A character’s personal violation can be made to symbolize national catastrophe.

Evidence

Most strikingly, Hassan’s rape by Assef prefigures the subsequent rape of the entire nation by the Deobandi extremists who count Assef as one of their number. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 247

Categorization

• XREF: The personal-as-national-allegory move contrasts with Hamid’s and Naqvi’s more resistant treatments of Pakistani identity.