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... At the age of seventeen, his parents, joining in the Muslim exodus from India, moved to Karachi, Pakistan, as did the family of Saleem Sinai, the protagonist in Midnights Children. ... These feelings of allegiance to two different and opposed nations became a dominant element in Rushdies novel Midnights Children. ... Six years later, Rushdie published his second novel, Midnights Children, which won the Booker Prize and brought him international fame. ... The role of Midnights Children in telling the inextricably linked story of the individual and the nation bears a striking resemblance to that of Gunter Grasss Tin Drum and James Joyces Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. ...
Key Facts
Full title - Midnights Children
Author - Salman Rusdie
Type of work - Novel
Genre - Coming-of-age novel; historical novel
Language - English
Time and place written - England, late 1970s and early 1980s
Date of first publication - 1981
Publisher - Alfred A Knopf, Inc. ... Naseem and Aadam get married, and Naseem, also known as "Reverend Mother," bears five children with Aadam: Alia, Mumtaz, Hanif, Mustapha, and Emerald. ... They also systemically perform operations on all of the living midnights children in order to render it impossible for them to give birth. ... He has many children with Naseem Ghani, and struggles with questions of the existence of God throughout his life. ...
Parvati-the-witch - One of midnights children, and a friend to Saleem. ... The two midnight children were born at precisely the same moment, and Mary Pereira switched them at birth, condemning Shiva to a life of poverty and promoting Saleem from a life of poverty to one of wealth and comfort. ... This myth plays a central role in Midnights Children because it suggests an aesthetic competition between Saleem and Shiva, as well as imagining the competition between Shiva and Saleem to be one between "the two valid forms of creation. ... The Shiva of Midnights Children shares the deitys characteristics, and becomes famous for his fighting abilities while enlisted in the Indian army. ...
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
The Relationship between Personal Life and History - Midnights Children explores the ways in which history is given meaning through the telling of individual experience. ... In a broader sense, Rushdie is relating Saleems generation of "Midnights Children" to the generation of Indians with whom he was born and raised.
The Fragmentation of Identity - The reader of Midnights Children must piece together Saleem Sinais narrative to extract meaning from it. ...
The Unreliability of Historical and Biographical Accounts - Salman Rushdie does not always accurately recount the events in recent Indian history during the course of Midnights Children. ...
Pickles - Rushdie has cleverly designed the chapters of Midnights Children. ...
Hit-the-Spittoon
Naseem Aziz, also known as "Reverend Mother," bears five children with Aadam: Alia, Mumtaz, Hanif, Mustapha, and Emerald. ...
Analysis
From the very first passages of Midnights Children, Rushdie establishes several thematic and stylistic trends that persist throughout the novel. ...
In Midnights Children, Rushdie uses characters names to explore the formation of national and personal identity. ...
In Midnights Children, colors are symbolic of national and religious affiliations. ...
The lives of the midnight children foreground the link between personal lives and national history. Emphasizing their role as members of a specific generation and citizens of a specific nation, perhaps even above issues of their biological parentage, Rushdie writes, "The children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand, by history. ...
The chapter titles in Midnights Children are crucially important to each chapters content and meaning. ... Soon he rolls down into a neighborhood where the children speak a different language and begins to bicker with them. ...
My Tenth Birthday
Saleem explains that 1001 children came into the world between midnight and 1 A. ... on August 15th, 1947, each with a different and miraculous ability, although only 581 of these children survived. ... Two of midnights children, Saleem and Shiva, mark the exact stroke of midnight as their birthday. ...
Analysis
Numbers in Midnights Children are endowed with mystical significance. The 1001 children born in the hour between midnight and one a. ... The 581 surviving children refer to the political climate. ... This myth plays a central role in Midnights Children because it suggests an aesthetic competition between Saleem and Shiva, as well as imagining the competition between Shiva and Saleem to be one between "the two valid forms of creation. ...
Midnights Children contains many important female characters who shape Saleems life, but the role of femininity in the novel is often contradictory or ambiguous. ... Saleem finds Shiva increasingly unpleasant, and realizes that Shiva alone, among the children of midnight, has the ability to block Saleem from his thoughts. ...
In Midnights Children, Rushdie frequently addresses the confluence of dreams and reality and illusion and truth. ...
Movements Performed by Pepperpots
After the mourning period of Saleems uncle Hanif, Ahmed begins to treat his wife and children with exceptional hostility, at which point Reverend Mother informs her daughter that she need not endure such a horrible marriage. ...
Rushdie writes, "Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were not all human. Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed and pepperpots…I had to go into exile to learn that the children of midnight were more varied than I—even I—had dreamed. ... When Picture Singh proposes to Saleem that he marry her, Saleem quickly uses the false excuse that he cannot have children. ...
Curses and oaths occupy an important position in Midnights Children. ... Shiva has become a hero in the Indian army, has received much attention from women, and has fathered countless illegitimate children. ... They also systemically perform operations on all of the living midnights children in order to render it impossible for them to give birth. Saleem, however, finds amusement in the fact that Shiva has had numerous children by women across India. ... At the end of Midnights Children, Saleem adopts a particularly pessimistic outlook on the future. ... " Inextricably linked to this sense of hopelessness are both the loss of his silver spittoon and his knowledge that all of midnights children have been sterilized.
Salman Rushdie does not always accurately recount the events in recent Indian history during the course of Midnights Children. ... Rushdie has cleverly designed the chapters of Midnights Children. ... We, the children of Independence, rushed wildly and too fast into our future; he, Emergency-born, will be is already more cautious, biding his time; but when he acts, he will be impossible to resist. ... Yes, they will trample me underfoot…they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege an the curse of midnights children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace. ... Saleem touches upon the multiple parentages that are the fate of the midnight children.
Approximate Word count = 15956
Approximate Pages = 63.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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