A Review Of The Last White Man In Contemporary Paradigm
“Her complexion is black. I want someone who looks as bright as the moon of the 14th night. A wish by all of us irrespective of gender but comes true for a few. A colored person has no right to happiness, enjoyment, liberty, or peace in the world. Are they half human beings? Why are we irritated by them? What happens if we transform to dark complexions? Complexion has become the complex of the modern age. The beauty industry, with all its innovative procedures and medications for fairness, has failed to transform black into white, except for a few. This very complex has deprived unnumbered girls in the world from the bliss of wedlock. This is a pity! Pity for all those who seek beauty in a white complexion and ruin the peace of their lives.
Andres and Oona are the happiest couple in the city after the transformation of their complexion from white to black. They have a daughter who never wants to know about the past of her parents when they were white. She is happy with what she is! The Last White Man is the story of Andres, who gets transformed into a Black one morning. It was a deadly shock to him, as he for a long time did not accept his change in color. The patience of Job encourages him to go out and take part in life. To his surprise, his father took long to recognize and accept him. He feels as if his wife had died now, as Andres resembles his mother, who died long ago. His business place, his gym, his beloved Oona, the marketplace, the road movement, and the grocery shop all took him as a stranger and abhorred him being black. Life became a drudgery and bane for him, which was a luxury and boon for him. It was only because of a change in complexion, complexion, and complexion only! It is true! A fact of life that can’t be denied: if he is forced to live a life of misery, racism, inferiority, savagery, and alienation in his own land, with his own family, with his own natives, not to speak of the hatred, abhorrence, alienation, and otherness of the colored Black race, which is victimized by the white in their own land.
Oona and Andres are representative of all those who give importance to white complexion and also later on show acceptance of Black. Mohsin Hamid, a modern Pakistani novelist, who pens down the alternate reality for the white western world. It is a moment to focus, to penetrate, and to know complexion can never be above humanity, kindness, and empathy. Racism should be discouraged; globalization should be encouraged. The greatest religion, language, and race is love and only love for humanity, a feeling of sameness, a feeling of oneness, a feeling of unity. Love, tolerance, caring, and sharing should be the yardstick of all communication in any field of life.
Think of all those Pakistanis, Malaysians, Africans, or any colored people from any part of the world who have to go to the West for work, for business, and for education; how difficult would life be for them! How would they be bearing the challenges of their daily drudgery beside the inhumane and degraded treatment that they receive from the white? It is the message for them never to test the dignity of human beings on color complexion; rather, the merit lies in the piety and piousness of their hearts. Dark complexion should not be considered a taboo, an abuse, or a stigma. They should be accepted, accepted wholeheartedly, as the “crown of creation.” They should be given equal rights, freedom to live, freedom to move, and above all freedom to speak.
“What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.’’
Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, scene 2).
The message of humanity, which can never fade away!
Reviewer
Shagufta Mansha
M.phill scholar at The University of Chenab
HOD of language and literature department
in Elite college of Management sciences,
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