In the present text I am going to analyse and to characterise the protagonist of the Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid’s novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. The main character is Changez, a Pakistani man, who left his native country to go to the USA to study at the prestigious Princeton’s University thanks to a scholarship, because he comes from a poor family.

Changez is a smart student and so he graduates in finance with the highest honours. After graduation he goes to work at Underwood Samson, a consultancy firm. There he fascinates his superior Jim, who decides to give him particular assignments even in foreign countries such as Philippine, Chile,... During the summer after the graduation he goes to Greece with some friends and there he meets Erica, a beautiful girl, who becomes a friend of him. At the beginning in the first years in New York, Changez enjoys America, American people and their values. Moreover he tries to integrate himself in the American society. For this reason he forces himself to behave like an American man and to believe in Western values. Thanks to his behaviour he is perfectly integrated in New York and at the work. In addition he becomes Erica’s best friend and they often hang out together. When he met Erica for the first time in Greece, he understood she was shocked by the death of her ex-boyfriend and for this reason she would probably not want to have a new boyfriend. However Changez courted her, expressing also some Eastern values, and she became quite his girlfriend.

Before September 2001 everything is good for Changez: he lives in a country he likes, he shares American values, he has some friends like Erica and Jim and he has a good job. Changez likes living in New York even if he is quite far from his family. The situation changes with the World Trade Centre’s attack on 11^th September 2001. After the attack made by some Pakistani terrorists, all American people start to have some negative prejudices about Pakistani people living in their country and for this reason they threat and consider differently all the people coming from an Islamic country. For example New Yorkers are scared when they see somebody with a long beard or wearing typical Eastern clothes. The attack has some consequences on the life of American people, but also on the life of Pakistani people living in the USA, even if they are perfectly integrated in the American society. Unfortunately this happens also to the novel’s protagonist, who starts to feel different from American people at work, but also with his friends. He is afraid because everyone looks at him with suspect in the streets of New York and also at Underwood Samson. The attack breaks also his relation with Erica, who decides to go away from Changez and New York, going to a clinic. In this situation Changez starts to shelve all the American values he has believed in until September 2001 to reconsider his values, which are the one of his birthplace, stating them in public. Doing this, it increases the suspicion from the Government. At this moment Changez has a negative view of America and its values; so this makes him lose motivation at work and after some time he is fired. Without job he decides to turn back to Pakistan and there he finds a new job as finance professor at Lahore’s University.

In conclusion you can say Changez is a round character because he undergoes a development throughout the novel. Indeed he presents also the change of his point of view about America. His name is significant, because it contains the word “Change”. At the beginning he is enthusiastic about living in New York, but throughout the novel, living and working in America, he analyses the contradictions of American economy and imperialism. This makes him reconsider his native values in disadvantage of the American values. At the end of the novel he is a mature man, while at the beginning he was a young dreamer, and he shows his maturity when he calls philosophically into question the values that he had when he was 18 years old, when he decided to go to Princeton. After this analysis he decides to come back to live in Pakistan.