Nadia and Saeed of Exit West are foils. Nadia is adventurous; Saeed is cautious. Nadia wants to travel the world; Saeed is perfectly content to mostly stay home. Nadia is nontraditional; Saeed finds solace in religion. I think these aspects compliment each other more than they clash against each other. They are both willing to compromise and do what they can to make their relationship work. Going through a war would have broken up all but the strongest couples. They said themselves, they were forced too close together. In an ideal world, they would have been safe to be themselves, and maybe they wouldn’t have broken up.

In the novel Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, a love story is one of the first things that we are hit with when it comes to Saeed and Nadia. They both start from becoming strangers with a complete 180-degree background when it comes to their family, to later becoming lovers. Nadia managed to finally ease up when meeting Saeed and finally showed appreciation towards him. From moving to different locations through the mysterious doors, along with others.

This begs the question of whether it’s possible to have a relationship at that time. They were both very affectionate towards each other while dealing with the huge war that was going on throughout their lives, always managing to meet back with each other and bonding time and time again, whether that would be meeting with each other or a simple check-up on the phone.

Even throughout all of the struggles that they went through, they ended things off. Which makes me think whether they were first in the relationship to protect each other during the war that was going on, or did they truly feel something for each other before it slowly went south because of all the migration to different countries. There was no known villain between them that caused their relationship to end, but a different set of views. I think this is a case where a relationship cannot work with both parties experiencing the same difficulties. Rather than fixing it, they ended it.

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.

The overarching plot of the novel Exit West is that mysterious doors which can take anyone in the world anywhere in the world, have caused what seems at first to be a “Migrant-pocalypse”. Of course, Mohsin Hamid (the author) turns this on its head to argue that this wouldn’t be an apocalypse at all, but instead a uptopia.

Now, I understand this is a work of fiction, and so it is by definition unrealistic at times, but in what world would this ever prove to be anything less than catastrophic? In the book, Saeed and Nadia leave their home country because of the terrible conflict which has been brewing there and eventually spirals out of control. Understandable, however they do so through magical doors which seemingly anyone can access. If anyone can access them, it’s safe to assume that everyone would want to use them, as everyone wants to leave. If a conflicting nation loses the people it’s conflicting over, what happens? They more than likely begin to use the doors as well. These doors lead to people’s homes most of the time, if some armed military people from some other country just started coming through a portal in my closet which I have no way of closing, I’d be forced to move. I’m assuming that’s the point though, more fortunate people being forced to move because of their circumstances, an almost identical situation to most migrants. Honestly, I don’t even know where this is going I just wanted to ponder the idea of rebellious armed soldiers coming from a civil war straight to my house. I guess it wouldn’t really matter, what could I do to stop it? Something like the London halo isn’t a terrible idea, but that doesn’t close the doors. Nothing, and no one would be safe around doors anymore, we’d just have to get rid of anything that even remotely resembles a doorway, and maybe construct one big one, like a monitored terminal, for people to come through safely.

In Exit West, phones start out as symbols of freedom. When Saeed and Nadia first connect, it’s through their phones that they escape the rules of their city. Hamid says, “phones had become indispensable, because they were the portals through which much of life was mediated” (40). That line always makes the phone feel like its own kind of door. Before the literal doors show up, people are already slipping through digital ones.

But that freedom doesn’t last. Once they flee, the phone stops being a tool of connection and becomes a reminder of what they’ve lost. Saeed keeps checking his “even though there was no one left to call” (94). The same thing that once gave him privacy and choice now traps him in memory. This represents how the things that feel like liberation at first can also isolate us.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid challenges many key points of life that have been discussed throughout history and which continue to be topics of discussion to this day. Themes involving love, gender, immigration, religion all appear throughout the journey of Saeed and Nadia. Hamid’s depiction of love was one of my favorites in the novel as I was fascinated by how it could be analyzed in so many different ways.

Saeed and Nadia’s love tells a universal tale of intimacy and friendship and protection where unforgettable memories are made and tender moments are shared. Hamid introduces the two main characters in the beginning of the story as curious lovebirds who are excited and entranced by the others’ presence, online or in person. Their relationship could have looked a lot like what we see in movies and read in romance novels, even similar to how Saeed’s parent’s marriage was described. However, as the conflict in their city intensifies, they are confronted with the notion that their relationship won’t always be one of order and constants. As the instability of war and riots brings the couple closer together, their need for each other is based on companionship and safety; they might even see the other as a reminder of the life they left behind after passing through the door. The trauma they share because of that experience may have been what led to their feelings of separateness later in the book. A trauma-bond. At one point they were inseparable and seemed to be totally aligned in their wanting to be together, but once hardship struck they began to drift apart. 

I think Hamid handles this complex relationship in an incredibly mature and thoughtful way. Saeed and Nadia aren’t presented as people who seek out arguments or conflict – instead they decide to be open with each other despite the painful emotional process leading up to that confrontation. The bond they built together had a strong foundation, so even after they go their separate ways towards the end of the novel their separation was accepted mutually and was even able to be bridged once they are old and meet back in their hometown.

Hamid ingeniously wrote the ending of Exit West as bittersweet because while the two characters don’t end up together, they still share such poignant memories that inevitably draw them close despite the different paths they ended up taking and that is such a human experience that should be depicted more often in media.

In Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid, I noticed that there were multiple abrupt short stories about random people. When first reading these stories, I didn’t understand the significance of most of them, but I realize now that they greatly built on the themes of the story.

For example, Hamid wrote about an old woman in Palo Alto who had lived in the same house her entire life, but noticed that her neighborhood and society were constantly changing. She claimed that her children “were motivated by money, money they spent without having, which she had never done, always saving for a rainy day, even if only a little” (208). The difference in her children’s values and her own shows how much society can change over time, and even if one doesn’t move, they still experience change because their community as a whole is affected.

Furthermore, Hamid wrote about a mute, elderly woman in Marrakesh who is visited by her daughter and asked to escape the country through a magic door. The maid believed that “she was not wanted by the world, and here she was at least known, and she was tolerated, and that was a blessing” (224). The maid refused her daughter’s request because she couldn’t imagine leaving the only place she had ever known, and she feared how she would be treated as an immigrant. This story served as a vignette to represent the people who couldn’t immigrate to a safer country, whether it be from fear or a situation preventing them.

Mohsin Hamid, the critically acclaimed author of the 2017 novel Exit West, uses very unique syntax in order to make the scene “feel” like it is being elongated or shrunk. Hamid mainly uses a series of sentence fragments connected by commas to blur all the action together, and give the reader the impression that everything happens very quickly. On the contrary, short sentences aren’t uncommon either:  Sometimes sentences are 3 words, and sometimes they take up more than a page. By contrasting these two very different sentence structures, Hamid creates a very interesting perception of events in the story, seemingly making some events fly by while others are dragged on forever. Often times, the action is happening right in front of you and you can’t even tell because of the way that the story is structured. An example of this is the passage describing the woman on the train. The entire train ride is technically one sentence, but it’s more accurately a series of sentence fragments stitched together with commas to form one monster sentence. Hamid uses these technique throughout the novel, among many others, to showcase his unique and creative writing style. 

In the novel Exit West, Mohsin Hamid explores the complexity of the migrant experience. While the journey from home to a new setting is liberating and opens the door of freedom, the journey of exiting one’s closeness of culture, home, and family also opens the door of struggle. When Saeed and Nadia are moving locations, I feel like each city and country represents a different door being either the “normal door” of familiarity or the “black door” of uncertainty.

In the middle of the story when Saeed and Nadia are on the Greek Island of Mykonos, they observe and compare the reasoning or circumstances of being in this certain environment. (enjoyment vs. necessity) There could be some on an island for the reason of vacation and chilling at the beach or people like Saeed and Nadia at a refugee camp with tents and lean-tos who are involved in the migrant experience by constantly reflecting on their past and home while moving for the better of their safety.

I also think that while reading this novel, although both Nadia and Saeed have had experiences of going through the doors of freedom and struggle, Nadia represents the door of freedom while Saeed represents the door of struggle. It is evident throughout the novel that Nadia likes independence, control, and specifically isolation from her family and learning new ideas and being in new environments correlating towards freedom. On the other hand, Saeed had a close relationship with his parents growing up and was enhanced through prayer. But this migrant experience for Saeed was different when he left home and increased how much he prayed a day, moving houses with people from the same country, and even developing a new relationship at the of the novel with the preacher girl. This shows how much he struggled through his constant connection of home in new environments.

Exit West was a novel that was written in 2017 about mass migration throughout the world and the backlash to it. It would be wrong to say that Exit West predicted the current political climate. Immigration has been a large issue although it is certainly more in the spotlight in the current day. The current political climate in the United States has wreaked havoc among many of the immigrant communities like those in Exit West.

Even near Oak Park we have felt the destruction wrought by these policies. Berwyn is subject to many raids and recently an Oak Park trustee was detained and questioned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. People are afraid to leave their houses due to fear of being encircled and trapped illegally without trial or any chance to escape.

The abuses of power have become so rampant that the official government website which details the constitution has removed sections relating to Habeas Corpus and although this has been attributed to a “coding error”, the change has yet to be reversed after a month.

Certainly with the knowledge of how we currently treat immigrants, Exit West seems to present an almost idealistic perspective on how the world might react to large numbers of people moving around.

In the book Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Nadia and Saeed are able to move through magical doors to travel to different countries all around the world. However, as they move through the doors their sense of belonging constantly shifts and changes. At first, their relationship gives them a kind of “home” in each other, but as they pass through new countries and communities, that connection starts to fade. Hamid is trying to highlight the idea that as we change so does our sense of belonging. This suggests that sometimes we outgrow the people and places that once made us feel safe. This is what we see happen in the book through Nadia and Saeed’s relationship. Even though they have a strong bond and connection at the start of the book, that changes as they move to Mykonos, then London, and finally Marin. Through that traveling they start adapting in different ways and ultimately grow more distanced from each other.