There are many factors to consider when deciding to stay together versus let the other go. Some important things for them to consider in their situation were not just their values or outlook on the future, but also safety and the ability to survive and live as comfortably as possible. I don’t think they should have stayed together because it was evident that many of their values and goals in life didn’t align. But staying together seemed to be the better option for both of them. It is safest to be with someone you know, which allows them to look out for and take care of each other. They each had their strengths and different connections they could utilise. Using their combined resources, it would be much easier to survive and create a more stable living space. Also, being with someone you trust in such trying times provides so much comfort and fights the loneliness they each must have felt as they left their homes behind. Staying together was certainly the most practical option, but at what cost? 

First of all, their values didn’t align. Saeed greatly valued his religion and felt very deeply connected to his nationality. He prayed every day and relied on his faith to guide him through the struggles he faced alongside Nadia. However, Nadia was not religious and never prayed with him. She was never disrespectful about it; she simply didn’t value religion the same way that Saeed did. When Saeed wanted to sacrifice some of their comfort of living in their own room in the Nigerian house to move into a house of people from their own country, Nadia refused. This demonstrates Saeed’s deep connection to his people and how he would give up his comfort to revive his relationship with his culture. Conversely, this demonstrates how Nadia doesn’t value their culture in the same way and would choose the comfort of their own room over joining a community of people from their culture. Nadia dresses very traditionally, in a very modest, long black robe every day. However, she doesn’t justify this in reference to its cultural significance or as a religious regulation, but as simply something she does for herself or to protect herself from men. Saeed critiques how she refuses to align herself with their religion or culture, showing a clear disparity in their values. 

Additionally, Saeed seeks familiarity, comfort, and the establishment of a more stable life. In contrast, Nadia seeks a new life and a new future for herself. This disparity in their ways of life and outlook on the future affects how they move forward. Nadia is eager to keep moving and find new things, while in every place they visit, Saeed tries to make it feel like home. This clear difference in their characters demonstrates their incompatibility as they don’t want the same life. They cannot create a life together that satisfies each of their wants and needs. Therefore, I think it was for the best that they broke up, allowing them to move in different directions. 

The imagery of the door in exist west are repeated multiple times. Hammid talks about them being complete darkness, people crawling out exhausted, unsure of whats on the end. But yet they are still willing to walk through. Rather than a magical door, I think Hamid is really just using these to express what real-world immigration looks like for those seeking asylum. People may give massive amounts of money, like as seen in the agent, to someone they do not know, purely out of hope that they can trust them. They are smuggled around in precarious situations and horrible conditions simply for the chance at a better life. As seen in those border x rays were people sew themelves into car seats, lay down in oil tanks, and go to great measure simply for a chance. And many times when they finally make it out, they arent greeted wth the amazing world they think of. This is clearly emphasized in the rest of the novel.

Throughout the book Exit West, Saeed maintains an incredibly complicated relationship with his homeland. At the start of the book he seems uncommitted to his culture and faith, only loosely following due to his parents religious beliefs. However, the further Saeed migrates from his country, the closer his connection to its beliefs become.

This becomes incredibly clear in Britain, when Saeed and Nadia live within the Nigerian house in London. While Nadia embraces the new people surrounding her, Saeed instead finds his own people from his country, fleeing to their house repeatedly to engage in prayer and simply converse. While some may claim this is just a shield Saeed is putting up to keep himself safe from a changing world, I think his return to tradition is a sign of his own independence. Throughout their migration, Nadia is attempting the entire time to isolate herself from their homeland. By taking up traditions only maintained back at home, Saeed demonstrates his own personal independence in choosing to revere the culture that raised him.

I think the idea of Nadia vs. Saeed in their respective ability to handle change, and their separation, has a lot to do with how much they appreciated their previous lives. Saeed remains connected to his home country because he enjoyed his life, and misses his loving family, where Nadia almost welcomes change since she doesn’t especially like her parents, although she is still curious about their wellbeing, and associates their home country with her bad experiences in that country. Because of this Nadia had no problems in adapting to the new circumstances, while Saeed struggled to accept his new life fully, leading to him experiencing a lot of stress to the point of bitterness. This discrepancy is also what ultimately leads to them growing apart.

Saeed remains attached to his family, prayer being the medium, while Nadia seeks new companions and bond in the new environment they find themselves in. Nadia quickly becomes friends with all kinds of people without bias, while Saeed still seeks the people from his homeland. For example, when the both of them are living in London in the rich family’s house, Saeed finds and talks to some people from his country, whom offer him a stay in their house under worse conditions from what they were living in at the time. Yet, he still asks Nadia to move into the house, not even recognizing that she might not want to until she brings it up. This and other events in that house is what started to separate the two characters, where they first fond they no longer longed for each other and where they first found they opinions in conflict, because one wanted to start a new life while the other wanted his old one back.

In Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid, Saeed and Nadia are constantly changing throughout the story. At first, Nadia and Saeed appear to be two people who are just getting to know each other, Saeed being more timid around Nadia while Nadia is more in her own element, focusing on how to become her own independent woman.

Throughout the story, although they remain close to each other, we see Nadia conform to the roles of the stereotypical woman at the time, someone who relies on a man to support her. However, it is quite the opposite, when Nadia and Saeed are stranded, we see the stress of the situation get to Saeed, Saeed becomes bitter, a quality of which has never been attributed to him before. Resulting in Nadia having to take charge of their situation, she set up camp, she negotiated for their food, she reached help on the phone faster than Saeed did. As the story went on, Nadia got closer and closer to her goals of becoming independent, while also growing farther and farther away from Saeed, almost refuting the gender roles in place at their time.

In Exit West, Mohsin Hamid shows us that Migration is not just traveling from one place to another, but also an emotional experience. The books depict the experiences of Saeed and Nadia as they leave their homes due to the violence of war. People in the novel can travel through mysterious doors that lead to new countries, mostly privileged countries. The doors symbolize modern migration, illustrating that crossing a border marks the beginning of change. Although the door makes the people feel safe, it doesn’t take away the fear fully away and the struggle to get comfortable with your family is also a struggle to adjust. Mohsin Hamid used the doors to show that migration is not just about leaving a place, but also changing some of your identity to fit into a new culture or environment. For example, in a out current day, many immigrants have to learn a lot to fit into this country, for example, learning English, which is hard to learn, especially if you have just come into the country as an adult.

Hamid also questions the idea that migration is uncommon or temporary. Instead, he sees migration as a big part of human life, where it shows diversity, opportunity, and hope for those who need it for a better quality of life. A big example of this is immigrants who come from different countries, because they do not feel safe and are coming here for a better life. As Saeed and Nadia move from one place to another, their relationship shifts from being really close with each other to being distant, showing changes that migration can cause. The novels show us that change is inevitable in a changing world. Through the novel, Hamid explains to us that in reality, we are all migrants, seeking a better future.

When I was first reading Exit West, the magical doors felt out of place because they appeared in a world that is otherwise very realistic, closely resembling our own. Hamid also doesn’t explain their existence, simply stating that they started to appear randomly. As the novel is set in modern times, filled with familiar cities, technology, and political conflicts that feel tangible, the doors seem out of place in the story’s world.
However, I believe Hamid did this intentionally. The doors serve as a powerful symbol, representing migration and the human desire to escape danger happening in their homes. While the doors themselves could be a part of a fantasy book, people’s reactions—ranging from fear and confusion to hope—feel incredibly real. Since the rest of the narrative addresses serious issues like war and displacement, the doors are meant to highlight these themes rather than seamlessly fit into a fantasy setting.

Mohsin Hamid’s novel, Exit West, utilizes a special narration style that is very unique to the novel, and it accomplishes a lot in terms of telling the story. Hamid’s sentences tend to ramble on for much longer than they traditionally would, lending itself to paragraphs and sometimes even pages that are entirely one sentence. These long sentences manage to contribute many different moods despite their similar structures.

One instance of this is on page 122, the second paragraph. It reads “They waited for a while but knew they could not stay in this hotel room forever…” then it continues on until the sentence concludes which “…they were in a house of some kind, surely a palace, with rooms upon rooms and marvels upon marvels, and taps that gushed water that was like spring water and was white with bubbles and felt soft, yes soft, to the touch.” This sentence, in contrast to the other example, reads very smoothly, gently, as though the sentence is the water described in it. It displays a feeling of peace and calm as well as admiration and awe. Even though this sentence is structured nearly identically to many others in the story, it conveys vast emotion on its own.

While most of the time, this serves the narrative in terms of managing to display a set of complex themes, it also distinguishes Hamid’s writing from the crowd. While these sentences can sometimes be quite the hassle to read, leaving any speaker out of breath and any reader winded, Exit West requires unique prose to tell the story effectively and thematically.

One key example of this is on page 74, where the long sentences serves to both elaborate on an emotion and also reveal a theme of the story. The sentence begins at the bottom of the page: “But part of her still resisted the idea of moving in with him…and also finding the idea of living as a chaste half-lover, half-sister to Saeed in close proximity with his parents rather bizarre, and she might have waited much longer had Saeed’s mother not been killed…stayed with them that night to offer what comfort and help she could and did not spend another night in her own apartment again.”

The interruption in the middle of the sentence, regarding Saeed’s mother’s death, shocks the reader just as if a loved one was killed in their own life: suddenly and without preface, interrupting their own thoughts about their life and way of being. It is in this way that Hamid manages to make the reader feel the same kind of grief as Nadia: missing someone important to characters in her life that she cares about despite having never known her, because all at once, Saeed’s mother is gone from the world.

A similar example that is less emotionally devastating is towards the end of the novel on page 230. While the sentence is shorter than the previous example it still manages to convey a great deal about the story: “Their conversation navigated two lives, with vital details highlighted and excluded, and it was also a dance, for they were former lovers….imagine how different it would be if I had agreed to have sex with you, and Nadia said we were having sex, and Saeed considered and smiled and said yes I suppose we were.”

In the ambling curves of this sentence, the reader can sense both the time that has passed and the fondness that still lingers between them. There is a bittersweetness in the words that is displayed by the long sentence, and it fills the reader with the same grief and joy that Nadia and Saeed are feeling in seeing each other again after all this time separated from each other.

It is in this way that Exit West requires its unique prose, especially when expertly wielded by an author like Hamid. Without these long, seemingly run-on sentences, Exit West would not have the same impact, and the deep humanity of the emotional writing as well as its complex, varied themes would be buried under more simple language, which would distract from the beauty and meaning of the story.