Journal of Frontier Studies across Disciplines

ABSTRACT

Literature has become such a powerful medium in recent years that questions of race, identity, and transformation can be explored. Through an interesting narrative of white people waking up to find their skin dark, Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man brings out these issues and forces society to reflect on its entrenched ideas of privilege and belonging. Through a Critical Race Theory approach, the present study analyzes the novel for Hamid’s representation of racial identity and otherness with social change. The aim of the study is to analyses and interpret the major and minor themes that reflect the novel’s critique of racism and inequality. Through a qualitative approach and thematic analysis, the close reading of text shows the recurrence of images and excitement along with the tracing of ideas that show how race is socially constructed. The system of racial thinking that the Theory is about is the white life. The experience of whiteness at the level of the person was elusive and difficult to grasp. The racially intense, contradictory, and even human nature of the two clusters does not always suggest a racial epiphany in the end, either. However, the clusters in question cannot help but expose the instability of racial identity and its human cost. This paper ends with a conclusion stating that The Last White Man not only critiques pecking orders but imagines humanity otherwise. Combining thematic analysis with CRT, this study adds to literature to show how fiction can contest power and foster empathy and equality.

Keywords: Mohsin Hamid; The Last White Man; Critical Race Theory; Thematic Analysis; Race; Identity; Transformation; Social Inequality