Essay 3 – Draft

Douglas Deutsch

Essay 3 Draft

Hamid’s use of fantastical elements in Exit West serve to rip the audience away from their prior mindsets. They act as a filter, a barrier to keep biases out of the refugee conversation. This is explicitly hit home when Hamid states “we are all just immigrants through time.” The novel “Exit West” is all inclusive. Despite this, the cognitive effects of traumatically changing homes are nothing to overlook. Menger claims in her essay “What it Feels Like to be an Other” that Hamid’s chosen genre of speculative fiction accurately places the reader inside the immigrants mind, a place with no shortage of isolation. I contend that Hamid’s optimistic writing allows his story to be more universally understood, but out of necessity, glosses over aspects of the refugee experience that aren’t universal, the trauma that simply can’t be related to by everyone. It is through the hints given to us by the elements of fantasy that we are able to discern the true trauma immigrants experience.

Hamid’s use of fantastical elements in his novel is seamlessly integrated into the world he created. As readers, we hardly blink at the introduction of magic black doors that teleport people. Maybe it’s because of  Hamid’s silky writing style. Or perhaps Hamid’s chosen genre of speculative fiction allows such an integration to be possible. The novum, according to Menger, doesn’t have to be scientifically plausible if it’s “within the constraints of the proposed world.” She argues that this allows the reader to compare the Speculative Fiction world continually to reality. The integration of the science fiction element in Exit West is so seamless that it can’t actually function as a novum. The reason for this is simple. There is no novum. The black doors actually exist. Our phones are portals to anywhere in the world, spreading information and creating connections across the world instantly. Phones and portals can be seen as interchangeable in Exit West.

Even before Hamid introduces the portals in the novel, he quite explicitly states how a phone allowed Saeed to have access to “Nadia’s separate existence” in a time where they were separated during unrest in their city. This kind of person-to-person connection shows the closeness technology can bring. Just because technology has improved does not mean that ignorance has improved with it. This can be seen through the “nativist’s” interactions with portals and refugee’s. As the portrayal of technology in the novel shifts away from person-to-person interactions towards cultural clashes, the portals become more representative of the news networks designed to give groups information that they want to hear. If this commentary on technology wasn’t clear enough, Saeed and Nadia’s relationship mirrors this realization. They begin to fall apart after encountering the portals, and the toxicity that arrived with them.

All of this brings us back to Menger. If Exit West doesn’t actually have a novum, then it can’t really be called a work of speculative fiction. This calls into question her claim that speculative fiction is what sets this novel apart from other literature on refugees. The reader still looks at the refugee issue from a fresh perspective, but this is not from “establishing a distance from reality” as Menger claimed. This is from establishing a closeness to reality. We connect to the story so much because we see that this actually is the present state of the issue, not because we are comparing a removed fantasy with our perceptions of reality.

By creating a story that is intrinsically close to reality, Hamid’s social commentary becomes apparent. Connecting the reader and the refugee through a forged closeness creates a vision of the future where the nativist and the immigrants recognize the humanity in each other. This gentle optimism is what sets the refugee novel apart from others. The bleak outlook found in most refugee literature numbs the audience to the trauma which instantly diminishes the impact of whatever they are trying to say. Hamid’s optimistic outlook in Exit West forces to readers to view the refugee crisis with respect to the possibilities of the  brighter future that Hamid envisions. This context adds humanity to the refugee that cannot be found if given in the traditional realist way. The relationships that we find with the refugees is essential to understanding their trials, hardships, traumas, and tribulations.

If Hamid made Exit West entirely optimistic, the entire situation of the refugee crisis would be lost. In order to add a dose of cynicism, Hamid distorts time, creating dissonance as an extra reminder to the reader that a refugee’s life is anything but easy.  For instance, Saeed and Nadia’s first journey through the portal was given a whole chapter of building, but the actual process of leaving only took up a small paragraph. Hamid describes the process of teleporting as being “both like dying and like being born,” which creates a noticeable barrier between the new chapters in Saeed and Nadia’s lives. Menger explains how this falls in line with Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus; which is the ability for a person to predict future actions based on past conditions and experiences. The complete chasm between past experiences and future experiences leads to an uncertainty about the future that transcends all rationality. Hamid emphasizes this through his abrupt changes in setting, and thus from his distortion of time. The distortion of time is not something found in purely in speculative or science fiction. It is something the brain experiences constantly. Our phones are an enormous time drain that massively distort our perceptions of the passage of time. We can relate, to a small degree, to the disturbing feeing that comes with the distortion of time, helping to place the reader in Saeed and Nadia’s experience.

Hamid creates a powerful social commentary on the refugee crisis through cleverly  displayed realist literature. The fact the we have trouble perceiving his work as realist serves only as a testament to the effectiveness of his prose. Realism is essential to this novel, paradoxically coming into form through his elements of fantasy, because it leads to our shared humanity. This is the key to overcoming our hate, our relations. If nothing else, remember, we are all just travelers through time.