“So, in no more than 250 words, please respond to the following prompt: Identify a passage of no more than 2 pages that, in your judgment, illustrates a conundrum about the concept/idea of “home” being represented by the novel. Very briefly describe what you consider to be the issue, problem, contradiction, whatever about “home” represented in this passage and what complications in the presentation of this issue in this passage do you feel would need to be addressed in detail were one to use this passage as the basis for a longer analysis of this issue in this novel.
The goal here is to show how the novel represents the idea of “home” in a complex way that reveals aspects of that issue that wouldn’t appear to someone just thinking casually about the issue. This goal is going to be our goal in all of our journeys—revealing what’s being said without being said directly (and might not even be something that the author intends to say at all!!) in the works of literature we’ll be traveling through.
I have chosen pages 📍Pages 26–27 (approx.)I wrote a draft that is incomplete:
The notion of ‘home’ is not necessarily defined simply by a physical space or environment, but home can also be a feeling of safety, comfort, and belonging. In Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West, the physical ‘home’ is fractured through surveillance and violence. In contrast, the emotional home is detached through loss and unrecognition yet fought through love and connection.
More specifically, in chapter four (pg 26-27), Saeed and Nadia’s home is presented as a shattered environment, once recognizable, yet now a threatening and ‘deadly space.’ Through memory and nostalgia, Saeed’s mother recalls her home ‘where she had spent her entire life now resembl[ing] an old quilt.’ However, in the present moment, the ‘War in… [the] city revealed itself to be an intimate experience’. These quotes exemplify the notion of home through the character’s senses and feelings. Home is now a memory of the past that has dissolved in the present as something unfamiliar and a deeply personal experience, with war and destruction dissolving any continium of what has always defined their ‘home’.
Most interestingly, the novel portrayes how ‘home’ has been fragmented through the loss of comfort and alienation. Most notaly Saeed’s mother exemplifies the loss of emotional connection to her home in the past and an old student who contributes to the destruction. ‘She wondered if it had really been him, and whether she should feel alarmed or relieved if it had’. The quote exemplief relief in a connection that was part of her past ‘home’ and life, that is now contribution to the destruction as he is part of the military and surveillance…….
Here are some good quotes:
- “She wondered if it had really been him, and whether she should feel alarmed or relieved if it had.”
- “Nadia passed her family’s home once on purpose, not to speak with them… but the home she had forsaken looked deserted…”
“When she visited again it was gone, unrecognizable, the building crushed by the force of a bomb…”
- “War in Saeed and Nadia’s city revealed itself to be an intimate experience…”
- “Saeed’s mother’s mental map of the place where she had spent her entire life now resembled an old quilt…”
“The frayed seams between the patches were the most deadly spaces, and to be avoided at all costs.”