Negotiating Transition, Transformation, And Change In Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man

Abstract

Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man (2020) is a short novel that deals with the theme of human reactions to drastic and inevitable change. This study endeavors to examine how various characters in the novel respond to and cope with change that manifests itself as a force de majeure. The aim is to scrutinize how the assessments of notable theorists can be shaped into a framework to be used by researchers and policymakers in dealing with the phenomenon of change in society. To this end, two pivotal works are utilized to assemble a theoretical framework. These are Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (2002), edited by Lance H. Gunderson & C. S. Holling, and Leading Change (1996) by John P. Kotter. The former advances perspectives on the phenomenon of change while the latter explains why and how transition, transformation, and change can be dealt with so as to make them constructive for society. This study concludes that researchers and scholars, as architects of public opinion, can direct their energies toward developing theories that offer strategies of preparation, acceptance, and resilience in the face of inevitable changes that are an ongoing process in human life. Such strategies are of vital significance to achieve harmony in multicultural demographic profiles on a global stage where the rate of change has gone far above what Aldous Huxley (1959) once referred to as a “chronic state of revolution”.