Exploring Radicalization in Fatima Bhutto’s The Runaways

Abstract

Radicalization is a burning issue of today’s multipolar world, which has been a hot topic of debate amongst scholars, political and religious leaders, journalists and literary writers. Literature is considered as a powerful tool to influence people, and has also been one of the most important ways of communicating the real issues of the world through the use of fiction which highlights these issues. With the researchers’ personal inclination to the field of literature, the researchers selected a popular novel by Fatima Bhutto (2018), The Runaways to explore and analyze how the process of radicalization in the youth is represented in the novel, and how, if at all, they have been radicalized. The research is guided by the theoretical perspective of Miller and Chauhan (2011) who argue that the study of previous works on radicalization suggests that there are not just the push factors for radicalization. There are also some pull factors which influence the minds of the people, and they turn towards radicalization. David Greenham’s (2019) method of close reading is selected for the analysis of the novel as it begins by studying the meanings of the words and goes up to the study of the text in wider socio-cultural, historical and political contexts. The researchers found that there were also push and pull factors for the major characters of the novel, i.e., Layla, Sunny and Monty, to join a radical organization, e.g., Ummah Movement. However, the event turned so brutal and painful that Layla and Monty were largely de-radicalized from the inside and wanted to escape the so-called land of milk and honey for there was bitterness and more cruelty and inequality prevailing than they had suffered in their societies of origin. Through the close reading of the novel through various aspects, like syntactic, semantic, generic, thematic, iterative and adversarial, answers to the research questions have been found. Push factors, like socio-economic conditions and betrayal by the loved ones, are overarching for characters to join radical organizations while pull factors, like motivation and realization of real phenomenon, have been helpful in de-radicalization. Failure in achieving the ideal, being part of a radical organization is also a significant finding. The researchers recommend that further research in different other genres of literature could also be conducted that deal with the issue of radicalization.