The present text’s purpose is to analyse a passage taken from chapter 3 of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In the extract Changez, the protagonist, tells his American host about Lahore’s new districts, but there is actually an hidden symbolism that overcomes the denotative meaning.

The novelist chose to exploit the technique of dramatic monologue in order to silence his interlocutor (the stranger): his aim consists in giving the reader a single point of view, allowing him to identify with the Pakistani narrator. Such device represents a new way of perceiving the post 9/11 reality, as well as the phenomenon of globalization.

Changez resorted to irony to compare the new districts of Lahore with Manhattan: indeed, while apparently counting the similarities between them, he highlights the differences. It appears clear in the use of exclamation marks, which gave the protagonist’s words an ironical tone while saying “like Manhattan? Yes, precisely!”. 

The narrator’s speech regards mainly 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 metaphorically compares two different cultures and lifestyles: while “the men on foot” embody the poor Pakistan, the wealthy 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 by recalling, for example, to the Urdu spoken in the city, or the typical Pakistani dishes he could taste at the Pak-Punjab Deli. The previous elements express nothing but nostalgia for his motherland, but they also portray New York as a globalised, multi-ethnical reality.

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