论文总字数：65960字

摘 要

全球化进程从根本上缩短了现代世界的距离，为人们相互联系和沟通提供了全新的方式和机会。原本由于国界和地理相互孤立的文化形式、社会组织和经济关系都逐渐越过无形的藩篱，在全世界范围内存在、变化和流动。作为一个涵盖了欧洲帝国扩张、殖民化、非殖民化，甚至是后后殖民化的历史进程，全球化在国际范围内和人类生活的多领域之中产生的作用和影响。

莫欣·哈米德（Mohsin Hamid）是具有英国和巴基斯坦双重国籍的当代作家。在2000年出版的处女作《蛾烟》中，他通过拉合尔这个城市及其居民的生活变化来表现全球化发展进程。本论文以《蛾烟》中的三个主要人物为考察对象，分析在全球化背景下，商品流通、财富分配不均和文化同质化对不同阶级的人们的生活造成的负面影响。

主体部分分为三个章节。第一章讨论了全球范围内的资金流动在拉合尔造成的腐败现象。第二章分析了在全球化进程中，因财富分配不均拉合尔出现的日益严重的阶级分化问题。第三章探讨了在全球化背景下，拉合尔的文化同质化和人物的身份迷惑问题。

全球化是多重面向的发展进程，因此，我们应该用批判的眼光去看待和审视它。本选题基于对小说《蛾烟》的阅读，分析其中揭示的与全球化相关的经济、文化和社会问题，并对其进行反思和批判。这对于同样身处全球化时代的我们思考和解决类似问题，也能提供相应的参考和帮助。对于哈米德的母国巴基斯坦和类似发展中国家来说，在全球化进程中，从被动卷入转变为主动参与这一进程是十分重要的。

关键词：莫辛·哈米德；《蛾烟》；全球化；负面影响

Contents

Acknowledgments i

Abstract ii

摘要 iii

Contents v

Introduction 1

Mohsin Hamid and His Works 1

Literature Review 2

The Concept of Globalization, Hybridity and Thesis structure 4

Chapter One Corruption Caused by Global Flow of Capital in Lahore 7

1.1Corruption in the Banking 7

1.2Corruption in Other Industries 9

Chapter Two Class Division Widened in Lahore under Globalization 12

2.1Different Employment Status 12

2.2Different Control of Air-conditioning 15

Chapter Three Homogeneous Lifestyle and Confused Identity of Lahore’s Citizens 19

3.1 “McDonaldization” of Local Life 19

3.2 Confused Identity of Mumtaz 22

Conclusion 26

Work Cited 28

Introduction

Mohsin Hamid and His Works

Mohsin Hamid (1971- ) is a writer with both Pakistani and British nationality and considered one of the best writers today by both The Millions and the American fiction writer Ben Fountain. Hamid is famous for his three novels, Moth Smoke (2000), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia(2013) and a collection of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations (2014). His fourth novel Exit West became an instant New York Times bestseller after being published on March 7, 2017. Apart from this very recent one, his writing has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted into films, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, selected as winner or finalist of twenty awards as well as translated into over thirty-five languages.

Hamid spent part of his childhood in the United States, where he stayed from the age of 3 to 9. He then moved with his family back to Lahore, Pakistan and attended the Lahore American School. At the age of 18, Hamid returned to the United States to continue his education. He graduated from Princeton University in 1993 and wrote the first draft of his first novel for a fiction workshop taught by Morrison. Hamid then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1997. Finding corporate law boring, he then worked for several years as a management consultant at McKinsey amp; Company in New York City. He was allowed to take three months off each year to write, and he used the time to complete his first novel Moth Smoke.

Daru, Ozi and Mumtaz are three main characters in the novel who have rather complicated relationship with one another. Daru and Ozi are best friends in childhood but then separated from each other because of sharpened class contradictions and gap of wealth. Mumtaz is Ozi’s wife, who moves from United States back to Pakistan after marriage, encounters identity confusion because of the shock of different cultures and has an affair with Daru.

Literature Review

As an eye-catching writer who exposes problems about postcolonial condition and globalization, Mohsin Hamid’s works are under heated debate by scholars abroad. Most of them discuss his works from perspectives of the revelation of globalization and post-colonization, post-911 literature, eco-critics, the analysis of the city Lahore and characters in his novel.

Janet Wilson focuses on the issue of globalization in her thesis “Mohsin Hamid: The Transnational Novel of Globalization”. She analyzes the economic, political and social influence of globalization, culture assimilation as well as the cultural “other” presented in Hamid’s novels. Similarly, Munawar Iqbal Ahmed discusses problems posed by post-colonization on Pakistan’s economy, politics and class division in his doctoral dissertation “Post-Independence/ Post-Colonial Pakistani Fiction in English: A Socio-political Study with Focus on Twilight in Delhi, The Murder of Aziz Khan, Ice-Candy-Man and Moth Smoke”. Also, Paul Jay argues his idea about globalization as a continual process in his essay “The Post-Post Colonial Condition: Globalization and Historical Allegory in Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke” and critically disagrees with the idea of “post post-colonial condition”. Based on Jay’s argument, this thesis discusses Moth Smoke under a historicized globalization.

There are also studies concerning the post 911 problems. Junaid Rana in her “The 9/11 of Our Imaginations: Islam, the Figure of the Muslim, and the Failed Liberalism of the Racial Present” emphasizes racial issues as well as world values in the post 911 literature and their significance in the modern literature. Lisa Lau discusses the cross-cultural trauma through the comparison between the novel and the adapted movie in her thesis “Post-9/11 Re-orientalism: Confrontation and Conciliation in Mohsin Hamid’s and Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. Besides, the essay “Rambling Confessional Narrative in Mohsin Hamid’s Novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist” also pays attention to the post 911 problem, which arouses American’s reflection on their identity and existence.

Munazza Yaqoob analyzes the influence of globalization from the perspective of ecology in his “Human Perversion and Environmental Space: An Ecocritical reading of Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke”. He depicts how polluted air in Lahore negatively affects individual’s mental health and society as a whole. He concludes that this is Mohsin Hamid’s criticism on capitalism.

Claire Chambers discusses the city Lahore itself in her essays: “Lahore, Lahore Aye: Bapsi Sidhwa and Mohsin Hamid’s City Fictions” and “The Heart, Stomach and Backbone of Pakistan: Lahore in Novels by Bapsi Sidhwa and Mohsin Hamid”. She analyzes the metaphorical meaning of Lahore city itself, the spatial theory as well as how it is related to the Pakistani literature.

Some other studies focus on the characters in Hamid’s novel. “Slaying Dragons: Mohsin Hamid Discusses The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is written by Hamid himself about the characteristics and experience of the protagonist, Changez. His response to the 911 event and his American lover, Erica, shows his complicated attitudes towards America. Amina Yaqin records the interview with Mohsin Hamid in the “Mohsin Hamid in Conversation”. The article is mainly about the experience and feeling that the author had in Lahore, the writing of his novels, the narration and the analysis of characters as well as their relationships.

Domestically, there are only a few articles about Hamid’s novel, which mainly focus on narrative strategy and trauma analysis. Like other critics, Wang Jianhui describes that the dilemma of the American society after 9/11 should be traced to multiculturalism in his “The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Multicultural Dilemma in post-9/11 American Society”. Piao Yu, in his paper “Understanding Cultural Trauma Writing in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, argues that Hamid illustrates individual’s traumatic experience from double perspectives and studies the root of 911 and other violent behaviors from economic and culture aspects.

It is a pity that the current studies of Hamid and his novels are limited at home and abroad. Most scholars discuss his works from the aspects of cultural “other” as well as post 911 problems. So, my thesis attempts to study the novel from a new perspective and delves into the negative influence of globalization on society, economy and culture in Lahore through the analysis of the main characters in the novel Moth Smoke. I hope my thesis could offer some help and reference for later researchers.

The Concept of Globalization, Hybridity and Thesis structure

There has been heated discussion on globalization. Many critics believe that “globalization is a contemporary historical phenomenon defined by a dramatic kind of rupture from the past in which the flow of economic and cultural forces have swamped the borders of nation-states, that the development of electronic media forms in particular have changed entirely the nature of social, cultural, economic, and political relations” (Jay, “Global Matters”33). But others, similar to what Paul Jay proposes in his Global Matters, hold the idea of historicizing globalization. Globalization is not simply a postcolonial phenomenon, but rather an extension of colonialism. It in fact has quite a long history since at least the sixteenth century and is not simply Western in their origin.

When Hamid invokes the Mughal Empire at the beginning of the novel, he does not realize that the Empire was actually a colonialist empire, one connected to the long history of globalization. The history of colonialism in South Asia did not begin with the British Raj but has a much longer history, one that includes Persian and Islamic invasions from the north, suggesting that “the forces of globalization took place on the continent long before global capitalism and the Internet came along”(Jay, “Global Matters”111). Besides, Janet Wilson expresses similar point of view about the narration in the novel: “Hamid focuses on the impact of changing post-imperial US politics, economics and educational opportunity upon the transnational youth of Pakistan”(Wilson 177). The careful inspection in the Moth Smoke presents us with solid evidence of the connection between post-colonialism and globalization. Even though Hamid himself claims that he belongs to a “post-post colonial generation”, his novel clearly reveals the influence of globalization. Just as Paul Jay mentions in his Global Matters: The transnational Turn in Literary Studies: “Globalization actually has a long history, that globalization in our own time should be seen as a significant acceleration of forces that have been in play since at least the sixteenth century and that are not simply Western in their origin”(48). It is a historical process rather than several fragmented phenomenon. This thesis agrees with Paul Jay in that we need to look into the histories of trade, exploration, colonization and post-colonialism in the long history of globalization.

In postcolonial studies, hybridity is an important and complicated topic. At a basic level, hybridity refers to any mixing of Eastern and Western culture. The term originates from biology and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth century (young 21). In Homi Bhabha’s essay “Signs Taken for Wonders”, he clearly thinks of hybridity as a subversive tool whereby colonized people might challenge various forms of oppression. Some leading theorists of hybridity are Homi Bhabha, Néstor García Canclini, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, and Paul Gilroy, whose works respond to the multi-cultural awareness that emerged in the early 1990s.

Hybridity is seen as a cultural effect of globalization. For example, hybridity is presented by Kraidy as the “cultural logic” of globalization as it “entails that traces of other cultures exist in every culture, thus offering foreign media and marketers transcultural wedges for forging affective links between their commodities and local communities”(Kraidy 463).

Hybridity has frequently been used in post-colonial discourse to mean simply cross-cultural exchange. Robert Yang notes how influential the term “hybridity” was in imperial and colonial discourse in negative accounts of the union of disparate races. There can be very different registers of hybridity, from slight mixing to very aggressive instances of cultural clash. The mixing of Eastern and Western cultures can bring about unwanted effects on people’s lives, such as McDonaldization. The hybrid culture fuses together different lifestyles and embodies a mix of Eastern and Western attributes. Besides, it changes the way in which an individual or a group of people defines itself. The era of globalization is posing a variety of challenges to the individuals. The influence of several different cultures causes confusion and identity crisis when people are trying to define themselves. People have to manage to adapt to the changes and develop a mixed or hybrid identity that provides the basis for living in their local culture and also participating in the global culture. It is important that colonial subjects from places such as Asia or Africa find a balance between eastern and western cultural attributes.

Mohsin Hamid’s work seeks to provide a unique angle that perhaps evokes empathy by unmasking the essence of a global system. Rather than stressing on ethnic and racial divides, this novel demonstrates the negative effects that globalization exerts on economy, culture and society in Lahore. Thus, Hamid’s Moth Smoke marks a contrast with other novels concerning globalization in its criticism of it. The thesis will make a careful analysis of the disruptive effects of globalization. Chapter One analyzes the problem of rampant corruption in various industries resulted from the flow of global capital and investment. Chapter Two reveals the negative effects of serious class division in Lahore widened by globalization. Chapter Three discloses phenomenon of cultural homogenization and Mumtaz’s confusion of her identity in an increasingly globalized world. The conclusion part summarizes social issues mentioned in the thesis and discusses the attitudes of Mohsin Hamid.

Chapter One
Corruption in Lahore Caused by Global Flow of Capital

Generally, globalization is not a phenomenon with only one dimension but involves economic, social, cultural, political and ecological aspects. The study of globalization constantly reconsiders the relationships between economy, culture, commodity and social phenomenon. But first of all it exists as Manfred B. Steger suggests, “the intensification and stretching of economic connections across the globe” (Steger 37). Nowadays, the emergence of a closely related international economy has changed the time when regional economy depends completely on local condition. The economic butterfly effect is intensified to a greater degree: whether it is deflation or inflation, low unemployment rate or high interest rates, the fluctuation of the economy in one place can possibly change the situation worldwide. The Great Depression in America serves as an eloquent example that it finally induces a cosmopolitan financial crisis. Thus, the future of our economy is linked internationally.

Under this circumstance, the phenomenon of corruption is running wild in Lahore. In general, corruption is “a form of dishonesty or criminal activity undertaken by a person or organization entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire illicit benefit”(Kaufmann and Vicente 195).The methods include bribe, blackmail, embezzlement, influence peddling, graft, and networking. In Moth Smoke, corruption exists as kickbacks and networking. This part of the paper aims at analyzing the major phenomenon of corruption exposed in the novel.

1.1Corruption in the Banking

The novel was set in the 1990s, when Pakistan was under serious burdens of excessive defense expenditure and sky-rocketing debt service. It was faced with the problems of deficits and inflation. Such situation caused anxiety on national economy from almost all citizens and thus the corruption was rampant at the time. Ozi and his father were two typical corruptors depicted in the novel.

At the very beginning of the novel, after his career in military academy, Ozi’s father “slipped into civil service, specializing, it’s said, in overpaying foreign companies for equipment and pocketing their kickbacks”(Hamid, “Moth Smoke”88). Multinational commercial investment should have provided the developing countries with both efficiency and benefits. Nevertheless, because of all kinds of rampant corrupting activities such as kickback, or bribery, international cooperation in fact pose unwanted influence on the domestic economy.

Besides, the sense of corruption passes down to Ozi, who carries on his father’s deeds. When his wife, Mumtaz, doubts that the rumors about Ozi’s father engaging in corruption are true, she “finally, delicately, confronted Ozi, he seems almost surprised that it bothered me. In fact, said one of the main reasons he’d come back to Lahore was to help his father protect his assets, kickbacks from the good old days when Dad was a senior civil servant with the country at his feet.”(Hamid, “Moth Smoke” 194) Ozi does not feel in the way that corruption is an illegal and shameful activity but thinks rightfully that it is a family legacy. Even after many years of education in the United States, he still approves of corruption and turns a blind eye to the severe economic situation.

When Ozi is given a chance to explain his behavior, he mentions it lightly and attributes it to the force of the current social situation.

“Some people say my dad’s corrupt and I’m his money launderer. Well, it’s true enough. People are robbing the country blind, and if the choice is between being held up at gunpoint or holding the gun, only a madman would choose to hand over his wallet rather than fill it with someone else’s cash” (Hamid, “Moth Smoke”230).

Ozi and his father make easy money by kickbacks with the help from foreign investment under the emerging global economy. Daru ends up, with Murad Badshah, selling drugs and robbing a boutique frequented by wealthy clientele. Under the influence of global economic crisis and western commodities, small people like Murad and Daru, lose their customers or jobs. They are faced with a dim reality with less resources and opportunities. However, the harsh economic situation only deprives the poor of their livelihoods. Rich people like Ozi’s family still enjoy parties, expensive foods and luxuries without the slightest influence. They could still benefits from their shell company and banking corruption. Here the class division shows in that the wealthy have the ability to make their theft legal, while the poor have no such power to create laws and regulations in their favor.

1.2Corruption in Other Industries

Corruption also occurs in the process of hiring employees. Networking is also defined as a kind of corruption which means fostering personal relationships with prospective employers, in the hope that these personal affections will influence future hiring decisions. It has been described as an attempt to corrupt hiring processes, where every candidate should be given an equal opportunity. When Ozi loses his job and tries to get another job, he is repeatedly declined by different banks until he gets help from his uncle to finally get a chance for a job interview. Under that situation when corruption is necessary, job seekers with no connection can hardly get an interview.

Even then, he has to face the fact that he is sent off by the rule of relations.

“We have more people than we need right now. And the boys we’re hiring have connections worth more than their salaries. We’re just giving them the respectability of a job here in exchange for their families’ business.”

……

“Unless you know some really big fish, and I mean someone whose name matters to a country head, no one is going to hire you. Not with the banking sector in the shape it’s in” (Hamid, “Moth Smoke” 62).

When economy is connected globally, resources and knowledge flowing in, and people going abroad, current market and human resources has come to the state of saturation. People who work hard are no longer needed here while others with connections are being valued. With prevailing atmosphere of corruption, it is clear that a large proportion of the social wealth is shared not by those who can acquired them but by those “who had done nothing whatever to deserve special privileges, but enjoyed preferential education, cultural and other career opportunities as a result of inheriting advantages earned by their forebears” (Luard 119-120).However, when Daru is whining about the unfairness, he does not realize that in fact, it was Ozi’s father who helped Daru get into the school which is “difficult to get into”(Hamid, “Moth Smoke”232) as well as his first bank job. We can see that in the era of globalization, the market falls into chaos and corruption becomes more severe.

Another example of corruption is about Daru’s young cousin’s internet company. When Daru visits his big family, he hears about his little cousin Jamal and his friends co-founding an Internet company and even owning an office. When he pays a visit to their company, he detects the power of relationship as well.

The equipment all belongs to his friend. The clients have come to them because of his friend’s family. The entire venture is being bankrolled by his friend’s father, who works in Bahrain and happily buys his son any computer-related gadgetry he wants. And unlike wide-eye Jamal, with his delicate fingers and soft, protruding lower lip, his friend looks very business-savvy(Hamid, “Moth Smoke”115).

The small internet company established by Jamal and his friends is like a toy which functions through all kinds of relationships. The source of clients, the venture, the office, and the equipment depend completely on the interpersonal relationships of his friend’s family. As long as the father of his friend does not feel the need to support the business, the company will be shut down. Jamal is just a victim in this game. Daru sees the similarity between the bank industry and this internet company. This company is built on a corrupted network of connections. Jamal is still an innocent boy who hasn’t tasted the bitterness of such situation. He hasn’t got the chance to understand that the whole company depends on his friends and he could be easily dismissed. People with no relationships those days cannot find the place to survive. It is a hurtful déjà vu for Daru that people like them are disposable and they should always tolerate the same fate.

I’m happy to see Jamal so excited, but the more he tells me, the more worried I become. …… I feel uneasy. I hate to see Jamal depending on this guy and being hurt. But there’s nothing I can do (Hamid, “Moth Smoke”115).

From the working experience of Daru and his cousin Jamal, it is obvious that many industries in Lahore are immersed in the corruption of interpersonal connections. This kind of network protects the wealthy people and the foreign capital under globalization and sacrifices the poor. Also, corruption is “negatively associated with the share of private investment and, hence, it lowers the rate of economic growth.”(Mo 20) It increases inequality, reduces the return of productive activities which is certain an obstacle to the economic development under globalization.

Chapter Two
Class Division Widened in Lahore Under Globalization

Globalization has also been criticized for its negative effects on society and people’s lives. Scholars such as Muhammad Iqbal Anjum comments that “[t]he process of globalization of Pakistan[’s] economy has been accompanied by the worst tragedies for both Pakistan herself and her masses” (Anjum 75). Besides, as Hamid himself writes, globalization brings with it “mass displacement, wars, terrorism, unchecked financial capitalism, inequality, xenophobia, [and] climate change” (Hamid, “Introduction: My foreign correspondence” 2). In the novel Moth Smoke, globalization has greatly influenced on people’s education and social class. For example, there is a craze of studying abroad in the rich family in Lahore. Descendents of the rich have the privilege to go abroad and enjoy the unrestrained life for several years, coming back home with nothing but a golden diploma in hand. In the novel, Ozi, the son of a rich family, has the chance to pursue further study in America while the poor boy Daru can hardly even graduate from a local college in Lahore because of the limited resource. The grudge builds between them because of their different backgrounds.

In the following section, social conflicts and personal dilemmas are revealed, which are regarded as signs of class division aggravated by globalization.

2.1Different Employment Status

In Moth Smoke, Ozi, Daru and Murad belong to three different classes: Daru has experienced a fall from the middle class to the bottom; Ozi represents the elite class that has become increasingly rich thanks to the globalized economy; Murad belongs to the class of working people. Three of them face different fate under the global tide because of their family backgrounds.

This global economic trend actually imposes impact on the surviving of small people. Affected by the global economic crisis, Pakistan is faced with a hiring freeze. People in this country have no extra money to spend for commodity and for deposit. Thus, as a banker, Daru hardly has any work opportunity. He even gets his opportunity for a job interview thanks to the relation of his uncle. However, even with such relation, Daru still could not get the job because of the dim prospect of the market. After all, “things are tight these days and favors are expensive.”(Hamid, “Moth Smoke” 62)

The story goes on as Daru, the one who has real talents according to Professor Superb but suffer from the division, falling into crime and burglary. He was once a decent worker in the middle class. Laid off because of his limited financial status, Daru works for a bank for modest pay, which hardly covers his basic living expenses. “Power prices have been rising faster than a banker’s wage the last couple of years, thanks to privatization and the boom of guaranteed-profit, project-financed, imported oil-fired electricity projects. (Hamid, “Moth Smoke” 87)” Unfortunately, the real decline point of Daru’s life starts when he messes up with a transnational financial deal for a client “with half a million U.S. in his account” (20) Losing the job cuts Daru off from his economic sources. Unable to support his own life and identified himself in the society anymore, Daru has become so vexed that he depraves into depression, violence, drug abuse and burglary.

Ozi, Daru’s friend from childhood, is the son of a wealthy money launderer. He is born rich, enjoys comfortable childhood and is able to get his degree from the United States. He returns to Lahore with a beautiful wife and a son in his arm. He never has to worry about losing his job since all he has to do is networking through various social business parties. The sharp contrast is that Daru struggles hard to keep his job while Ozi can easily find a better job.

It is clear to see that what actually makes Ozi’s life so easy is his overseas study experience and powerful family backgrounds with wide connections. After few years of free and squandering life in America, he comes back home with a beautiful wife and a group of friends from higher class. There is an existing position waiting for him back in Lahore and he only needs to carry on his father’s corrupting deeds. Free market and global economy cause the employment platform to focus only on the experience of internationalization and the commercial value of the individual. This has led to the blind hiring of the returnees with golden diploma, and people like Daru who actually learn knowledge but with no experience in studying abroad suffer from continual rejections in the market.

This unequal employment situation intensifies class division because of global talent flow: wealthy people go abroad to study and return to get high-paying positions; poor people do not have the funds to study abroad, and after graduating from domestic school, they can only get humble jobs. This vicious cycle is the reason that those who really make money are richer and those who are poor remain at the bottom of the society.

Murad Badshah, who was born in a middle class family, works hard and obtains a master’s degree in order to lead a decent life. Without any useful connections or family backgrounds, he is still unable to find a job. But he still has hope in his future and decides to start a rickshaw business: “In the short years since then, I acquired four more, and am now captain of a squadron of five little beauties.” (Hamid, “Moth Smoke” 61) However, the violent invasion of globalized goods and culture deprives him of his means of livelihood. The rickshaw market is occupied by the newly entered yellow cabs from western countries. As a rickshaw driver, Murad finds that his customers get fewer and fewer because many of them choose to take the comfortable and fashionable cab instead. “With the arrival of yellow cabs in Lahore, the rickshaw business took a bad turn.”(62) This kind of “fierce” competition is unfair since individual workers cannot compete with corporate business. Murad states, “profits became increasingly slim, and to say competition was fierce is an understatement of unusual proportions” (62).

Finally, such unjust competition at work forces Murad to “conduct a little redistribution of wealth.”(Hamid, “Moth Smoke”63) He resorts to violence, drug dealing and robbing boutiques to supplement his business income. He gradually loses his hope and his expectation of a decent life.

The discrepancy of the employment statuses of three citizens in Lahore reveals a cruel fact: even the same globalization has different effects on different groups of people. Daru’s career comes to an end because he challenges the interests of a member of an elite class. Ozi can do whatever he wants since he belongs to the privileged class. Murad cannot squeeze into a higher social group no matter how hard he tries. Class division alienates relationships. “We had some good times, Ozi and I, before he left.”(Hamid, “Moth Smoke”28) Daru has, for many times, expresses his feeling of jamais vu toward Ozi because they live their lives after childhood in radically different ways. It seems clear to us that Ozi could lead a smoother life than Daru because of his superior family background. Other than their different backgrounds, triggered by globalization, preference to studying abroad also widens the gap between the rich and the poor.

2.2Different Control of Air-conditioning

In this world where commodities act as medium of various culture and symbol of different social identity, we can “no longer make a clear distinction between exchanges that are purely material and take place in an economy of commodities and exchanges that are purely symbolic and take place in a cultural or social economy”(Paul, “Global Matters” 56). Indeed, these forms of exchange have always overlapped. The flow of commodity not only influences the cultural life of Pakistan people, but also incurs related social and political problems. Both Daru and Ozi own imported cars: Suzuki and Pajero. They are both Japanese cars, but their brands could tell the status of the owners. In the novel, Daru complains about his own old dysfunctional car for many times and admires how Ozi’s Pajero, “costs more than my house and moves like a bull, powerful and single-minded”, “gives his word added authority”(28). A car like this declares Ozi’s high social-ranking before he has to announce it himself. While Daru spends almost all his money to bribe the police for his drunk driving, Ozi runs the red lights and enters whatever parties he likes because “bigger cars have the right of the way” (27)

Another persuasive example is air-conditioning. It is an advanced technology introduced from Western countries. To people in Pakistan, it is the privilege of the selective groups. In chapter 8 of Moth Smoke, “what lovely weather we’re having ( or the importance of air-conditioning)”, people from different status in Lahore have different views and ways to use air conditioner, which subtly reflects different living conditions as well as their views of the world and society. Distinct opinions of air-conditioning from different people in the novel bind these dimensions of globalization as a whole.

Professor Julius Superb is the first one to express his commentary on this field. In his social class, he divides the people in Pakistan into two groups:

The first group, large and sweaty, contains those referred to as the masses. The second group is much smaller, but its members exercise vastly greater control over their immediate environment and are collectively termed the elite. The distinction between members of these two groups is made on the basis of control of an important resource: air-conditioning. (Hamid, “Moth Smoke”126)

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