Comparative Analysis of Reluctant Fundamentalist and Breath Eyes and Memory

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A strong comparative literary argument should:

Address a debatable question on a specific topic (here, exile) that can best be answered through a comparative study: How does gender affect the experience of exile?

Engage with a theoretical framework (here, Edward Said’s “Reflections on Exile”).

Make clear the grounds for comparison. What do the two novels have in common; why are we comparing them?

Identify an important contrast between each novel’s representation of your topic (here, exile).

Establish the significance of your findings. How does the literary comparison enable us to rethink commonplace theoretical assumptions about exile? Comparative Analysis of Reluctant Fundamentalist and Breath Eyes and Memory

comparing Reluctant Fundamentalist with Breath, Eyes, and Memory. Focus on the protagonists, Sophie and Changez.

Historical Context
When and where is each novel set? What is going on, politically, that affects the protagonist’s journey?

Both novels alternate in their settings, between the home country and the host country (America).

Narrative Method
How is the narrative framed? Who is the narrator of the story? How is time and place represented; are flashbacks and flash forwards used?

Both novels are told from first-person perspectives and have an oral quality.

Exile (Causes & Effects)
“Exile is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home…” (Edward Said, “Reflections on Exile,” 137).

Said assumes that the native place is synonymous with the self’s “true home,” or locus of belonging. How is exile represented in each text: as a separation of the self from the native place or from the adopted country of residence? What are the source of, or reasons for, each protagonist’s exile?

In both novels, the protagonist experiences a rift between the self and the place identified with as home.
Contrasts

Reluctant Fundamentalist: Estrangement from America emphasized.

Breath Eyes Memory: Estrangement from Haiti emphasized.

“Clutching difference like a weapon to be used with stiffened will, the exile jealously insists on his or her right to belong” (Said, “Reflections on Exile,” 144-145).

“Exiles feel (…) an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives, usually by choosing to see themselves as part of a triumphant ideology” (Said, “Reflections on Exile,” 140-141).
What is the protagonist’s response to exile? Does protagonist take refuge in nationalism?

Epiphanies (Life-changing realizations)
“… provided that the exile refuses to sit on the sidelines nurturing a wound, there are things to be learned: he or she must cultivate a scrupulous subjectivity” (Said, “Reflections on Exile,” 147).

What is the significance of Changez’s trip to Chile and Sophie’s trip to Haiti? What do the protagonists learn, and how does this knowledge change them?

In both novels, exile deepens the protagonist’s critical awareness.

Contrasts

Changez’s trip to Chile:
Sophie’s journey to Haiti:

Endings (Is the rift between self & native place healed?)
“Exile is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home…” (Edward Said, “Reflections on Exile,” 137).

Does the protagonist manage to heal the rift in his or her cultural identity by the end of the novel? If so, how? If not, why not?

Both novels end in the native place and leave room for multiple interpretations.
For your argument to have significance, you address how it enables us to rethink commonplace theoretical assumptions about exile, namely Edward Said’s.

How do your findings challenge Said’s definition as exile as an “unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home?”

Answer here:

Said does not account for the role that gender plays in creating a rift between the self and a native place, which he assumes is identical with “its true home.” He also assumes that exiled individuals could never heal that rift: “its essential sadness could never be surmounted” (137).
However, …..(2-4 sentences; how do the findings of your comparison address what Said’s theory overlooks?).