Sunday, March 26, 2006
Unmerry Go Around
For me, Midnights Children represents one very large unhappy merry go around. It is merry because Saleem is able to tell his story, to leave his mark on the readers as I am sure Salman Rushdie sits in his writing chair content because of the massive headache he gives students. Yet as merry as Saleem must be by being able to share his story, his life is just one tragedy after another. Instead of ponies and horsies on his merry go around, there are catastrophic political events and horrific, although oddly well connected personal events. Nevertheless what caught my attention the most was the way that Rushdie decided to write Saleem’s story.
In our third book of this semester, we are once again confronted with a style that is different from Howards End and A House for Mr. Biswas. Although in a way Midnights children is like A House for Mr. Biswas because the storyline makes a circle. Throughout the entire book, Rushdie writes in circular story lines that connect the present characters with characters from the past. Towards the end when Saleem seems to be wrapping up his life story that is draining him, he says “There have been thirty – two years, in this story, during which I remained unborn; soon, I may complete thirty-one years of my own” (464). This split down the middle with India’s Independence and Saleem’s birth splits his novel in two halves with connections between the two that make it seem like a circle. Adding the two halves together makes sixty-three years when a circle would be sixty-four years. He doesn’t complete the circle because he leaves room for the future by saying, “one jar must remain empty”(532) because “the future cannot be preserved in a jar” (532). Yet this isn’t the only circular form in the book.
The last few chapters of the book connects characters in Saleem’s present life to the stories that he told of his past. He akins the Reverend Mother to Jamila by saying, “There is another Reverend Mother now, as Jamila Singer, who once, as the Brass Monkey, flirted with Christianity, finds safety shelter peace in the midst of the hidden order of santa Ignacia” (453). He compares Picture Singh to “the possibility of his becoming a second Hummingbird” (513) and while comparing Durga, the washer woman to his grandmother Saleem also compares Picture to his grandfather by saying, “at last she reminded me of Reverend Mother in her later years, when she expanded and my grandfather shrank” (513). Then he puts himself in his circular writing form by returning to Bombay, “Saleem returned to the city of his birth to stand illuminated in a cellar while Bombayites tittered at him from the dark” (524).
One of the most eye catching circles Saleem tells us if of his own birth and the birth of his son. On the very first page he describes his own eventful birth by saying “on the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came” (3) then while describing his son’s birth he copies exactly the form and the style by saying “On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms. Oh spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at Emergency, he emerged” (482). This full circle between his birth and his son’s birth akins Saleem’s own life to his son’s. In a way he predicts that his son who is also “handcuffed to history” (482) will probably live a miserable and traumatic life while India finds political stability because “his destinies [is] indissolubly chained to those of his country” (482). But however circular Saleem makes it to be, he also differentiates his son from himself exactly like how he leaves a year empty while telling his story that spans sixty-three years. Saleem describes Aadam’s generation by saying, “Aadam was a member of a second generation of magical children who would grow up far tougher than the first, not looking for their fate in prophecy or the stars, but forging it in the implacable furnaces of their wills” (515).
With that quote in mind, Rushdie’s ending to Midnights Children leaves me feeling distraught because it is so “unnervingly abstract”. While the novel is still digesting in my brain, I can’t help but think that the ending is depressing even though Saleem seems to paint a picture that the second generation of the Midnights Children will have it better.
In our third book of this semester, we are once again confronted with a style that is different from Howards End and A House for Mr. Biswas. Although in a way Midnights children is like A House for Mr. Biswas because the storyline makes a circle. Throughout the entire book, Rushdie writes in circular story lines that connect the present characters with characters from the past. Towards the end when Saleem seems to be wrapping up his life story that is draining him, he says “There have been thirty – two years, in this story, during which I remained unborn; soon, I may complete thirty-one years of my own” (464). This split down the middle with India’s Independence and Saleem’s birth splits his novel in two halves with connections between the two that make it seem like a circle. Adding the two halves together makes sixty-three years when a circle would be sixty-four years. He doesn’t complete the circle because he leaves room for the future by saying, “one jar must remain empty”(532) because “the future cannot be preserved in a jar” (532). Yet this isn’t the only circular form in the book.
The last few chapters of the book connects characters in Saleem’s present life to the stories that he told of his past. He akins the Reverend Mother to Jamila by saying, “There is another Reverend Mother now, as Jamila Singer, who once, as the Brass Monkey, flirted with Christianity, finds safety shelter peace in the midst of the hidden order of santa Ignacia” (453). He compares Picture Singh to “the possibility of his becoming a second Hummingbird” (513) and while comparing Durga, the washer woman to his grandmother Saleem also compares Picture to his grandfather by saying, “at last she reminded me of Reverend Mother in her later years, when she expanded and my grandfather shrank” (513). Then he puts himself in his circular writing form by returning to Bombay, “Saleem returned to the city of his birth to stand illuminated in a cellar while Bombayites tittered at him from the dark” (524).
One of the most eye catching circles Saleem tells us if of his own birth and the birth of his son. On the very first page he describes his own eventful birth by saying “on the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came” (3) then while describing his son’s birth he copies exactly the form and the style by saying “On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms. Oh spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at Emergency, he emerged” (482). This full circle between his birth and his son’s birth akins Saleem’s own life to his son’s. In a way he predicts that his son who is also “handcuffed to history” (482) will probably live a miserable and traumatic life while India finds political stability because “his destinies [is] indissolubly chained to those of his country” (482). But however circular Saleem makes it to be, he also differentiates his son from himself exactly like how he leaves a year empty while telling his story that spans sixty-three years. Saleem describes Aadam’s generation by saying, “Aadam was a member of a second generation of magical children who would grow up far tougher than the first, not looking for their fate in prophecy or the stars, but forging it in the implacable furnaces of their wills” (515).
With that quote in mind, Rushdie’s ending to Midnights Children leaves me feeling distraught because it is so “unnervingly abstract”. While the novel is still digesting in my brain, I can’t help but think that the ending is depressing even though Saleem seems to paint a picture that the second generation of the Midnights Children will have it better.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Midnight's Children
An ending wraps up the story the novel tells but also gestures toward the future. It can be comforting or apocalyptic, finite or unnervingly abstract (or all of the above). How would you characterize the ending of Midnight's Children? Does it even end? Rushdie's narrator, Saleem, is increasingly self-conscious of his need to end his story and of the problematic implications of doing so. If we have asked of our previous novels, "what is the moral of this story?" can we ask here "what is the moral of its stories?"
In order to help you pin this down, feel free to take one of the issues we focused on in class (paradox, connection, gender, reality/history, hope, violence, and form) as a way in to analyzing Rushdie's achievement (or lack thereof) OR take one of the following passages as a place to begin your consideration of where Midnight's Children ends up.
"And we all lived happily ... at any rate, even without the traditional last-sentence fiction of fairy-tales, my story does indeed end in fantasy" (372-3).
"but in finding it had become the first victim of that spirit of detached fatigue which made the end the only possible solution. (Tick, tock.)" (376).
"Scraps of memory: this is not how a climax should be written. A climax should surge towards its Himalayan peak; but I am left with shreds, and must jerk towards my crisis like a puppet with broken strings. This is not what I had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin" (491).
"Children, something is being born here, in this dark time of our captivity; let Widows do their worst; unity is invincibility! Children: we've won!" (502).
"But no, he has not finished, there is strain on his face, and finally my son, who will have to be a magician to cope with the world I'm leaving him, completes his awesome first word: '...cadabba'" (528).
"The process of revision should be constant and endless; don't think I'm satisfied with what I've done!" (530).
And, of course, feel free to analyze the actual final paragraph of the novel on page 533.
In order to help you pin this down, feel free to take one of the issues we focused on in class (paradox, connection, gender, reality/history, hope, violence, and form) as a way in to analyzing Rushdie's achievement (or lack thereof) OR take one of the following passages as a place to begin your consideration of where Midnight's Children ends up.
"And we all lived happily ... at any rate, even without the traditional last-sentence fiction of fairy-tales, my story does indeed end in fantasy" (372-3).
"but in finding it had become the first victim of that spirit of detached fatigue which made the end the only possible solution. (Tick, tock.)" (376).
"Scraps of memory: this is not how a climax should be written. A climax should surge towards its Himalayan peak; but I am left with shreds, and must jerk towards my crisis like a puppet with broken strings. This is not what I had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin" (491).
"Children, something is being born here, in this dark time of our captivity; let Widows do their worst; unity is invincibility! Children: we've won!" (502).
"But no, he has not finished, there is strain on his face, and finally my son, who will have to be a magician to cope with the world I'm leaving him, completes his awesome first word: '...cadabba'" (528).
"The process of revision should be constant and endless; don't think I'm satisfied with what I've done!" (530).
And, of course, feel free to analyze the actual final paragraph of the novel on page 533.
