"Midnight's Children" Post 7b

In the New York Times Review of this novel, it was stated that "The literary map of India is about to be redrawn... Midnight's Children sounds like a continent finding its voice". Although this is only from the back of the book itself, I think that it is very telling of the novel. Through the plot, the characters, and most certainly the prose, Rushdie creates a story of India. This reminded me much of the way that both Faulkner represents the South in his writing, specifically Absalom, Absalom! and Garcia Marquez represents Latin America in his writing, specifically One Hundred Years of Solitude. All three of these literary giants use their prose to immerse their reader in the place. Faulkner uses semicolons and runon sentences, making the reader feel like their are snared in the heat of the South, or listening to some old story teller going on endless tangents, almost forgetting the original story. Marquez blends realism and magic in a unique way, by including it not as something mystical but something simply to be accepted, much as curanderas are still figures in Latin America. Rushdie combines both of these elements in his novel, but he also focuses on quick sections of extremely vivid description, especially scents, which seems to simply evoke India for the reader. He also uses Saleem's journeys into Pakistan and his fighting on the other side of the war to show how closely the two countries were related, and how twisted their ties had become. Marquez also involves history in his novel: José Aureliano finds a ship left over from colonial times, a banana company comes to plantation the land, and Aureliano finds himself immersed in numerous insurrections and civil wars which to him have no meaning. In Abasalom, Absalom! Thomas Sutpen built his house upon the backs of slaves, all of the children are raised by slaves, and Rose's marriage is complicated and then ruined by the Civil War. 

I extremely enjoyed reading Midnight's Children and would definitely recommend it, but it falls in with both Absalom, Absalom! and One Hundred Years of Solitude in that it is literature. The writing style is not the one we are accustomed to: it is another vehicle for the author to impart their country and their home. This makes for an interesting, tough, yet ultimately rewarding reading experience. 

"Midnight's Children" Post 7a

Another cultural aspect of India in the modern time period that I noticed in "Midnight's Children"? I suppose it would have to be mysticism. I mean, the entire premise of the novel is based on the fact that all of the children born within the hour of midnight of the birth of India in India were endowed with special gifts, magical abilities. The author is requiring that the reader either take a leap of faith, read the novel disbelievingly, or decide to focus on another aspect of the novel than this integral feature (I took the last route). Superstition figures throughout "Midnight's Children", aside from the children's gifts. Many of the events happen in reoccuring cycles: Meruochrome flowing, sons not being sons, wives changing their names, women growing into Reverend Mothers, men shrinking, relying on magicians, and countless other repetitions . The characters in the book seem to stake a lot by the way of omens as well: when Saleem arrives in the magicians ghetto, an old woman calls him out: "'Ai-o-ai-o! Bad luck is come! You go to foreign places and bring it here! Ai-oooo!'" (445). Many of the magicians are swayed and it is only through the efforts of Picture that Saleem is allowed to stay. Even Saleem himself falls sway to meanings and signs: he applies the fact that Indira Gandhi's hair was white on one side and black on the other and applies it to numerous events: the black and white sides of the economy, the black and white sides of the Emergency, the black and white sides of her detainment of the MCC. Fortunately, everything is not black and white for long: the opposition party comes into power and Saleem is allowed to continue with what little life he has left. 

"Midnight's Children" Post 6b

In this section, Saleem describes the pickle factory where he is currently living. One isn't really certain what he is doing there, but you get the feeling that he is the owner. A pickle factory doesn't seem like a very appealing place, but he includes one description of it that, if it isn't a beautiful place, is at least a beautiful description of it: "I have not shown you the factory in daylight until now. This is what has remained undescribed: through green-tinged glass windows, my room looks out on to an iron catwalk and then down to the cooking-floor, where copper vats bubble and seethe, where strong-armed women stand atop wooden steps, working long-handled ladles through the knife-tang of pickle fumes; while (looking the other way, through a green-tinged window on the world) railway tracks shine dully in the morning sun, bridged over at regular intervals by the messy gantries of the electrification system. In daylight, our saffron-and-green neon goddess does not dance above the factory floors... Human flies hang in thick white-trousered clusters from the trains; I do not deny that, within the factory walls, you may also see some flies. But there are also compensating lizards, hanging stilly upside down on the ceiling... sounds too, have been waiting to be heard: bubbling of vats, loud singing, coarse imprecations, bawdy humor of fuzz-armed women; the sharp-nosed, thin-lipped admonitions of overseers; the all-pervasive clank of pickle-jars from the adjacent bottling-works; and rush of trains, and the buzzing (infrequent, but inevitable) of flies" (240).  I really loved this description: the area was covered so fully yet not systematically, more in a rambling way but you still got a feeling and view of the space: the image of the copper vats bubbling and seething was perfect, and the comparison of the human flies upon the trains to the flies inside the room was so well done: it just showed how a simple description of a pickle-factory is beautiful and unique in the author's words. 

"Midnight's Children" Post 6a

In this chapter an American character is introduced and I thought that it was interesting how she was described, both stereotypically and not. Evie Burns, or Evelyn Lilith Burns, lives "with her widower father in an apartment in one of the two squat, ugly concrete blocks which had grown up, almost without our noticing them, on the lower reaches of our hillock, and which were oddly segregated: Americans and other foreigners lived (like Evie) in Noor Ville" (207). The foreigners are sequestered in area, the rich success Indians are in a similar building but not intermingled. Evie, of course, is the quintessential American with her braces: "her teeth lived in a metal cage... (I permit myself this one generalization: Americans have mastered the universe, but have no dominion over their mouths; whereas India is impotent, but her children tend to have excellent teeth.)" (208). Another generalization, related to expansionism and Manifest Destiny of the United STates: "It has been observed that all Americans need a frontier: pain was hers, and she was determined to push it out" (208). Her way of talking is poked fun at: "'Hey, you widda leaky nose! Stop watching the schoopid ball, ya crumb! I'll showya something worth watching!'" (208). Evie's differences as an American go beyond where she lives, how she looks, and how she speaks: she comes in as a whirlwind and takes control of the boys lives. She is not a wife-to-be, has no romantic aspirations, is instead ready to occupy the position of "chief" (208). From a culture where women were traditionally expected to throw themselves on their husband's funeral pyre (called sati), this is quite a departure and shows the difference in her role as an American girl. However, its interesting to note that the boys don't mind her taking charge: Saleem falls in love with her and all of the others listen to what she commands, even from the first day. They don't resent that she is lording over them but is only a girl; they simply follow her. Either her personality simply makes it so or these boys are being raised in a more modern time. 

"Midnight's Children" Post 5b

Sometimes this book has a very unique writing style that is helpful, and makes it special cause it says something that could be said in a conventional way but in the way that the author expresses himself it actually makes more sense and is more natural when you think about it, besides inherently being rather beautiful. As this is rather vague, here are several examples: 

"Muffled shrilling of a bell penetrates the washing-chest, in which a nearlynineyearold boy lies uncomfortably concealed" (182). This one works well because Saleem is not yet nine but almost here, in a way that he is not eight any longer. I'm certain that when he is asked his age he rattles off this phrase "nearlynineyearsold" all in one thing: it has somehow taken on a meaning of its own, that stage of being on the verge, in between two states.

"I was gripped by hot fingers of excitement- the agitated insects of excitement danced in my stomach" (186). I enjoyed this metaphor because it does not seem as cliche as butterflies in one's stomach, it seems a little less sugar coated as insects are not quite as appealing. The repetition of the word "excitement" makes it really stick in one's mind, especially with its staccato sounds, and the juxtaposition of the words "agitated insects", which has a slightly disgusting connotation, and "excitement", which is generally a positive term, really describes that feeling of nervous apprehensive excitement-  not quite comfortable or happy but  not unpleasing.

Overall, although sometimes his writing style comes off as unnecessarily confusing or different, for the most part it's not only beautiful but purposeful, putting the reader more fully in the place of the story. 

"Midnight's Children" Post 5a

"In a country where any physical or mental peculiarity in a child is a source of deep family shame, my parents, who had become accustomed to facial birthmarks, cucumber-nose and bandy legs, simply refused to see any more embarrassing things in me; for my part, I did not once mention the buzzing in my ear, the occasional ringing bells of deafness, the intermittent pain. I had learned that secrets were not always a bad thing" (194), "This was it; the beginning of the repayment of their investment; my first dividend- first, I was sure of many" (187). These two quotes show the relationship between Saleem and his parents, most likely similar to the relationship of children and parents across India. Here, Saleem feels that he must repay his parents for the time and effort that he has put into raising him, most likely a social obligation expected of children. It is sad that his parents have no room to understand him; it seems that children are an extension of their parents and some of the standing of the parents is based on the standing of the child. In this setting, it takes a rather extreme measure when Saleem's father beats him as recompensation for attempting to tell them about the voices in his head. However, this is not a specific cultural aspect to India: some of the odd relationship in the expectations of parents for their children is still found today, here in the United States. All of the parent pressure regarding colleges, grades, and sports ties into this connection between a child's success and their parent's standing. Unfortunately, this seems only to complicate Saleem's family further. 

"Midnight's Children" Post 4b

This section really shocked me! Saleem is Saleem yet at the same time he is not, all due to the meddling of Mary. "And when she was alone- two babies in her hands- two lives in her power- she did it for Joseph, her own private revolutionary act, thinking He will certainly love me for this, as she changed name tags on the two huge infants, giving the poor baby a life of privilege and condemning the rich-born child to accordions and poverty... On the ankle of a ten-chip whopper with eyes as blue as Kashmiri sky- which were also eyes as blue as Methwold's- and a nose as dramatic as a Kashmiri grandfather's- which was also the nose of grandmother from France- she placed this name: Sinai" (130). I felt rather cheated after this section: all the history leading up to this moment of Saleem's birth was not his own? He wasn't even born at midnight! Is he still endowed with these powers? I was overall confused; the story had thrown me for a loop on the constant leading up to this point, which was the birth of the narrator Saleem. However, a quote the next page, as his lover Padma protested the same way reassured me, in a way, that despite this switch, this complication the story is still Saleem's as we know him: "It's this: when we eventually discovered the crime of Mary Pereira, we all found that it made no difference! I was still their son: they remained my parents. In a kind of collective failure of imagination, we learned that we simply could not think our way out of our pasts..." (131). Even though he is biologically not their son, Saleem is his parents' child: he has been raised by them and by their history; even if the story described preceding his birth is not technically his, if those mentioned are not his ancestors, it is still his story: it shaped the events that brought him to the moment in which he became his family's child and affected their actions from there on out.