THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST AS A MONOLOGUE
MONOLOGUE:
A monologue is presented by a single character, most often to express the mental thoughts aloud, sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common in dramatic media as well as in non-dramatic media such as poetry. Monologues share much in common with several other literary devices including soliloquies and apostrophes.
DEVICE OF MONOLOGUE IN THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST: This is probably the only novel of its kind, a novel with no lyrical descriptions of people and places. It has no dialogue at all; in fact, the entire novel is a long, gripping monologue. A novel in the form of a monologue and without a dialogue is a brilliant and novel idea, and it works magnificently in this case only because Mohsin Hamid is a superb writer with formidable powers. He grips the reader's mind with polished and haunting prose.
The hero of the novel, Changez, a student from Lahore, Pakistan, attends Princeton University. After graduation at the top in his class, he secures an excellent and well-paying job at the elite valuation firm Underwood Samson. He becomes well-adjusted and well-accustomed to the American way of life, falls in love with the beautiful and elegant, Princeton-educated Erica, who hails from an aristocratic family. For the first time in his life Changez is happy. Then, unexpectedly, on September 11, 2001, two planes crash into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. As a result, the towers collapse. And along with the towers, Changez's personal world also collapses. When the terrorists are identified as Muslims from Saudi Arabia, and people, and the media speculate about the reasons for the attack, Changez finds himself questioning the injustices by America abroad. His priorities in life change, and he neglects his job. And as a result he loses his job. He returns to Lahore, where at a market in the district of Old Anarkali, he meets an American stranger. The novel is narrated as a monologue addressed to this stranger.
The use of monologue facilitates Hamid’s viewpoints to go across the reader effortlessly. The effect of the usage of monologue is that Hamid engages the reader directly drawing them into the narrative by the creation of a nameless American character who mirrors the audience. Another outcome of using monologue is that it silences American’s point of view and therefore Hamid can present his Pakistani/Muslim perspective. The disadvantage of the monologue is that it presents an unreliable narrator but however, Hamid uses the unreliable narrator as an advantage in his novel to question the Americans about believing everything that American media throws at them. Overall the usage of monologue plays a pivotal role in expressing Hamid’s stand and he utilizes this literary technique to his maximum.
First by addressing the nameless American with the second person pronoun “you”, the novel gives the impression of speaking directly to the reader. For instance, when Changez first meets with the nameless American, he says
“Excuse me sir, but May I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not afraid of my beard: I’m a lover of America.”
Immediately reader is engaged in the conversation and adopts the persona of the American. By using monologue, Hamid tries to draw the reader into the text in order to empathies with the situation. The usage of the monologue forces the reader to be an active part of the issue. The narrative structure is a representation of the author sitting down with the reader and engaging in a conversation about the protagonist’s story.
Changez says to the stranger about Princeton University: "Every fall, Princeton raised her skirt for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and- as you say in America-showed them some skin. The skin Princeton showed was good skin, of Course-young, eloquent, and clever as can be-but even among all that skin, I knew in my senior year that I was something special. I was a perfect breast, if you will-tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity-and I was confident of getting any job I wanted."

The use of monologue in The Reluctant Fundamentalist allows Hamid intimate access to his protagonist’s mind. Not without its limitations, monologue is used here with great effectiveness, particularly in helping to build suspense. Changez’s tone, which is sometimes exaggeratedly polite, sometimes darkly menacing, is packed with the bitter irony of hindsight as he takes his silent interlocutor through the various stages.Mohsin says
“The form the novel, with the narrator and his audience both acting as characters, allowed me to mirror the mutual suspicion with which America and Pakistan (or the Muslim world) looks at one another”.

The Reluctant fundamentalist uncovers two failed love affairs, one with a person and the other with a nation. The narrator tells his story of falling out of love with the United States.
EXAMPLES FROM LITERATURE: Changez’s monologue carries echoes of 18th-19th century monologues. The situation is similar, for instance, to that of ancient mariner: a ‘guest’ is detained by a man, in this case Changez, with a disturbing story to tell. Even the voice of the Changez erases the voice of the American. The monologue highlights the major flaw in our relationship to the other. For even a common vocabulary does not imply a shared language,Changez and unnamed American share much, and still do not agree or trust each other.
Another example can be Browning’s celebrated poem ‘My last Duchess’. The narrator is addressing a gentleman who remains out of reader’s view throughout the poem. The Duke tells him of his wife whose portrait hangs on the wall “looking as if she were alive”. In Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the dramatic monologue is conducted by Changez,who starts his conversation by approaching his ‘listener’ on a Lahore street.Changez goes on to narrate the story of a period of his life much before he approaches his listener on the first page of his novel.
Like Browning’s Duke, Changez not only lets his ‘invisible’ listener know of events that occurred in his life. Events that left him, a Princeton graduate, working at a top valuation firm in New York, a changed man. But he also let him have a peek into his soul.
CRITICISM ON THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST AS MONOLOGUE ‘Lorenzo’ a renowned American writer says, So far a total disappointment. What happened to the brilliant author of Moth Smoke? This book with his narrator's monologue looks like an attempt to simplify both: literature and points of view. Even irony seems put here and there without logic. And the effect of all these fake attempts to pretend the narrator is really having a conversation with the stereotype of an American businessman in Lahore is really disturbing. I hope that Hamid is going to surprise me, but still page after page, chapter after chapter I am becoming pessimist and bored. It’s all about writing technique and honestly the story itself doesn't catch my attention.
An Indian writer Sanjay says that there are nine reasons to read this novel. Nine Reasons to Read This One: Because it’s hard enough to sustain a distinctive voice for a dramatic monologue in a poem (ask Robert Browning), leave alone an entire novel. Because it’s short, yet evocative: a relief at a time when authors needlessly pile on the pages. Because the voice is just right – formal without being somber; precise without being stiff. Because, unlike in John Updike’s Terrorist, you can empathies with and understand Changez, the fundamentalist. Because of the delicious ironies, among them the fact that Changez works in a US firm that evaluates companies ripe for takeover; virtually the first piece of advice he receives is to stick to the fundamentals. Because Changez’s disillusionment comes about in a nuanced, progressive manner and as such is completely believable. Because there’s ample evidence of the author’s craft, especially in Changez’s many responses and descriptions while narrating his tale in a Lahore bazaar. Because yet another example of such craft is that Changez’s ill-fated relationship with the USA is matched by his ill-fated relationship with Erica – without being heavy-handed about it. Because in less than 200 pages, Hamid creates both a compelling protagonist.
CONCLUSION:
It has been felt that the ending of the novel, though stunning, was all too sudden. But the author has explained in interviews that the ending was intentional.
"It was always intended to end as it does. For me, the reader is a character in a novel, and the way one reads it shapes the outcome.” So a reader who is more suspicious of Pakistanis might read it differently from one who is more suspicious of Americans. But it is the fear we are all being fed, the sense that something menacing lurks in the shadows of our world, that has the potential to make the novel a thriller. To engage the reader for 184 pages with one man talking non-stop to another, narrating, teasing, theorizing and lecturing is truly impressive feat.