Nostalgia can be described as someone reminiscing on the good ole days, looking back on the past of memories people have longed to hold onto.  I have looked back into the times I cherish, to graduating high school, to remembering the fun times I had shared with old friends and being able to laugh at all the things that I’ve gone through. Reading this book I have noticed I look back a lot to many times and do it more often then I realize. It something people do all the time. And it’s good and healthy that people can look back and yearn for those times and being able to remember things that they hold dear.  But sometimes it can be unhealthy. Sometimes nostalgia isn’t so desirable and good as they seem.  It can haunt them, and push themback into a state that can be unhealthy.

As we see in the novel “the Reluctant Fundamentalist” two main characters go nostalgia in different ways. Changez who is the main character deals with memories from his homeland, to New York, childhood and September 11^th, and his love interest Erica. Erica, like Changez, is also dealing with nostalgia in the novel, but she keeps looking back at the memories of her first love from childhood named Eric who had passed away from cancer. She deals with nostalgia in the most painful and unhealthy way of yearning to be with him, letting herself not to move on from his death.

It is healthy to look back at old memories, but I feel like you cannot dwell on the past. As he is telling his story to a random American at a coffee shop, he talks about the love he had for Erica for you can see that he also like Erica is dwelling over the lover he had for her as she had for Chris. He talks about the change in America and the change in Erica after 9/11 he makes comparisons between the two.  Stating that she is like America which is “increasingly giving over to the dangerous nostalgia at the time. There was something undeniable retro about the flags and uniforms, about generals addressing the camera in war rooms and newspaper headlines featuring such words as duty and honor” (115).  He compared how he felt living in New York as it was in theera like WWI. He saw how America was getting sucked into the past as Erica was as well.

So as you see Erica, is continuing to get worse and worse suffering from deep depression over the loss of her former lover Eric in the novel, you see that she can’t bring herself to get over it. She gets sucked deeper and deeper into the memories and can no longer be who she once was. She can’t give Changez what he needs from her and you see his fear of losing her that he continues to focus on his memories of loving her. He lets his love of her affect him that he even told her to pretend he was Chris and eventually led himself to believe he was him as well as they made love to each other. They both let nostalgia take over them in the unhealthiest regrettable way.  You need to allow yourself to move on from the bad and even the good memories you once have had because eventually focusing too much on thepast can end up destroying or disrupting your life.

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