Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

 

SALMAN RUSHDIE 

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

From The Satanic Verses

Ahmed Salman Rushdie 

 born on 19 June 1947 

is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent.

Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.

After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. On 12 August 2022, a man stabbed Rushdie after rushing onto the stage where the novelist was scheduled to deliver a lecture at an event in Chautauqua, New York.

In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses.

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”

Midnight's Children 

Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.

Midnight's Children sold over one million copies in the UK alone and won the Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. It was awarded the "Booker of Booker" Prize and the best all-time prize winner in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize's 25th and 40th anniversaries. In 2003 the novel appeared at number 100 on the BBC's The Big Read poll which determined the UK's "best-loved novels" of all time.

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in 1947 British Raj India and after the partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.

The first book begins with the story of the Sinai family, particularly with events leading up to the fall of British Colonial India and the partition. Saleem is born precisely at midnight, 15 August 1947, therefore, exactly as old as independent India. He later discovers that all children born in India between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. on that date are imbued with special powers. Saleem, using his telepathic powers, assembles a Midnight Children's Conference, reflective of the issues India faced in its early statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political differences faced by a vastly diverse nation. Saleem acts as a telepathic conduit, bringing hundreds of geographically disparate children into contact while also attempting to discover the meaning of their gifts. In particular, those children born closest to the stroke of midnight wield more powerful gifts than the others. Shiva "of the Knees", Saleem's nemesis, and Parvati, called "Parvati-the-witch," are two of these children with unusual gifts and roles in Saleem's story.

Meanwhile, Saleem's family begins a number of migrations and endures the numerous wars which plague the subcontinent. During this period he also suffers amnesia until he enters a quasi-mythological exile in the jungle of Sundarban, where he is re-endowed with his memory. In doing so, he reconnects with his childhood friends. Saleem later became involved with the Indira Gandhi-proclaimed Emergency and her son Sanjay's "cleansing" of the Jama Masjid slum. For a time Saleem is held as a political prisoner; these passages contain scathing criticisms of Indira Gandhi's over-reach during the Emergency as well as a personal lust for power bordering on godhood. The Emergency signals the end of the potency of the Midnight Children, and there is little left for Saleem to do but pick up the few pieces of his life he may still find and write the chronicle that encompasses both his personal history and that of his still-young nation, a chronicle written for his son, who, like his father, is both chained and supernaturally endowed by history.

Narrative Technique : 

Novel Vs. Film Adaption

Salman Rushdie is undoubtedly one of the most famous novelists of the present time. His second novel Midnight's Children received greater critical acclaim making Rushdie a famous literary figure in English speaking world. The novel won him the Booker of Bookers prize in 1993. In the novel, Rushdie introduces an innovative narrative technique that is different from contemporary writers. He uses the first-person narrative through Saleem Sinai, the novel's protagonist. Rushdie also makes good use of the device of Magic Realism in Midnight'sChildren. Further, Rushdie's use of cinematic elements can clearly be seen in the novel. All this shows Bombay Cinema's influence on Rushdie and Rushdie'suse of Indianized English is his biggest achievement. His use of Indian worldlike ekdum, angrez, firangee, etc. gives Indian flavor to the novel. Above all, Rushdie can be considered the master of narrative techniques.

Characters of Midnight's children 

Novel Vs. Film

There are major differences, to be sure, between the novel and film versions of Midnight’s Children. Most notably, many of the magical realism elements disappeared as the book made its way to the screen. In an interview with the Indian journalism outlet News Laundry, Rushdie discusses the ways in which he and Deepa Mehta dealt with magical realism onscreen.

“One of the big conversations that Deepa Mehta and I had in making the film was ‘how big should the noses be?’” he explained to the interviewer. Rushdie goes on to detail how, in the film adaptation of Midnight’s Children, there were three prosthetic noses used for Saleem, but “we had to really discuss how much to exaggerate the nose. Should we make it like Cyrano de Bergerac? In the book, it’s much bigger.”

Here is the interview in which he speaks about the movie adaption :

👉NL Interview Salman Rushdie

Themes and Symbols

1) The perforated Sheet

2) The silver Spittoon  

3) Knees and Nose

💮The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz falls in love with his future wife performs several different symbolic functions throughout the novel. Unable to see his future wife as a whole, Aadam falls in love with her in pieces. As a result, their love never has a cohesive unity that holds them together. Their love is fragmented, just as their daughter Amina’s attempts to fall in love with her husband are also fragmented. Haunted by the memory of her previous husband, Amina embarks on a campaign to fall in love with her new husband in sections, just as her father once fell in love with her mother. Despite her best attempts, Amina and Ahmed’s love also lacks the completion and unity necessary for genuine love to thrive.

💮The silver spittoon given to Amina as part of her dowry by the Rani of Cooch Naheen is responsible for Saleem’s loss of memory. Even when he has amnesia, however, Saleem continues to cherish the spittoon as if he still understands its historical value. Following the destruction of his family, the silver spittoon is the only tangible remnant of Saleem’s former life, and yet it too is eventually destroyed when Saleem’s house in the ghetto is torn down. Spittoons, once used as part of a cherished game for both old and young, gradually fell out of use: the old men no longer spit their betel juice into the street as they tell stories, nor do the children dart in between the streams as they listen. The spittoon is the symbol of a vanishing era, which, in retrospect, seemed simpler and easier. And so, although Saleem may not be able to recall the specific association between the spittoon and his family, the spittoon maintains its symbolic quality as both a container of memory and a source of amnesia.

The seer, Ramram, predicts the birth of “knees and nose” which represent Shiva and Saleem, respectively. In addition to symbolizing each boy’s special power, knees and nose also play another role. When Aadam Aziz first kneels down to pray, his knees touch the floor and his nose hits the ground. The knees and nose, in this instance, represent an act of prayer, as well as the submission and humility necessary for faith. After hitting his nose on the ground, however, Aadam rejects that submission, and a hole opens up inside of him. The knees and nose also become significant with Farooq’s death via a sniper bullet. Shot, Farooq first drops to his knees, then hits his nose on the ground. Just as Adam bowed before god, Farooq bowed before death. Shiva is suspected of killing a string of prostitutes with his powerful knees, while Saleem uses his nose to discover the most decrepit prostitute in the city. Knees and nose—just like Shiva and Saleem, destruction and creation, faith and humility—are inextricably related.

💮What is your Aesthetic experience after watching the screening? 

One thing I've found is that there's the perfect combination of timing in magic and storytelling.