The Emissary of Death

The Emissary of Death, Existing West
Death is the absolute truth that cannot be denied. Everyone and in turn everything could and will
one day die. Life is fleeting and is bound to end. However, mortality is not attributed to what is
living alone. It could be attached to an idea, a concept or something more abstract than that. The
theme of “mortality” is integral to the narrative of Mohsin Hamid’s novel, Exit West”. In which
Hamid addresses several contemporary tribulations that many Orientals struggle with, due to the
constant wars and civil unrest that their countries suffer from. To that end, Hamid opted to
highlight the adversity that they struggled through and explore the mortality that comes through
it, either through physical death, abstract death and emotional death.
Exist West tells the story of Saeed and Nadia, a displaced Oriental couple, from an unknown
country in disarray. The genius behind this ambiguity is inclusivity. By doing this, Hamid
ensures that everyone struggling with their place in the world, whether they’re displaced or
seeking asylum, they could relate to the struggles that the main characters would go through.
This struggle is shackled to mortality, as a driving force in the narrative. Despite the instability of
the city that the protagonists lived in, the first instance for change took form when Saeed’s
mother was killed by a stray bullet. This led the couple to finally realize the gravity of the
situation that they live in and eventually drove them to exist to the West. As death was caused by
the civil unrest that the country was going through with the militia’s occupation and oppression.
Hamid also explored death through natural means, as we saw his father dying from pneumonia.
Proving that death can have many shapes. Despite death of a person being what is most
associated with mortality in application, the author successfully reflect mortality in a more
idealistic fashion, by murdering abstract ideas.
The war-torn world that the characters are living in is the product of humanity’s folly. Hamid is
insistent on making that despondently clear. As the first none human victim by the hands of the
author is “hope”. With the death of Saeed’s mother, hope died. And with the death of hope, an
awakening is realized. Finally, it became clear that the city is no longer safe for anyone, which
promoted Saeed and Nadia to seek refuge elsewhere by finding the portal. Yet, due to the death
of hope, his father could not bring himself to seek salvation too. Instead, he stayed behind in
another abstract victim, the city itself. The city is dying, it is not completely dead. But it is a
matter of time until mortality seeps its claws into it and ends its miserable existence. These
constants exposures to desolation, eventually lead to emotional demise.
The emotional-icide is interestingly not born from the narrative only. In fact, the first instance is
the loss of the emotion of faith. An argument can be made for not being a feeling, yet Saeed only
regains his faith due to the emotional distress he feels in his subsequent misfortunes. Prior to
that, faith has lost its place in the heart of both protagonists. As neither of them was a practicing
Muslim. Nadia explicitly announces “I don’t pray”, while Saeed reluctantly admits his lack of
devotion by saying “not always”. Another brush with mortality, which is the more significant
incident, is the death of “love” in the novel. By the end of the novel, the love that connected
Saeed and Nadia is no more. They no longer feel the connection they felt. It became so easy for
them both to let go. Their living situations could be accredited to this death of love. Despite it not
being physical, the affect it has on our protagonists is equivalent to the influence that physical
death had on their lives. It drove them away, just like the death of the city and Saeed’s mother
did.
In the end, the physical death, of Saeed’s mother and others in the city, lead to abstract death of
hope and the city and countries being torn by war and that in turn lead to the emotional death, of
love, feelings and connections between characters in the novel. As even the reunion in the end of
the novel between Nadia and Saeed was met with stillness. As we do not know if they will ever
be able to recover from the damage caused to them by this war. Teaching the reader of the
difficulty caused by war and misery for anyone to convalesce and recuperate from; despite time
passing.

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The Emissary of Death, Existing West

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