The novel’s valorized secular voice is undercut by making her a neglectful mother
Evidence
Terry Molloy articulates the value of art and might be expected to emerge as the main valorized voice countering the bleak austerity of her son’s worldview. However, things turn out not to be that straightforward. The text implies that Terry’s embrace of artistic freedom comes at the cost of nurturing Ahmad appropriately. She is drawn as an overstretched single parent who does her best to support her son. However, we are told that she “sees her son often for less than one hour in twenty four” (9), spending most time in her job as a nursing aide at the local hospital. Terry claims little talent for motherhood, and Ahmad disapproves of her lifestyle and regular string of lovers. He sees her as “a victim of the American religion of freedom … though freedom to do what and to what purpose is left up in the air” (167). Terry embodies a different kind of malaise in which the cost of personal freedom is borne by others. As such, she forms part of a broader theme of failed parenting. Ahmad’s father has absconded, and he seeks alternative father figures throughout: from Charlie Chehab, the son of his boss at the furniture store, to Shaikh Rashid, the imam who leads him toward violent jihad. Jack Levy’s expressions of paternal interest are rebuffed, and he offers an admittedly lame explanation for Ahmad’s zealotry for God: “I guess a boy needs a father, and if he doesn’t have one he’ll invent one. How’s that for cut-rate Freud?” (117). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 135
Categorization
- XREF: Directly relevant to The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s treatment of competing value systems — Changez’s family, his relationship to America, and the novel’s refusal of a clean secular hero.
- SEED: The reading tool here: a novel contests Islamophobia not by valorizing a secular counter-voice but by destabilizing ALL explanatory systems, secular and religious alike — a transferable criterion for distinguishing contestation from reinforcement.