Though many of us like our lives to be as neatly organized as possible, pigeon-holed, and easily categorized, life is chaotic, varying, and is always a juxtaposition of numerous influences and ideas. Hanif Kureishi’s novel, The Buddha of Suburbia exemplifies this amalgamation throughout the novel, beginning with its very title. While it is a coming of age tale, the protagonist, Karim Amir, can speak to numerous audiences. With our unique and differentiable cultures becoming more and more global in their aspect, Karim represents the citizens of this new culture that exist within the spaces between.
As a character that is half Indian and half Caucasian, Karim, from the first page, struggles with issues of identity. He states that “perhaps it is the odd mixture of continents and blood, of here and there, of belonging and not, that makes me restless and easily bored” (Kureishi 3). It is these antithetical ideas, of belonging and not belonging, of being here and being there, that define Karim and define his struggle to find a place within his culture, a culture that even he is not sure what it consists of. Not only does Karim exist within an amorphous idea of race but he also operates within a rigid class system, while remaining almost fluid within that system.
Karim is able to make the move from suburb to city. And while not without its difficulties, he still manages to do so successfully. If we see, as Kureishi depicts it, the suburbs as representing a working blue-collar class and the city representing an educated white-collar class, Karim’s ability to not only move from one to the other but also retain the ability to go back and forth between the two can be seen as quite a cultural achievement. The fact that Karim desires and decides to go back to the suburbs at the end of the novel also illustrates the growth he has experienced as a character as well. He is no longer the yearning boy we encounter at the beginning of the story, but a man who realizes that life can encompass more than one place and more than one situation.
Throughout the novel Karim has to learn to live within a variety of cultures, reside in a variety of places, and consider numerous ideologies. While during the story he seems to exhibit no loyalty to any idea or culture—trying, almost frantically, to experience anything and everything—he is no passive observer, but by the end of the novel has made a pastiche of his life and has obtained some sort of success as he has learned how to communicate within the various circles he inhabits. Not only has he learned how to communicate within them he has been able to retain relationships that exist within all of the social arenas he operates in. One of the most important realizations in regard to that communication is actually one of negativity. At the end of the novel, while Karim is talking to his father, he realizes that they are “misunderstanding each other again! But it was impossible to clarify” and in answering his father Karim states that he much “chose [his] words carefully” (Kureishi 280). In Karim’s acknowledgement, we see that he has realized that residing within a culture and communicating in that culture takes work and requires effort—a realization that characters like Charlie never come to.
Kureishi illustrates well the numerous spheres we all inhabit on a daily basis. Through Karim we see a reflection of the complicated cultures that we all live within and realize that as uncomplicated as it is to be able to be summed up in one word or one general statement, it is also unrealistic. In this ever globalizing economy and culture, more and more lines of distinction are being blurred, but as Karim learns at the end of the novel we have as much responsibility to help shape our culture, be it large or small, as does our culture towards us.
Works Cited:
Kureishi, Hanif. The Buddha of Suburbia. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.
