Rosemary Stump, Jasmine Hosein, Paula Febles Bustillo
Public Reception
New York Review of Books: “On the Indian World-Mountain”
“Mired in the complexities of human love and hate and aspiration, Midnight’s Children is anything but abstract or desiccated in its allegorizing tendencies. Yet I doubt that it will reach a very wide audience in this country. It is long; its scene and subject-matter have no automatic appeal for Americans; it cannot be gulped down. The book will gain ground slowly but, I believe, inevitably.”
The Guardian: “Midnight's Children is the right winner”
“It feels like shutting the lid on a magic box. A swirling, overloaded mass of words, colours, smells, allusions and illusions has suddenly been contained. A portal to a fantastical, vital dimension has been sealed off.”
“What surprised me, however, is how much simple pleasure I was able to take from Rushdie's writing. Given Midnight's Children's weighty reputation, its position as a bulwark of so many post-colonialism syllabuses, not to mention the tragedy and human misery inherent in its subject matter, I was expecting something drier and worthier. Instead, I was overwhelmed by its zest and sparkle; the sheer joy in creation shown in every gleefully overloaded sentence, every authorial sleight of hand and every scatological joke. Midnight's Children is tremendous fun.”
Scholarly Articles
“Saleem, Shiva, and Status: Authentic and Hubristic Pride Personified in Midnight's Children”
“The fact that Saleem's hubristic pride arises from something completely beyond his control—his date of birth—is consistent with evidence suggesting that hubristic pride is most likely to occur when individuals attribute their successes (or positive qualities) to uncontrollable, stable, and global aspects of themselves.”
-How does Saleem’s pride mature over the course of the novel into a more authentic pride?
“Epic of Failure”
“Midnight's Children seeks to capture the experience of the Indian peoples by depicting Saleem Sinai's failure to equate his story with the nation's. We as readers experience the "multitudinous" nature of India by perceiving how the efforts to unify its history in an epic form fall apart. With this in mind, I will argue that the moments of failure in Rushdie's novel establish a utopian political vision for post-independence India. My analysis should not be confused with the trend in Rushdie criticism of defending his work as a deconstruction of some abstract notion of Western historiography. Nor will I take Rushdie at his word that the novel represents an "anti-epic.” Instead, I will explore how the novel's efforts to undermine its own epic pretensions answer the "national longing for form" in a way that preserves the diverse and often conflicting religious, cultural, and social practices within India.”
Annotated Bibliography
Jordison, Sam. "Midnight's Children Is the Right Winner." Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 10 July 2008. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
- This review is a nice way to open up discussion into how the class perceived the novel. Somewhat predictably, the review discusses how magical and enjoyable Midnight's Children is, if you can manage to get through it. The reviewer praises the book, but admits it is a difficult read, a sentiment shared by many Midnight's Children reviews.
- Su examines how Rushdie's work can be considered an "epic of failure" because it seeks to capture the experience of the people of India by depicting Saleem's inability to equate his story with India's. This source is relevant because it provides insight into how Rushdie preserves India's conflicting indentities.
- A good portion of this review is plot summary of the book. But the author also ends up making some interesting points about how he believes the public will perceive the work.
- Weidman and Tracey discuss Saleem's hubris in the earlier parts of the novel. They also go on to discuss how his excessive pride matures into a more authentic pride as he ages, and begins to accomplish things to be proud of that are in his control. This article opens up discussion into Saleem's ego and how it effects trusting him as a narrator.
Empire."Postcolonial Text 5.2 (2009): 2-14. Kent University. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.
- Raja’s review and analysis of Midnight’s Children counter the mainly positive critiques of the novel. Raja argues that Rushdie is actually furthering the narratives of pre-colonial works rather than lending to the pushback against British colonialism. This article is relevant because it gives readers insight into the problematic and culturally appropriative nature of Rushdie’s works.
- Clark’s review is largely positive and explores the Indo-Anglian literary movement of English speaking, Indian authors. Clark’s review is relevant because it Americanize’s some of the concepts putting them in context for American readers.
- In Price’s review of Midnight’s Children he talks about the rewriting of history Rushdie seems to be doing but justifies it as a push against what he calls the “British history of India” as opposed to India’s actual history before it was colonized, during British rule, and after. This article is contradictory to Raja’s but is relevant because it furthers the theme of hybridity in the novel by comparing what two reviewers of different cultures thought about it.
Galván, Fernando. "EL «REALISMO» DEL EXILIO: "MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN"" Atlantis 10.1/2 (1988): 55-68. JSTOR. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/41054575?ref=search-gateway:bca3746d6f89fd90bf5c0ea79ea8537b>.
- Galván’s essay focuses on the very particular traits of the narrator’s voice in Rushdie’sMidnight’s Children. He exposes that by the narrative being very specific in voicing its space and time it deviates from Rushdie’s other works such as Shame and Grimus; this in turn defines a sort of cultural exile for the author, comparing it even to García Márquez, cand calling Bombay Rushdie’s Macondo. Galván also notes that the use of Padma as a stand-in for real life readers creates an auto-conscience to the narrative that draws lines in the text: author vs reader, the historical vs the fantastical.
- “Midnight’s Children reflects a conscious effort to construct and reconstruct a reality that takes and responds to the ‘realities’ fabricated by others; therein lies the reality of exile” (68). Galván states that by drawing these lines the author, Rushdie, creates for himself an exile from a world that is both his and not.
Gane, Gillian. "Postcolonial Literature and the Magic Radio: The Language of Rushdie's Midnight's Children." Poetics Today 27.3 (2006): 569-96. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/40280762?ref=search-gateway:a38288b60969b17ec42becdf047eda15>.
- Gillian explores the use of the English language within Rushdie’s Midnight Children. Although the novel takes place primarily in India, it’s originally written in English. When asked about it Rushdie states, “I thought it was necessary to find a way of allowing them to talk which would seem natural and which would have differentiation but which wouldn’t raise those questions [are they speaking English, what are they actually speaking, what would they have actually said]” (592). Though the use of the English language also lends itself to a primarily hybrid nature within the text, Gillain wonders whether perhaps, “Most metropolitan readers will complacently continue to believe in the universality of English” (594). There is also no denying that a main factor that comes in with English is its marketability and its lucrative nature. As it is, “magic turns out in the end to have much to do with money” (594).
White Magic
- “… Gradually the confusion and ruin seeped out through the windows of the house and it took over the hearts and minds of the nation, so that war, when it came was wrapped in the same fuddled haze of unreality in which we had begun to live.” Pg. 381
2. “Why, alone of all the more-than-five-hundred-milllion, should I have to bear the budern of history?” Pg. 440
-Finally expresses contempt for his place in India’s history.
3. “As the child of those confused days grew within her, the contrast between its youth and her age increased; it was at this one point that she collapsed into an old cane chair and received visits from the specters of her past. “ Pg. 380
-Blurring of time becomes evident in Saleem’s mother as the aunt continues to poison her. Where else is time blurred in the book? Where else does the past come back to the present? (Hint Hint:the circularity of the ending!)
- Shiva’s sterilization, but he has already spawned another generation of Midnight’s Children.
-Does the very fact that Saleem is aware of the illusions in his life, contradict him calling them illusions? Is there any way for truth and reality to be objective? Consider Saleem’s father stealing the sacred hair of Muhammad. The fact that it is replaced with a fake is irrelevant, because nobody is aware of it. Does the hair being an ‘illusion’ even matter?
5. “So I carried what was now only half a boy (and therefore reasonably light) up narrow spiral stairs to the heights of that cool white minaret where Shaheed babbled of light-bulbs while red ants and black ants fought over a dead cockroach, battling along the trowel-furrors in the crudely-laid concrete floor.” Pg. 432
-Shaheed becomes the cockroach at the top of the mosque taken there by Buddha (Saleem). Is this any commentary on religion?
6. “Indians are only capable of worshipping one God.” Pg. 503
-Isn’t this ironic? India is such a melting pot, Even Saleem’s family has a multitiude of religions. His family is Muslim, Saleem is mostly Hindu, and ayah Mary is Catholic.
Women in the text
7. “But no matter how much she did for me, I was unable to do for her the thing she desired most; because of the side of the Mosque, the moonlight showed me her night-time face turning, always turned into that of my distant, vanished sister… no not my sister… into the putrid, viley disfigured face of Jamila Singer. “ Pg. 462
8. “Women have made me; and also unmade.” Pg. 465
-In Midnight’s Children, are women portrayed as more or less powerful? What do you guys think of Saleem not embodying the typical male protagonist? (In the sense that he is never able to bed a woman, father his own children, etc.)
1. “While Jamila sang of holiness and love-of-country, I explored profanity and lust.” (364)
2. “The dead die, and are gradually forgotten; time does its healing, and they fade - but in Parvati’s basket I learned that the reverse is also true; that ghosts, too, begin to forget; that the dead lose their memories of the living, and at last, when they are detached from their lives, fade away - that dying, in short, continues for a long time after death.” (438 - 439)
1. “I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come” (440).
2. “Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems –but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible” (189).
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