Exit West Analysis

Preserving humanity is difficult, especially when someone is faced with having to escape and leave everything and everyone they once loved behind during time of war. In Mohsin Hamid’s “Exit West,” Saeed and Nadia face this dilemma when they are forced to run away like animals from their home. In the duration of the story, they had to find a way to maintain their humanity. This proves to be something hard during time of war, but not impossible. Taking a different point of view can help maintain someone’s humanity, human necessities remind people of being human, violence is not a true human quality, and love reminds people of their humanity. Mohsin Hamid argues that in times of war and migration it is easy to forget who we are, but there is always
This is shown when Saeed and Nadia are at Mykonos and instead of complaining about their needs and suffering because of the limited resources, they admired their surroundings as though they were vacationing, this helped them forget about their problems for a moment. In the story, Saeed and Nadia are losing faith in finding another door, and what keeps them motivated is treating the refugee camp as a vacation. Hamid writes, “Days passed like this, full of waiting and false hopes… Nadia had the idea that they should explore the island as if they were tourist...so they carried their loads like trekkers in the wilderness and walked along the beaches and up the hill.” (Hamid 113) In times of war being optimistic as a human being is really difficult, especially for Saeed and Nadia because the militants would go through the doors to attack the refugee cities, which lead the nativist to attack the migrants. Taking their small getaway “vacation” helps Saeed and Nadia leave their problems aside even if it is for a moment and helps them relax because a refugee camp is not somewhere to vacation and relax. The quote shows how even though someone may be facing a problem, there is always something positive out of it. So instead of thinking that they may die in Mykonos because they did not have many resources, they started looking at what Mykonos had, which were the views. This helped Saeed
This is shown with Saeed and Nadia throughout their relationship, at the beginning of their relationship they were in “love,” they were even thinking of some day marrying. Despite their changes, they were holding on to the relationship until they were finally safe and then they decided that their other half was not the other. Saeed and Nadia’s love did not die, it just turned into a brotherly love. Hamid writes, “they rarely touched, and her desire to be touched by him, long subsided, did not flicker back into flame...Saeed were becoming her brother, though never having had a brother she was unsure what that term meant.” (Hamid 200) This represents the need to not feel lonely. Before Saeed and Nadia did not have the chance to fall in love with each other, they rushed into “a relationship” because Nadia was alone, which was dangerous for a woman at that time, and Saeed did not display the qualities of a man. There were many moments when they each noticed that the other was changing and they would question the relationship, but neither ended the relationship because now they were alone in the world. Nadia did not have a family, and now Saeed was left an orphan and did not have a family either, they only had each other. Love is the most important thing that makes a person feel human, that is the reason for human existence, to be able to have someone to love, it could be a partner, a friend, or a family member, but if a person does