Nostalgia; Good and Bad

           Nostalgia, what is it? Is it a good thing, bad or maybe both. I think most people are looking for something that makes them happy when they think of a nostalgic event. I think of nostalgia as a feeling about my past that may be happy or maybe sad. For example, I think back to when I lived with my parents and the thought just makes me happy. Back then I could not wait to move out and away but now that I have been gone I miss my family and I miss coming home to my parents and sister every night. This is what I would consider as being nostalgia.

            In The Reluctant Fundamentalist there are a few cases of nostalgia. In one example I feel like the nostalgia is a little unhealthy. The nostalgia I am talking about is the nostalgia that Erica has for her past lover. This is unhealthy because her ex-boyfriend died of lung cancer and has been gone. I am not saying that mourning a death of someone close like that is a bad thing but there comes a time when someone must move on and let the past be the past. This type of unhealthy nostalgia can even lead to an obsession with the past. This is what happened to Erica and she ended up paying for it because she ended up in a mental institution. I also think that America’s nostalgia was also unhealthy after 9/11. After 9/11 American citizens were all in support for going to war. I think they looked back on Desert Storm and felt like they had some unfinished business they WANTED (not needed) to attend to. This one of the bad forms of nostalgia because now in the wake of America’s decision to punish those who hurt us as a nation, many lives (both American and Iraqi) have been lost. The most recent study I read about this said that since the U.S. invaded that the death toll is up to approximately 1.2 million people. Also here in 2008, almost to 2009, I think that America is feeling a different type of Nostalgia. As a nation we are regretting the choice to go to war and we are looking back nostalgically on a time when our nation was not at war and we were unified by the fact that we had all been attacked in the event of 9/11.

            Overall I think the author, Mohsin Hamid, does a great job of basically spelling out the different kinds of nostalgia in the book. I feel that nostalgia can be a good thing hat makes people happy. However, I also feel that nostalgia can be something that holds people back from facing the reality of the present day and ruin them mentally, just as Erica was ruined mentally.