How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia By Mohsin Hamid

1176 Words3 Pages

The novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, is about a man's adventure starting from a poor country boy to becoming a successful businessman. To achieve his goal of wealth he goes through many challenges including near-death, deceit, violence, and love. Ultimately, the main character does fulfill his dream, but his business began to decline. Unlike other typical fiction books, the author, Mohsin Hamid, differentiates his tale by writing without many specifics (such as character names and places) in the second person point of view. He also disguises it as a self-help book, where you are main character trying to become rich. Although I am not male like the main character nor do I have many similarities to his life, there are numerous instances …show more content…

The main character already attained a thriving bottled water business and was on his way to slowly become filthy rich, but he wanted more. He did not want to stop. In order to quickly expand his business, he followed the narrator’s advice to “befriend a bureaucrat” (137). This bureaucrat was key to become a state-licensed provider because previous applications from the main character were initially turned down. This required bribery on his part to get the bureaucrat to issue a license. This is risky because the bureaucrat was a middleman between the main character and the bureaucrat’s boss. The main character took a risk to feed the greed of bureaucracy. He could’ve been losing money to get rejected. This situation is an example of how everyone takes risks. Students could be losing money to get an education that may not be what they want. Gamblers take risks to earn a lot of money quick. I took a risk of injury to become a better diver. Life requires a little risk to allow an individual to achieve …show more content…

In the novel, “you” become “infatuated with a pretty girl” (38) despite the narrator’s warning: “don’t fall in love” (35). Love was a side goal the main character had. He wanted to be with the pretty girl and courts her with their shared interest in films. Unfortunately, their relationship at the time never escalated to anything more than friends. The pretty girl runs away because of her own goal of becoming a model and “you are distraught” (53). This illustrates that it is acceptable to not always get what you want. This circumstances did not ruin the main character’s life. He continued to follow his primary goal and later on in the novel, the main character, as a successful adult, pursues the pretty girl again and they become closer than before. In my statistics class, I did bad on almost every test resulting in countless failed tests and quizzes. But I kept working hard and I was able to barely pass. If I didn’t pass the class, I would be sad, but I would that wouldn’t be the end of the world. Not every goal in life will be successful, but failures should not be the end. They can motivate an individual to make the failure a learning experience and they can focus on their other goals or make new

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