“Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid (post 3): Neither character nor plot nor migration driven, this novel is psychology of multiple personality driven.

As the last chapter would seem to confirm, this novel is neither character driven nor plot driven nor social issue driven. The two main characters, Saeed and Nadia, who had been a romantic couple, have been separated for many years. How they have been for all these years is barely mentioned. And the issues of social turmoil and refugees are relegated to nostalgia.

What, then, is this novel’s basic interest?

Surprisingly, it is psychology. Take, for example, the novel’s magic doors, which in the real world would be considered a major scientific phenomenon and a revolution in transportation, but in this novel is an illustration of the author’s imagination: He, like most novelists, can travel to different places through doors in his mind.

The following passage addresses place and migration psychologically:

“Every time a couple moves they begin…to see each other differently, for personalities are not a single immutable color…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” (p. 186).

Note: Within the passage is embedded the idea that “personalities are not…single.” And although the average person may switch roles and moods under different circumstances, it is the person with multiple personality who switches personalities, or may even create a new personality, according to what is most adaptive under the circumstances.

In contrast, the person without multiple personality can relate to the lyric, “Wherever I go, I find myself there.” Indeed, the very concept of personality is based on the fact that most people stay basically the same. So when novelists or philosophers purport to discover that this is not so, they are extrapolating from the minority of people (possibly including themselves) who have multiple personality.

Mohsin Hamid. Exit West. New York, Riverhead Books, 2017.