Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Son the Fanatic, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Immigration, Assimilation, and Radicalization
Immigration, Fathers, and Sons
The West and Islam
The Role of Women
Summary
Analysis
Parvez, a Pakistani immigrant in England, begins to secretly visit his son’s room because he has noticed changes in it. At first the changes in Ali’s room are welcome. The room, once messy, is now clean and orderly. But when Ali’s possessions gradually begin disappearing, and brand-new items are thrown out or given away, Parvez becomes alarmed. He also notes that Ali has recently broken up with his English girlfriend, and that his friends no longer call.
Ali’s room becoming clean indicates a growing discipline. But Ali throwing away his possessions suggests a discipline that is at odds with the Western focus on attaining material goods. Cutting off his English friends further indicates that Ali is in the early stages of his departure from English culture. Parvez’s concern over Ali’s new behaviors signifies the beginning of the conflict between father and son that will drive the plot of the story.
Themes
Parvez is unable to confront Ali about these changes, as he finds himself suddenly afraid of his own son. Questions he does pose to Ali are met with sharp, inconclusive replies. Parvez is especially upset by Ali’s strange behavior because he was worked so hard throughout his life to provide for his son, including paying for his education to become an accountant. Parvez fears that these changes might indicate that England is ruining his son like it has the sons of other immigrant fathers.
Parvez’s fear of Ali represents both the growing distance between father and son as well as the West’s fear of Islam and Muslim people. Parvez, like other first-generation, immigrant fathers, has worked hard to ensure that his second-generation son will thrive and experience upward mobility in their adopted home. The stories of other immigrant fathers who lost their sons to negative influences in England exist as warnings of what can go wrong for Parvez and other first-generation fathers. Parvez sees Ali and his future as an accountant as the final step to achieving full assimilation into English culture for his family, and fears that Ali is squandering his own hard work and sacrifice by straying from this carefully constructed path to success.
Themes
When Ali’s room is bare of almost everything, including even the pictures that once hung on the walls, Parvez is disturbed enough that he can’t sleep. He starts drinking more whiskey, even on the job. Parvez is a taxi driver, and most of his coworkers are fellow Punjabi immigrants from Pakistan who work the night shift in part because the money is better and in part so they can avoid their wives by sleeping in the daytime. They enjoy a “boy’s life” in the taxi office, where they bond over card games, jokes, lewd stories, meals, and conversations that span the personal and political.
The accelerating changes in Ali’s behavior alarms Parvez because he can sense in it the loss of his dreams of full assimilation through his son. Though Parvez doesn’t yet realize it, Ali’s behavior is driven by his new Islamic beliefs, it is significant that his reaction is to drink more whiskey, which in the story represents his intoxication with Western culture and rejection of Islamic religion (which does not allow drinking alcohol). Meanwhile, the first mention of women in the story presents them as something to be avoided.
Themes
Parvez knows he needs to confide in his cabbie friends about Ali’s troublesome new behaviors, but he is ashamed and fearful that they will blame him for these changes the way they blame other fathers whose sons get caught up in drugs, gangs, and illicit sex in England. What’s worse is that Parvez always bragged to his friends about his son’s successes in school, sports, and life. Parvez’s “dreams of doing well in England” hinge upon Ali’s success. He desperately wants for his son to settle down as an accountant with a nice wife, and, eventually, children. Now this once certain future feels less guaranteed.
Parvez struggles to be vulnerable with his friends and is unwilling to acknowledge (or unable to see) his role in the conflict with Ali. Once confident that he would achieve his dream of full assimilation through his son’s successes, Parvez is starting to realize that his son’s goals and dreams may conflict with his own. Parvez’s shame at the change in Ali’s behavior makes clear that he sees his own success and worth as connected to Ali’s success at assimilation in England.
Themes
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Parvez finally breaks down one night and confides in his two closest friends at the taxi office. His friends are convinced that Ali must be selling his possessions in order to buy drugs. They advise Parvez that he must be strict and get Ali under control before he goes “mad, overdose[s], or murder[s] someone.” Parvez leaves the office convinced that his son has become a “drug addict killer.” Outside, he is relieved to see one of his regular riders, Bettina, waiting for him in the front seat of his taxicab.
Parvez’s friends, also first-generation immigrants, are sympathetic towards him because they share his dreams of a successful assimilated life in England. The friend’s incorrect diagnosis of the causes of Ali’s change, though, is ironic—they imagine him as becoming lost in the “do anything” ethos of the West such that he has become addicted to drugs, when in fact he has turned against the West. Bettina shows up for the first time in this scene, and the relief that Parvez feels when he sees her demonstrates his emotional dependence on her.
Themes
Bettina is a prostitute. The cabbies know the local prostitutes well, as they drive them to and from liaisons each night. Parvez and Bettina have known each other for three years, and they spend the long drives back to her house talking about their lives and hopes. Parvez talks with Bettina in a way that he can’t with his wife. He also feels protective of her ever since he rescued her from a violent client one night. Shaken by his friends’ suggestions that Ali is on drugs, Parvez confides in Bettina who advises him to be on the lookout for signs of drug abuse such as bloodshot eyes or mood changes.
The fact that Parvez can talk to the English prostitute Bettina in ways that he can’t talk to his own wife represents his further departure from his past life and culture in Pakistan in exchange for full assimilation into Western culture. He feels protective of Bettina, but in reality, she also protects him by providing him with the space to be vulnerable and by helping him manage his emotions that he could not otherwise deal with. The irony is that Bettina is a prostitute, and for her emotional labor Parvez should be paying her. Instead, she is paying him for the long rides home.
Themes
Relieved to have a plan, Parvez begins to carefully observe Ali’s every move. As Parvez watches over Ali, he notices that his son is likewise watchful over him. In fact, Ali looks at Parvez with such a critical eye that it leaves Parvez feeling like he is the one who is behaving strangely. Eventually, Parvez realizes that there are no signs of drug abuse, and that Ali isn’t even selling his possessions, just throwing or giving them away. The only physical change he notes is that Ali is growing a beard.
The way that Parvez and Ali both regard each other with increasing scrutiny in this scene continues to demonstrate the growing distance and suspicion straining their relationship as father and son. Under Ali’s watchful eye, Parvez’s feeling that he is the one behaving strangely begins to blur the line between assimilation and radicalization, and protagonist and antagonist, in this story. It suggests that Parvez is just as suspicious for so wholeheartedly embracing assimilation as Ali is for embracing Islam. Ali’s increasing devotion to Islam is represented here by his new beard, which is a physical signifier of devout, fundamentalist Islamic belief.
Themes
One night after staying out late discussing the matter with Bettina, Parvez comes home and uncovers a clue to Ali’s mysterious behavior. As Parvez is standing in the hall, he hears his son’s alarm go off. He rushes to hide in his bedroom, and orders his wife “to sit down and keep quiet, though she had neither stood up nor said a word.” Peering out from his bedroom, Parvez observes Ali go into the bathroom to wash up. When Ali returns to his bedroom, Parvez follows behind and presses his ear to Ali’s door. From behind the door, Parvez hears a muttering sound that leaves him “puzzled but relieved.” He realizes that Ali is praying, and, through continued spying over the course of several days, confirms that Ali is praying the full five times a day required in Islam.
This scene is the first of only two where Parvez’s unnamed wife shows up very briefly. Unlike Bettina, Parvez’s wife is unaware of the conflict unfolding between her husband and her son. He doesn’t confide in his wife the way he confides in Bettina. Instead, Parvez regards his wife as someone to order around, rather than someone to collaborate with. His orders here are especially pointless and authoritarian, given that she was already quiet and seated when he demanded that she be quiet and stay seated. He orders her just to order, and barely even actually sees her. This scene is also significant because Parvez discovers that Ali is not addicted to drugs and is instead practicing Islam, and therefore establishes that this conflict between father and son is rooted in a greater conflict between the West and Islam.
Themes
In light of this realization, Parvez thinks back to his boyhood in Lahore and his time spent learning the Koran. He remembers that one day an instructor attached a string to the ceiling and then tied it to his hair, so that if he fell asleep the string would yank him awake. This incident left him with a distaste for all religions. Similarly, his taxi driver friends scoff at the mullahs of their neighborhood and enjoy exposing what they see as their hypocrisies. However, when he tells Bettina and his friends that Ali’s strange behavior turned out to be prayer, no one knows what to say as religions is not so easy to condemn as drugs.
This flashback to a formative moment in his childhood in Pakistan establishes Parvez’s distaste for religion in general, but particularly his disdain for what he views as the strict authoritarianism of Islam. This authoritarianism conflicts with what he will later explain is his love for the freedom afforded by life in the England and the West. His fellow first generation taxi drivers likewise scoff at Islam, further highlighting the way that their desires for assimilation in the West is in part a reaction to the negative experiences with Islam and religion in their youth.
Themes
Parvez wants to sit down and talk to Ali about his newfound interest in Islam. After refusal and evasion on Ali’s part, Parvez convinces him to have dinner. The next day, though, Parvez meets with Bettina in his car and recounts the uncomfortable dinner he shared with Ali the night before. At the start of the meal, the waiter, a friend of Parvez’s, brings him his usual whiskey and water. Immediately, this sets off a fierce debate between Parvez and Ali. Ali scolds his father for violating the tenets of Islam by drinking and gambling. Parvez, upset, keeps drinking and gets more and more drunk. As the waiter refills his whiskey, Parvez realizes that his son is looking at him from across the table with a face full of disgust and hatred.
Ali’s initial refusal to have an open conversation with his father foreshadows that their relationship may be irreparable. That Parvez unloads the stress of his uncomfortable dinner with Ali onto Bettina further establishes that she is the vessel for the emotions he cannot manage on his own. The whiskey, symbolic of Parvez’s intoxication with the West and his desire to assimilate into English culture, sparks the conflict that will further polarize Parvez and Ali. As Parvez gets drunker and drunker throughout the meal, representative of his further commitment to English culture, Ali only becomes more steadfast in his fundamentalist beliefs.
Themes
Midway through the dinner, Parvez is so upset and enraged that he throws a plate on the floor. He is furious that his son is trying to dictate to him the difference between right and wrong, while suggesting that he is a bad man who has lived a shameful life. Ali continues to insist that his father has lived a bad life because he has broken so many rules of the Koran. He admonishes Parvez for eating pork, and for pressuring his wife to cook it for him by telling her that “You’re not in the village now, this is England. We have to fit in!”
When Parvez throws the plate on the floor, it not only signifies the climax of this argument, but foreshadows Parvez’s eventual resort to violence against his son. That Parvez responds to Ali and his new beliefs with violence mirrors the way that the West also often responds to Islam and the Muslim world with violence. This scene is the last in which Parvez’s wife is briefly mentioned. Again, she exists only for him to order around, and in this particular flashback the fact that Parvez orders her to cook him pork (a food prohibited in Islam) represents that he has sacrificed his old culture entirely for the sake of assimilating into a new one. He is forcing Western values onto his wife in a way that echoes how the West often forces their cultural values and beliefs on the rest of the world through imperialism or assimilation.
Themes
Ali then tells his father that he is “implicated in Western civilization.” Parvez believes this is absurd, and replies, “Implicated!...But we live here!” Ali continues, telling him that Westerners hate them, and asks how he can love something that hates him for who he is. Ali preaches to his father about the coming rule of Islam over the world, the hypocrisy of the West, and his willingness to give his life for jihad if the persecution of his people does not stop. At this, and with eyes full of tears, Parvez directs his son out of the restaurant while feeling as if the voice speaking these words is not Ali’s at all.
This passage is significant because it highlights the extent to which Ali has been radicalized while he simultaneously leverages valid critiques against the West. Ali’s willingness to give his life for jihad indicates that he has become radicalized. At the same time, he points to the prevailing Western prejudice against the Islamic world and Muslim people, and highlights the hypocrisy inherent in his father’s desire to assimilate into a culture that will never fully embrace him regardless of how hard he tries to fit in. Parvez notes that Ali’s voice no longer sounds like his own, and this signifies his full transition from the boy who was to live out his father’s dreams to a young man that has been radicalized. Parvez, meanwhile, can’t comprehend himself as being “implicated” in Western civilization because he sees himself as already being part of Western civilization. Parvez doesn’t and can’t understand his son’s rejection of the society in which they live.
Themes
On the way home, Ali sits in the back seat of his father’s taxicab, as if he is a customer. Parvez asks what inspired him to adopt this radicalized version of Islam, and Ali explains that it was simply living in England. Confused, Parvez tells his son that he loves England because “they let you do almost anything here.” “That,” Ali replies, “is the problem.” Parvez is so distraught that he veers into a passing truck and knocks the side-view mirror off his car. He knows he is lucky not to have gotten stopped by the police, which would have resulted in a lost license and lost job. When they arrive home, Parvez falls in the road injuring his hands and tearing his pants, but Ali doesn’t help his father get back up.
Ali’s decision to sit in the back of the cab represents the distance growing between him and Parvez, both ideologically and as father and son. In this scene, Ali explains that growing up in England as the son of Muslim immigrants is what turned him against the West. It is significant that this is the exact opposite of Parvez’s of experience growing up in Pakistan, which turned him against Islam. Parvez hearkens back to his past when he explains to Ali that what he loves most about England and the West is freedom to enjoy life and all of its pleasures. This is in comparison to what he remembers as the strict Pakistani culture of his youth. Parvez had thought that Ali would naturally follow the path he had initially set, and did not comprehend that Ali’s own experiences as a second-generation immigrant might push him in a different direction. That Ali ignores Parvez after he's fallen on the concrete represents that any loving bond that existed between father and son is lost at this point.
Themes
As Parvez recounts this story to Bettina, he tells her that he is so desperate to get through to his son that he would even be willing start praying. Simultaneously, he is enraged that his own son is telling him that he belongs in hell. The last straw for Parvez, however, had been when Ali told him that he was dropping out of accounting school because Western education is anti-religious. Instead, Ali says that has decided to work with Muslims in prison struggling to maintain their Islamic purity. Before finally heading to bed for the night, Ali asks his father why he doesn’t at least have a beard or mustache.
Parvez is both desperate to win his son back, while also so angry with him that he can’t see through to a compromise. Ali dropping out of accounting school marks his official departure off the path of assimilation that Parvez had so carefully and painstakingly constructed for him. Parvez’s dream of assimilation for his family is now dead. Ali’s final words to Parvez that night refer back to the beard, a physical symbol and marker of Islam. His desire that his father at the very least have some facial hair reveals how that Ali’s ideas about his father are just as idealistic and misguided as Parvez’s were about Ali. Parvez was looking for Ali to give their family a path into the English middle class, while Ali is looking for his father to offer a bridge back to a religious connection to Islam that Parvez never felt.
Themes
Parvez concludes the story of this terrible night by telling Bettina that he feels that he’s lost his son. He can’t stand that Ali looks at him like he’s a criminal, so has resolved to kick him out of the house. Bettina, however, convinces Parvez not to kick Ali out, arguing that it’s normal for teenagers to be superstitious or caught up in cult-like beliefs. She tells Parvez that Ali will grow out of it, and trusting that she’s right, Parvez lets Ali stay and continues to endure his son’s scorn.
At this point Parvez knows that he has lost his son, but it’s Bettina who convinces him to keep trying to win him back. Again, Bettina serves as the voice of reason who helps Parvez manage the emotions and interpersonal conflict that he cannot manage on his own and will not open up to about with his wife. Bettina is becoming increasingly involved in a conflict between father and son that has nothing to do with her.
Themes
Ali’s preaching shows no signs of fading, however. He claims that Parvez is “grovelling to the whites,” rather than acknowledging that there is “more to the world than the West.” Sarcastically, Parvez asks how Ali could know this given that he’s never left England. Ali looks at him with contempt.
In this exchange, the story captures both the impassable ideological gulf that has developed between Parvez and Ali, but also how both characters are at once both right and wrong in those different believes. As he reframes his father’s desire to assimilate as a desperate attempt to make himself palatable to white Westerners, Ali rails against white and Western supremacy, imperialism, and the violence that the West often unleashes upon Muslim people. Parvez doesn’t acknowledge, or perhaps engrossed in his rage cannot see any truth in Ali’s beliefs. And yet Parvez’s point that Ali has never lived in Pakistan also can’t be denied. Ali’s vision of what his father left behind in also leaving Pakistan is an idealized one, with no basis in experience. Parvez did experience it, and that experience turned him against religion. Just as Parvez can’t engage with Ali’s criticisms, though, Ali views Parvez’s points only with contempt.
Themes
A few days later, Parvez and Bettina are together in Parvez’s car, and Parvez explains to her that he does believe that Westerners are sometimes “inwardly empty,” and that everyone needs “philosophy to live by.” Bettina suggests that he sit down with Ali and share his philosophy, in hopes that Ali will see and be influenced to see that there are more than just his own beliefs. The following night, Parvez sits with Ali. Before their conversation begins, he hopes that his son will notice the beard he has started growing, but Ali says nothing.
When talking to Bettina, Parvez finally admits that there may be some truth to what Ali has to say about the West. He suggests that the pursuit of materialism and pleasure above all else can result in feelings of emptiness and unfulfillment. Again, Bettina tries to push Parvez to try to heal their relationship and pull Ali back from the brink of extremism. Parvez has even started growing out a beard to show Ali that he is willing to compromise. However, the fact that this gesture goes unnoticed by Ali suggests that Ali at this point is uninterested in any type of compromise.
Themes
Parvez begins by talking about the importance of respect, especially between children and their parents, which appears to resonate with Ali. Encouraged, Parvez explains that he believes life ends with death, and that once “rotted in the earth,” you live on only in your children, grandchildren, and generations to come. Ali appears less receptive to this idea, but Parvez continues, explaining that he wants to make the best of his time on earth, and wishes that Ali will, too. Confused, Ali asks what this means. Parvez clarifies that he means that one must enjoy life, but Ali retorts that “enjoyment is a bottomless pit.”
The fact that Parvez’s appeal that children must respect their parents resonates with Ali is ironic given that he’s spent the entire story insulting his father. Ali wants to respect his elders, but only elders of a certain sort. Parvez’s theory that life only continues after death through one’s children is his way of telling Ali that his hopes and dreams for an assimilated and successful life in England hinge entirely upon Ali. Parvez explains that his philosophy of life prioritizes enjoyment, but to Ali this is the source of the emptiness that Parvez acknowledged Westerners often have. In other words, in his final attempt to win his son back, Parvez simply reveals how entrenched he has become in the materialistic and individualistic ways of thinking and living that prevail in the West, and which Ali despises.
Themes
Parvez wishes that Ali could recognize the beauty of living, but Ali is focused on the oppression of “our people.” Parvez is unsure of what Ali means when he says, “our people.” The conversation ends when Ali asserts that millions of people over the course of hundreds of years have agreed with his beliefs and asks who Parvez is to suggest that he is right while these millions of other people are wrong. Shocked by the forcefulness of Ali’s beliefs, Parvez is left speechless.
In this scene it’s clear that Ali in part views his extreme Islamic beliefs as a way to reclaim the culture and identity his family lost when they came to England and tried so hard to assimilate. While the first-generation wants to survive in their adopted country, and see assimilation as critical to survival, the second-generation mourns the loss of the culture that they’ve been cut off from while simultaneously dealing with discrimination and prejudice. It remains important to note, though, that the radicalized version of Islam that Ali espouses is not in fact the same religion that Parvez left behind. Ali, in wanting to reconnect to a lost past, has become much more strict and radical in his religious beliefs than was the past world he is trying to reconnect to.
Themes
One evening sometime after this failed conversation, Parvez has picked up Bettina. She has visited a client and they are driving through a poor neighborhood where there are two mosques. They drive past Ali. Bettina insists that they pick him up because she wants a chance to talk to him. Ali gets into the back seat of the taxicab, as Bettina is sitting in the front seat. Parvez becomes suddenly aware of Bettina’s “short skirt, gaudy rings, and ice-blue eyeshadow” as well as the strong scent of her perfume, which he himself loves.
That it’s in the poor neighborhood where there are two mosques reveals the hardships and discrimination that Muslim people face in England and the West. In this scene Bettina finally gets directly involved in the conflict between father and son. She sits up front with Parvez, which signifies both the closeness of their relationship as well as Parvez’s love of the West. Ali sits in the back, again representative of the distance between he and his father, and more figuratively the distance between his father and Islamic culture. Parvez suddenly becomes self-conscious of Bettina because he knows how she will appear to Ali. Her perfume, which he loves, permeates the entire cab, and represents how deeply entrenched his love of the West has become. Suddenly ashamed of this fact in front of Ali, he tries to open the window to dissipate the scent of the perfume, but there is no escaping the truth of who and what he loves.
Themes
Parvez begins driving faster, as Bettina asks Ali where he’s been that night. Ali replies tersely that he was at the mosque. When Bettina asks him how he’s doing in school, Ali retorts, “Who are you to ask me these questions?” Bettina places her hand on Parvez’s shoulder as she explains to Ali that his father loves him deeply and is simply very worried about him. Ali counters that if his father loved him he wouldn’t let a woman like Bettina touch him. At this point, both Bettina and Ali regard each other with looks of pure fury. Bettina asks, “What kind of woman am I that deserves to be spoken to like that?” Ali simply replies, “You know,” and then threatens to get out of the car. Before he can, Bettina lets herself out despite Parvez’s protestations.
Bettina gets in the middle of the conflict between father and son when she begins to reason with Ali in an attempt to mend the relationship that Parvez has failed to save. Ali responds by shaming Bettina for being a prostitute is a moment of misogynistic violence. Because she was so devoted to her role as Parvez’s emotional manager and advisor, she is the one who ends up hurt in what was always a conflict between father and son. Bettina’s exit from the car represents the ways in which Ali is interfering with Parvez’s dreams of, and ability to, fully assimilate into English culture.
Themes
Parvez and Ali return home in silence. Ali retreats to his room while Parvez retreats to his bottle of whiskey. Parvez pours himself drink after drink and attempts to distract himself with TV and the newspaper. Unable to calm down, he goes upstairs and paces back and forth in front of Ali’s closed door before finally deciding to enter. Inside his room, Ali is praying, and does not acknowledge his father’s presence. Parvez suddenly begins to attack his son, kicking him, dragging him up off the floor by his shirt, and hitting him again and again until Ali’s face is bloodied. Though he “knew that the boy was unreachable…he struck him nonetheless.” Ali does not try to fight back or protect himself. Without a hint of fear in his eyes, he asks his father: “So who’s the fanatic now?”
At home, Parvez and Ali can no longer bear to be in the same room. The distance between them is final. Parvez resorts to his whiskey, one of his cherished Western freedoms, and his drunkenness is symbolic of his deep allegiance to the West and assimilation. Just as Ali is lost to his fundamentalist beliefs, Parvez is equally as lost in his all-encompassing desire to assimilate at the expense of all else. And the loss of that dream pushes him to despair. Although Parvez knows that no intervention will save Ali from the path he has chosen, he attacks him anyway in a final and desperate attempt to win him back. This moment replicates the violence that the West unleashes on the Islamic world in their attempts to change or control it. This is the very same violence and imperialism that radicalized Ali in the first place. Ali’s final words to his father blur the line between radicalization and assimilation in order to demonstrate that assimilation, which has turned Parvez against his family, is itself a radical path to take.
Themes
