Tori McNamara
Ms. Hagge
AP Language and Composition
05/24/23
Exit West In-Class Prose Analysis Essay
The book Exit West tells the story of two young adults, Nadia and Saeed, living in a war-torn city in a world where portals open up in common places like cabinets or restroom doors. These portals allow people to travel all over the world with ease, but this ability to travel causes problems in many countries when they see a surge of refugees entering their cities. In his book Exit West, Hamid shows how Nadia and Saeed’s relationship is put under strain during the migration which reveals how different their values are and why they are not a good match for each other, especially when it comes to their relationship with their phones.
One thing that is very different about Nadia and Saeed is the way that they approach the use of their phones. The way each of them uses their phones is thoroughly described on pages 40-41. “Saeed partly resisted the pull of his phone… But this hour was tightly regulated, and when it ended, a timer would set off an alarm, a gentle, windy chime, as though from a breezy planet of some blue-shimmering science fiction priestess, and he would electronically lock away his browser and not browse again on his phone until the following day… In contrast to Saeed, Nadia saw no need to limit her phone. It kept her company on long evenings, as it did countless young people in the city who were likewise stranded in their homes, and she rode it far out into the world on otherwise solitary, stationary nights,” (40-41). It is clear that Nadia and Saeed felt very differently about the impacts of phone usage. Saeed felt that it was a trap that would pull him in and keep him there which would take him away from the life he was actually living in and bring him into this online world where everyone was concerned with everyone else's lives. When Hamid writes “she rode it far out into the world” he is showing that Nadia’s phone allowed her to explore the world and the people in other parts of the world even though she was not there with those people. This figurative language shows that Nadia is more adventurous while Saeed is happy with where he is now. This is one of the first signs that Nadia and Saeed may not be a good fit for each other.
Once they get into a relationship, the meaning and importance of their phones change. Their phones become something that connects them and helps them strengthen their relationship. Their phones are most effective at connecting them before they go through the first portal and leave their city, but they also help connect them later on in the book after they had started to grow distant from each other. “In their small bedroom after sunset they listened to music on Nadia's phone, using the phone's built-in speaker... One night she played an album that she knew Saeed liked, by a local band popular in their city when they were in their teens, and he was surprised and happy to hear it, because he was well aware she was not overly fond of their country's pop music, and so it was clear that she was playing this for him," (135-136). Nadia's phone helped them resolve their disputes and go back to being happier because Nadia showed how she still cares about him. Hamid chooses to include this example of their differing tastes in music to show that this idea can be expanded to other aspects of their lives. Saeed is still tied to the things such as the people and culture he left back home while Nadia is more open to trying new things and meeting new people now that they left their city. Saeed was the one who liked the music from their city and Nadia explored other music from around the world. They do not value the importance of having pride in your own city in the same way. Nadia is not as connected to her city as Saeed is and this may be because she is not extremely close with her family like Saeed was with his family.
While early on in the book social media and their phones helped connect Nadia and Saeed by allowing them to talk to one another, this changed. After they break up, they are still influencing each other through their phones. "Neither much enjoyed catching unexpected glimpses of their former lover's new existence online, and so they distanced themselves from each other on social networks, and while they wished to look out for each other, and to keep tabs on each other, staying in touch took a toll on them, serving as an unsettling reminder of a life not lived, and also they grew less worried each for the other, less worried that the other would need them to be happy, and eventually a month went by without any contact, and then a year, and then a lifetime," (223). Their phones used to be something that connected them and made them happy, but as they grew apart because of the migration, they were pushed apart by their phones, too. Their relationship not only with each other but also with their phones as well, crumbled due to the migration and their different values. Hamid has lots of run-on sentences throughout the book and this sentence in particular is very effective at making its point because it is a run-on sentence. Writing this way allows Hamid to explain a lot about how their phones were affecting them while writing a small amount. This sentence conveys a lot about how both Nadia and Saeed feel while being direct about exactly what it is caused their relationship to turn into.
Hamid not only shows how their relationship is affected by their phones but he also compares their relationship to phone screens. “Every time a couple moves they begin, if their attention is still drawn to one another, to see each other differently, for personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we reflect depend much on what is around us. So it was with Saeed and Nadia, who found themselves changed in each other’s eyes in this new place,” (186). In this passage, Hamid compares their changing relationship to that of a changing phone screen through a metaphor. Just like a phone screen, people change all the time due to different things that they experience. The migration changed the way that Nadia and Saeed saw each other and this made them realize that they did not have the same values and they were better off being friends and not in a relationship with one another.
Throughout the book Exit West, Mohsin Hamid shows how Nadia and Saeed’s relationship is affected and eventually broken apart by their phones. He does this through his employment of metaphors, run-on sentences, and figurative language. With these literary devices, Hamid makes it clear that their phones helped them realize that they were not right for each other and ultimately led to them separating and growing apart.
Tori McNamara
Ms. Hagge
AP Language and Composition
05/31/23
Both Sides of the Phone
The novel Exit West tells the story of two young adults, Nadia and Saeed, living in a war-torn city in a world where portals open up in common places like cabinets or restroom doors. These portals allow people to travel all over the world with ease, but this ability to travel causes problems in many countries when they see a surge of refugees entering their cities. In his book Exit West, Hamid shows how Nadia and Saeed’s relationship is put under strain during the migration which reveals how different their values are and why they are not a good match for each other, especially when it comes to their relationship with their phones.
One thing that is very different about Nadia and Saeed is the way that they approach the use of their phones. The author thoroughly describes how the way each of them uses their phones is different saying, “Saeed partly resisted the pull of his phone… But this hour was tightly regulated, and when it ended, a timer would set off an alarm, a gentle, windy chime, as though from a breezy planet of some blue-shimmering science fiction priestess, and he would electronically lock away his browser and not browse again on his phone until the following day… In contrast to Saeed, Nadia saw no need to limit her phone. It kept her company on long evenings, as it did countless young people in the city who were likewise stranded in their homes, and she rode it far out into the world on otherwise solitary, stationary nights” (40-41). It is clear that Nadia and Saeed felt very differently about the impacts of phone usage. Saeed felt that it was a trap that would pull him in and keep him there which would take him away from the life he was actually living in and bring him into this online world where everyone was concerned with everyone else's lives. On the other hand, when Hamid writes “she rode it far out into the world” he is showing that Nadia’s phone allowed her to explore the world and the people in other parts of the world even though she was not there with those people. This figurative language shows that Nadia is more adventurous while Saeed is happy with where he is now. This is one of the first signs that Nadia and Saeed may not be a good fit for each other.
Once they get into a relationship, the meaning and importance of their phones change. Their phones become something that connects them and helps them strengthen their relationship. Their phones are most effective at connecting them before they go through the first portal and leave their city, but they also help connect them later on in the book after they had started to grow distant from each other. An example of this connection is signified through Nadia playing music: “In their small bedroom after sunset they listened to music on Nadia's phone, using the phone's built-in speaker... One night she played an album that she knew Saeed liked, by a local band popular in their city when they were in their teens, and he was surprised and happy to hear it, because he was well aware she was not overly fond of their country's pop music, and so it was clear that she was playing this for him," (135-136). Nadia's phone helped resolve their disputes and go back to being happier because Nadia showed how she still cares about him. Hamid chooses to include this example of their differing tastes in music to show that this idea can be expanded to other aspects of their lives. Saeed is still tied to the things such as the people and culture he left back home while Nadia is more open to trying new things and meeting new people now that they left their city. Saeed liked the music from their city and Nadia liked to explore music from around the world. They do not value the importance of having pride in your own city in the same way. Nadia is not as connected to her city as Saeed is and this may be because she is not extremely close with her family like Saeed was with his family.
While early on in the novel social media and their phones helped connect Nadia and Saeed by allowing them to talk to one another, this changed. After they break up, they are still influencing each other through their phones. This influence is shown through their newfound distaste for social media as they both distance themselves from it: "Neither much enjoyed catching unexpected glimpses of their former lover's new existence online, and so they distanced themselves from each other on social networks, and while they wished to look out for each other, and to keep tabs on each other, staying in touch took a toll on them, serving as an unsettling reminder of a life not lived, and also they grew less worried each for the other, less worried that the other would need them to be happy, and eventually a month went by without any contact, and then a year, and then a lifetime," (223). Their phones used to be something that connected them and made them happy, but as they grew apart because of the migration, they were pushed apart by their phones, too. Their relationship not only with each other but also with their phones crumbles due to the migration and their different values. Hamid has lots of run-on sentences throughout the book and this sentence in particular is very effective at making its point because it is a run-on sentence. Writing this way allows Hamid to explain a lot about how their phones were affecting them while writing a small amount. Hamid also shows how quickly time passed without Nadia and Saeed talking to one another by including “a month, a year, and a lifetime” all in one sentence. This sentence conveys a lot about how both Nadia and Saeed feel and how it led to the end of their relationship.
Hamid not only shows how their relationship is affected by their phones but he also compares their relationship to phone screens. Hamid says, “Every time a couple moves they begin, if their attention is still drawn to one another, to see each other differently, for personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we reflect depend much on what is around us. So it was with Saeed and Nadia, who found themselves changed in each other’s eyes in this new place,” (186). In this passage, Hamid compares their changing relationship to that of a changing phone screen through a metaphor. Just like a phone screen, people change all the time due to different things they experience. The migration changed the way that Nadia and Saeed saw each other and this made them realize that they did not have the same values and they were better off being friends and not in a relationship with one another.
Throughout the book Exit West, Mohsin Hamid shows how Nadia and Saeed’s relationship is affected and eventually broken apart by their phones. He does this through his employment of metaphors, run-on sentences, and figurative language. With these literary devices, Hamid makes it clear that their phones helped them realize that they were not right for each other and ultimately led to them separating and growing apart.
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