The Interpretation of the Ending in“The Reluctant Fundamentalist”

XIA Xiao-zhen

Abstract：The ending in “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” arouses readers’ rich imagination but every interpretation based on preconceptions and prejudices can not reflect the purpose of the ending elaborately designed by the author with original narrative skills because of parochialism. From the view of space filling in cognitive poetics, although the space can be filled by readers, readers’ ideas are not comprehensive if based on their own perspectives of culture. The uncertainty of the ending invites more profound thinking. The author forces the readers to be a limited observer according to the theory of Schrodinger’s cat in order to bring readers to various possibilities of the ending simultaneously without making judgment only from one’s own culture. Both Changez and the American are permanently suspended within a kind of political equivalent to the theory, the ending can reach no answer. “Veil of Ignorance” invites the readers to transcend prejudices and sympathy and reconstruct the space of the ending with the understanding of uncertainty. The ending elaborately devised by the author invites readers to embrace a different goal of political and cultural enlightenment with diverse background for the equal stance.