Essay 2 Draft

Exit West – An Imperfect Defense

In Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 novel Exit West, migration is a central theme. Travelling is of no difficulty for the main characters, Nadia and Saeed. They can step through magical doors and end up somewhere else. However, this is not the real world. As Yogita Goyal states, Hamid “render[s] the journey of the refugee magical and instantaneous” (Goyal 246). Here, Goyal argues that the magic doors detract from the true struggles of refugees. She says the journey of a migrant is pivotal to understanding the difficulties that they have faced. Nasia Anam argues that the encampments in the story are merely temporary places for the migrants to live while being detained. She talks about the idea that “refugees coalesce in pockets”, inflaming the traditional European fear of being colonized by their own colonists (Anam 673). Even though Anam argues that Hamid works against traditional fears by telling the story from a migrant’s perspective, the book does not show the brutal conditions of real-life refugee camps. How can Hamid support the ability to migrate if he starts from an inaccurate representation of migration itself? The realities of immigration show that his writing about these “encampments” actually harms his ability to argue to protect this right. 

While Goyal argues that Hamid does not accurately portray migration, throughout Exit West and in interviews, Mohsin Hamid is definitely protective of the right to migrate. He idealizes the ability to travel between countries and for all places to be able to integrate immigrants almost seamlessly. Hamid himself moved from Pakistan to the US to the UK, taking advantage of his freedom of movement. In one interview with Anne Brice, Hamid even said “Migration is what our species does, what humans need to do” (Hamid). The idea that migration is a natural, common thing to do is also reinforced throughout Exit West, such as in London, when Nadia and Saeed leave not because of imminent danger, but because they grew tired of the conditions they lived in. 

Even though Hamid believes that migration is natural, he cannot support his argument to the fullest extent without mentioning the difficulties that some migrants face. Nadia and Saeed end up in camps in Mykonos, London, and Marin. In each place, the camps are presented as cultural blending pots with very little problems within the camp. In one passage, Hamid describes the camp in Mykonos directly as “like most places” (Hamid 107). This presentation takes away from the argument that we are all global citizens who deserve the ability to move between countries and cultures freely. Mohsin tries to make the refugee camp into a fully functioning society, which not only presents an idealized version of the refugee camp, but also modern civilization, which is contradictory to his message. If all societies everywhere were to function like that refugee camp, there would be no reason to change what we are doing now.

Hamid attempts to protect migration without consideration for the real-life conditions of the refugee camp. We can see this through the conditions in places like the Darién Gap, which are absolutely dreadful. Drug cartels run thousands upon thousands of people through a long, dangerous jungle. One journalist, Caitlin Dickerson, traveled through the Gap and stayed in the camps provided by the cartels. “They [the border patrol agents] were not on their way to investigate people robbing and assaulting migrants in the jungle, or those who captain deadly boat rides for exorbitant fees. Instead, they declared that the people running the camp had been aiding and abetting human trafficking by selling food and Wi-Fi. They burned the camp down.”  (Dickerson). Migrants in this example face constant threat from not only the illegal cartels running them through the jungle, but also from border patrol agents. The constant fear that migrants face when trying to leave their country is something that Nadia and Saeed never experienced. In both places that they leave, they build a steady life, meet many new people, and exist with very little worry for their safety. In London, they were promised “a home on forty square meters of land and a connection to all the utilities of modernity” (Hamid 179) yet, the couple still decides to leave. Had Hamid portrayed the precarious situation that refugees live in today, he could have properly demonstrated why everyone needs the power to control where we live. Even though the novel is thought to be speculative, it can be difficult for the reader to truly comprehend the difference between Hamid’s argument and reality without the context that is lacking in the book. 

Goyal argues that Hamid had an ethical responsibility to show these conditions. She thinks that Hamid “naturalizes the fact of migration” in ways that damage work that is being done to better these camps (Goyal 241). However, considering the bigger picture, this novel is not a typical migration story. In fact, many critics do not characterize it as a refugee story at all. One book critic, Isaac Chotiner, describes the book as flat, saying “Hamid doesn’t really explain how the world has or has not changed” which is generally a large part of an immigration novel (Chotiner 1). The lack of description of places like the refugee camps does not give Hamid anything to build his argument off of. If Hamid had allowed for any development; of characters, locations, or ideologies, then he would have been able to drum up support for his ideas much more effectively. His failures in the book are not ethical, but argumentative. 

Overall, while Exit West presents a narrative about migration through the magical doors that Nadia and Saeed traverse, it ultimately fails to capture the harsh realities faced by many refugees today. By portraying refugee camps as perfect little blending pots rather than sites of struggle and hardship, Hamid diminishes his ability to support the right to migrate. Critics like Yogita Goyal highlight the ethical responsibility of authors to accurately represent the tribulations of migrants, however, I believe that the issue is more argumentative. Without addressing the precarious conditions of real-life refugee experiences, Hamid’s description of migration as uncomplicated becomes misleading and destroys the urgency of advocating for change. 

Works Cited 

Anam, Nasia. “The Migrant as Colonist: Dystopia and Apocalypse in the Literature of Mass Migration.” ASAP/Journal, vol. 3 no. 3, 2018, p. 653-677. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/asa.2018.0043.

Chotiner, Isaac. “Faceless Masses: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, reviewed.” Slate, 6 March 2017, https://slate.com/culture/2017/03/exit-west-by-mohsin-hamid-reviewed.html. Accessed 17 October 2024.

Goyal, Yogita. ““We Are All Migrants”: The Refugee Novel and the Claims of Universalism.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 66 no. 2, 2020, p. 239-259. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2020.0019.

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.

Hamid, Mohsin. Interview. By Anne Brice, Sept. 1, 2020. https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/09/01/on-the-same-page-exit-west-mohsin-hamid/

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