Midnight's children
Midnight's Children
- By Salman Rushdie
-: About the Writer :-
Salman Rushdie (19 June, 1947), in full sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, is an Indian born writer whose allegorical novels examine historical and philosophical issues by means of surreal characters, brooding humour and an effusive and melodramatic prose style. His treatment of sensitive religious and political subjects made him a controversial figure. He is best known for his fifth book, The Satanic verses. Which prompted a fatwa against him in 1989. But over the past 40 years he has published 16 others, including Midnight's Children - the winner of three Booker awards- and his latest novel, Two years Eight Months nand Twenty-Eight Nights. A disciplined worker by day and a socializer by night, he says he strives for writing that "stands the test of time".
-: Introduction of Midnight's Children :-
Midnight's children, allegorical novel by Salman Rushdie, published in 1981. It is historical chronicale of modern India centring on the inextricably linked fates of two children who were born within the first hour of independence from Great Britain. Midnight's children was awarded the Booker M C Connell Prize for fiction in 1981. In 1993 it was chosen as the best Booker Prize novel in 25 years.
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the Ominous Consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India's 1,000 other "midnight's children", all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.
Midnight's children deals with India's change from British rule to Independence and touches upon the themes of the partition of British India.
Let's get more idea about the novel by question and answers :-
1】 Write short note on the title - ' Midnight's Children'.
Ans. :-
The title of Midnight's children refers to the pivotal time when a group of specially-gifted children are born in the novel. All of the children born in India near the midnight of its first Independence Day develop superhuman abilities. The exact way this happens in unclear,but as the children grow older, they start to realize that they are different from others. The closer the time of their birth to midnight, the more powerful their gifts are. The two most powerful are Saleem and Shiva, who were born on the stroke of midnight.
The title of Midnight's children comes from the hour of India's Independence, August 15, 1947. In Rushdie's book, all the children born at the same time become the children of the period : " Fathered, you understand, by history". And the children's represent "the highest of talents of which men have ever dreamed".
Saleem's story speaks of the joyfull discovery of the midnight's children via his protagonist Saleem's own "All India Radio", his own amzing psychic talent that serves as a communications hubs for all 1001 youngsters. However, their potential had yet to be realised. "Childhood is the name of the third principle". But it dies or more accurately , it is murdered.
The annihilation of the Midnight's children, which Saleem thinks is the true reason for India's state of emergency, lies at the core of his dark tale. Mrs. Gandhi, the widow, totally destroys their magical abilities by performing "test and hysterectomies" on them. This is Rushdie's way of expressing that the emergency had emasculated and castrated the nation.
Rushdie's humour comes in a 1985 interview in which he discusses how the concept of Midnight's children came to be. He claims he started with only one kid. As he considered switching them, they became two.
"Then I realised that in a nation like India, you can't have only two children. It has to be more than two, and if it is, why these two? I used calculators to do a quantitative calculation on India's birth rate and discovered that a thousand and one children is correct".
Rushdie, while writing about the Indian Subcontinent, is in some ways similar to the authors who came before him, such as Raja Rao and R.K.Narayan, but he is extremely different.
During India's independence struggle, Rao's Kanthapura was the Sthalapurana, or place legend, par excellence. His true idol is Mahatma Gandhi. In contrast to Rao's book, Narayan's "Waiting for Mahatma" is a light satire on the ordinary Indian's inadequate knowledge of the Gandhi-led liberation movement while being respectful to the Mahatma. Gandhi appears in Midnight's children as well, but the historical memory of Independent India is so hazy that Saleem records date of his murder erroneously.
The title Midnight's children refers to both the promise that the 1001 children represented and the post-independence generation's inability to bear the burden of building a perfect society.
2】 Write a note on narrative technique in Midnight's Children.
Ans. :-
Salman Rushdie has been perhaps one of the most controversial figures of Indian diaspora in recent years. He shot into fame with the publication of magnum opus, Midnight's Children, which work for him Booker of Bookers in 1993. In 2008, the novel was selected as the best of Bookers in past 40 years. The novel is notable for many things and one of them is the innovative narrative technique used by Rushdie.
Rushdie's Midnight's Children introduces a new narrative technique which is totally different from the traditional narrative techniques. Also Rushdie sets the trend for experimentation with narrative technique and usage of English language. In this way he gave new direction to Indian writing in English. William Walsh rightly praised the technique by saying that, "combining the elements of magic and fantacy, the grimmest realism, extravagant force, multi mirror analogy, and a potent symbolic structure, Salman Rushdie has captured the astonishing energy of the novel unprecedented in scope, manner and achievement in the hundred and fifty-years-old tradition of the Indian novel in English.
-: THE TECHNIQUE OF FIRST PERSON NARRATION :-
Rushdie employes the technique of first person narrative in Midnight's Children. The characters are introduced long before they actually appear in the novel. It creates suspense in the mind of the readers. The novel covers a period of seventy five years of the history of the Indian subcontinent. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, narrates the story of his birth and the birth of Indian subcontinent. The narrative blurs the chronological boundries. As, Rushdie's counterpart, Saleem Sinai narratos his story from a distance of time and place. Like the narrator of Mahabharata, Sanjay who is endowed with special power to see things from a distance, and narrates the events of Kurukshetra war, Saleem is endowed with magic power so that he can see from a distance and read the mind of readers.
-: THE USE OF ORIENTAL AND WESTERN TEXTS :-
Rushdie has cleverly used both oriental and Western text in the novel. He remains indebted to a few writers and their works, chief of which are Laurence Stern's Tristram Shandy, Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum Gabrial, Gracia Marqueze's One Hundred years of solitude and Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Saleem, in the novel himself is, truely cosmopolitan. He is partly Hindu, partly Muslim and partly Christian intermixing of various religious and cultures that make of India. Midnight's Children do not agree with the Hindu world view of Indian society as homogeneous one. Rushdie also owes his narrative device to Punch Tantra and Kathasarit Sagar.
-: MAGIC REALISM :-
Rshdie adopts the device of Magic Realism in Midnight's Children. Magic realism is a term originally coined by German out critic Frantz Roh in 1925 to describe the tendencies in the work of certain German painters in the early twenties. But the term was first apllied to literature by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier in the late 1940's. Basically magic realism was a Latin American phenomanon characterized by the incorporation of supernatural elements into realistic fiction. Some well-known writers who used this new device were Jorge Amanda, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabrial Gorcia Marques etc. Some characteristics of this new style were identified as the mingling of the realistic and fantastic, natural and supernatural, skillfull time shifts, use of dreams, myths, fantasy and fairy tales. Salman Rushdie has written critically acclaimed magical realist novels. His Midnight's Children, Shame and The Satanic Verses incorporate the technique of magic realism. While reading the Midnight's Children we find that the whole novel is a perfect combination of reality and imaginary between the real and the unreal.
There are many places in the Midnight's Children where Rushdie used the device of magic realism for the framework of the novel. When we go through the novel, we find that Saleem Sinai, the protaginist, has the gift of having an incredible sense of smell which allows him to determine other's thoughts and emotions. This gift of Saleem is same to that of his grandfather Adam Ajiz who also had the same large nose and magical gift. In the novel we see that how Adam's incredible sense of smell and his magical nose saved him for being killed in the Jallianwala Bag Massacre :
"As the fifty-one men March down the alleyway a tickle replaces the itch in my grandfather's nose... Adam Ajiz ceases to concentrate on the events arround him as the tickle mount to unbearable intensities. As Brigadeir Sure issues a command the sneeze hits my grandfather full in the face "Yaaaakh-Thooo!" he sneezes and falls forward, losing his balance, following his nose and thereby saving his life(41).
Thus Adam's sneeze provides a sense of humors as well as a kind of pity and fear in the heart of readers. In this way, the author plays beautifully with magic realism in such realistic and serious incidents of history of India.
-: THE CINEMATIC ELEMENTS :-
The influence of Bombay film industry can also be seen in the narrative of Midnight's Children. Rushdie adopts the structure of Bombay film industry on a large extents, which provides him a perfect model for the novel. In this way the novel is very close to Hindi film. Stock narrtive situations like mistaken exchange and stock cinema actors like good 'ayah' Merry Pereira racall Bombay film. The exchange of Shiva and Saleem at the very time of birth is the most frequently discussed cinematic elememt of Midnight Children. Rushdie himself in his essay "Midnight Children and Shame" makes a significant comment on this particular cinematic operation, "...this melodramatic device... was a genuine kind of Bombay Tolkies, B-movie notion and I thought that grew out of the movie city ought to contain such notions.
This cities ought to contain such notions. These are children not so much of their parents but children of time and children of history". Some other cinematic elements are that of natural mothers who are good by nature and stepmothers who are evil. Virtuous male protagonists are contrasted with evil counterparts and so on. In the novel, Shiva , Saleem's alter-ego, combines the role of rebel hero with the vilain of Bombay film. In the 1970's and 1980's the reach of Bombay cinema nd its influence on Indian mind can easily be imagined.
-: CORNIFICATION OF VARIOUS LANGUAGES :-
Another interesting features of Rushdie's narrative is the Bounteous sprinkling of English with Hindi and Urdu words which provides an oriental flavor to the novel. This combination of words can be termed as Chutnification of various languages. He makes use of number of Hindi and Urdu words in the text. Such words include 'ekdum', 'angrez', 'nasbandi', 'dhoban', 'firangee', 'rakshsas', 'garam masala', 'baba', 'badmash', 'goondas', 'sarpanch', 'paan', 'khichari', 'gur', etc. are used in flawless English. He also employes some expressions and phrases in the novel such as 'baap-re-baap', 'hai-hai', 'sab kuch', 'chi-chi', 'pyar Kiya darna kya', 'ooper niche', 'bhai-bhai', 'nimbu pani', etc. Sometimes Rushdie combines words and phrases to make compounds such as 'overandover', 'suchandsuch', 'birthanddeath', 'updownup', 'blackasnight' etc. Such compounds shows Rushdie's innovation and mastery over English language. These experiments with language make Midnight's Children an interesting text to read.
Sometimes, in the novel, Rushdie misspellings of words such as 'unquestionabel', 'straaange', 'ees', 'existance', etc. He also makes use of some incorrect words, from grammatical view point, like 'mens', 'informations', 'lifeliness'. All these delebrates misspellings point to the use of English by Indians to their day-to-day life.
Thus, one can say that Rushdie's use of innovative narrative technique has made Midnight's Children a complex and highly challenging work of fiction. Along with the content and its marvellous treatment, this new and innovative narrative technique enabled Rushdie to capture the topmost position among the winners of the Booker Prize over the past twenty five years.
3】 Write a note on 'Saleem as an unreliable narrator'.
Ans. :-
Midnight's Children presents the story of Saleem Sinai, a boy who was born during midnight on the same day India acquired Independence. The fact that he was born on this precise date seems to bind him to India's history, making of him not only an interesting character, but an important one as well. Midnight's Children is a first person narrative of Saleem himself retelling his history and the history of his family. Throughout the narration Saleem makes relations between historic events and his personal life, but he barely provides prove, such as documents, to support the things he so convincingly narrates.
How sure can we be, as readres, that the day in which Nassem broke her three years of silence(out of raged towards Mumtaz still being a virgin after years of marriage) was tha same the day that "a weapon such as world had never seen was being dropped on yellow people in Japan(65)? The unreliability of Saleem narration and the faith the reader has to put to believe it sets a theme in the novel: the truth is a matter of perspective and not a matter of confirmable, or correct, facts.
The unreliability of Saleem's narration increases as we read on. In the chapter "All- India Radio" he writes: "Rereading my work, I have discovered and error in chronology. The assassination of Ghandi occurs, in this pages, on the wrong date."(190) Saleem admits he made a mistake while recounting his story and nothing assures us that he did not make any other mistakes throught. On the same page Saleem questions himslef: "Am I so far gone, in my desperate need for meaning, that I'm prepared to distort everything-to re-write the whole history... purely inorder to place myself in a central role?" This quote shows that the mistake he made may have been caused by his self-consciousness and by the fact that he wants to place himself as the focus point of his narration, hence forcing facts and events to work the way he wants them to work, instead of the way in which they actually happened.
This little aspect of Saleem's narration enhances the theme of the truth being a matter of perspective. Saleem directly states that "in [his] India, Ghandi will continue to die in the wrong way", merely because that is the way he wants to perceive Indian history [or his history] becase it is the way he will always remember it and the way that adapts the best to his narration.
This is not the first time we see first person narrative in class. First person narrative was also present in the previous book we read, The Sense of an Ending by Julia Barnes. In that book, the theme of history is also present and Tonny Webster comes to the conclusion that history is "the memory of survivers". This definition applies to Salem's story: he narrates his memories as he thinks they happened and as he seems best fits. Furthermore, in the beginning of The Sense of an Ending, Tony Webster claims: "What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed". This once again relates back to Saleem's narrative because what actually happened is not what he ended up remembering, but rather he ended up remembering a different thing, which helped him achieve the purpose of his narrative: put himself as the main focus.
It is certain that Salem's lacks evidence to support the hard to believe events that he narrates, hence decreasing the credibility of his story. However, this lack of evidence is what give rise to the theme of history itself in the novel, because history is no other thing than the narration of past events and memories and in some cases we don't have proof that the events took place and that is when we have to put faith in what is being told to us.
4】 Write a brief note on 'Saleem in India and India is Saleem'.
Ans. :-
The feature of the title 'Midnight's Children' makes it immediately obvious that this novel is out of the general. Perhaps it's most extraordinary aspect is the allegory of the character Saleem, of just one human being, for the downfall of postcolonial India. Yet Rushdie does not make it as simple as this; combined with the allegorical nature of Saleem are autobiographical and fantastical aspects. And our narrator's distinctive wit and morals give him identity, arguably one that's too narrow to conceivably represent an entire country, the thing which is a conglomeration of people, politics, geography, religions, languages and cultures.
Simultaneously, obvious aspect such as Saleem sharing his birth with that of the Independent Indian state, and ultimately his breakdown, mirror that of his homeland. Despite Saleem's clear purpose of reflecting the events in India, some factors perhaps make it impossible to fully comprehend both person and country. There is unreliability of Salem's narrative, in which he draws attention to his flaws calling himself, "an incompetent puppeteer", and his memory which "selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies.. creates its own reality".
Rushdie's narrative mode seeks to convey a coexistence of fantasy and reality. Parvati, who has turned Saleem invisible so he can return to Bombay, fallen in love with him, but endured the impossibility of consumation because her husband "supremposed upon her features the horribly eroded physiognomy of Jamila singer", endures a painful labour. The role of Parvati in the novel is magical, yet her troublesome labour coincides temporally with the time between Mrs Gandhi's guilty verdict and consequent seizure of emergency powers. Likewise, the "grasping-choking" magical power of Shiva's knees has such significance, as the return of this violent figure into the narrative is at a similar date to that of India's first nuclear explosion. In this Rushdie shows how strange and unstable was the political reality of the time. It may also be an ironic suggestion, that despite the novel being written for a Western audience, it's magical realism togethe with Salem's memory confusion, has an alienating effect, perhaps Rushdie implying that the Western reader is distant and ignorant of India's past, unable to empathise with the problems of ex-colonial victims but rather feel a sense of shame.
This sense of strangeness and instability of the politics and problems of the time becomes associated with Saleem. It seems he is unabled to live a personal, independent life, but only one that is occupied with the country's and other people's problems, possibly representative of them. His birth being simultaneous with that of 'new India' prompts Mr. Nehru to write him a letter saying, "It will be in a sense the mirror of our own". His downfall was simultaneously with that of India, highlighted by his awareness of his bad memory and importantly, the employment of the triple end-stops "..." and a complex, perplexing syntax, "I don't want to tell it! - But I swore to tell it all. - no, I renounce, not that surely some things are better left.
It is only right that a novel should be as large as it its subject matter, and probably the crucial feature of 'Midnight's Children' is the expansive allegory of Saleem, and the importance of the narrative. An understanding of India is certainly achieve through Salem's character and language. The most important themes of "unreliability of memory", and "the one and the many" are paramount in achieving the overall illustration of post colonial India through our narrator.
Work cited :-
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Midnights-Children
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/158932/midnights-children-by-salman-rushdie/9780676970654
https://assignment.ignouservice.in/2022/01/the-title-of-midnights-children.html
https://uncoveringliteraturessecrets.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/first-person-narrative-how-reliable-is-saleems-story/
https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/saleem-as-an-allegory-for-india-in-midnights-children/
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