s speech regards the urban and social aspects of Lahore, but they are just a mean to focus on the social division between Manhattan and Lahore (America and Pakistan). It is clearly showed with “the men on foot” and “the mounting men”, who stand for the poor and the rich. By juxtaposing them the narrator compares two different cultures and lifestyles: while “the men on foot” embody the poor Pakistan, Manhattan (a synecdoche for New York city) is represented by “the mounting men”.

Changez did his best to enter the powerful part of the American society, first of all by stifling his origin and his native culture. He tried to convince the interlocutor of his feeling at home in America, for example, to the Urdu spoken in the city, or the typical Pakistani dishes he could taste at the Pak-Punjab Deli. The elements express nothing but nostalgia for his motherland.

The message conveyed in chapter three is linked to the protagonist’s condition of living in two different cultures, where the American one at first seems to be predominant, with his technological and social superiority. Then, Changez becomes aware of the faith he lost in the occidental model, which is not that progressive.