Salman Rushdie\'s Midnight\'s Children in Terms of Postmodernity

Salman Rushdie is one of the most famous authors of the modern era. In the tradition of Gabriel Marquez, Rushdie sweeps the reader up in his novel, Midnights Children, like the book by Marquez that obviously had a great deal of influence on Rushdie, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Midnights Children is a postmodern look at the modern fairytale that Salman Rushdie weaves for those who wish to pick up the book.

This paper will include a brief description of postmodernism followed by a look at Salman Rushdie. Most scholars agree that this novel fits into the category of Postmodernist fiction, but how so? What specific elements of postmodernism do this book contain that makes it a postmodern book? In this paper, I will look at various elements of postmodernism including the contrast of information and knowledge, the idea that the novel parallels history, decolonization, feminism/post feminism, dispersion philosophy, ontology, and the role of chance, and the idea of fantasy in Salman Rushdie's novel.

Postmodernism is a word that critics and the general population like to throw around whether they understand what the word means or not. Postmodernism emerged in academic literature during the mid-1980's. Postmodernism is hard to define because it appears in a wide variety of areas, like art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. Furthermore, postmodernism cannot be described as a temporal phenomenon, it is hard to put a date on postmodernism, like one might date the baroque period.

In order tom understand postmodernism in literature, it might be helpful to look at the movement from which postmodernism grew, that is, modernism. The main characteristics of a modern literature are:

An emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing, an emphasis on how perception takes place rather than what is perceived, such as stream-of conscious writing.

Movement away from objectivity provided by omniscient third person narrators and clear-cut moral positions.

Blurring the distinction between genres. Poetry is more like documentary and prose is more poetic.

An emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives and random-seeming collages of different materials.

A tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness.

Rejection of formal aesthetics.

Rejection of the high/low distinction in popular culture.

Postmodernism follows most of these same ideas. But there are important differences.

Modernism presents a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history.

Modernism presents that fragmentation as tragic. On the other hand, postmodernism does not present the idea of fragmentation as something that is tragic, but celebrates the fragmented nature of existence. In other words, Postmodernism is more lighthearted than modernism, tends not to take itself as seriously as modernism does.

According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations, which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism that dictate particular cultural practices, including the kind of art and literature that are produced. The first is market capitalism. This is the type of capitalism that prevailed in Western Europe, England, and the United States, and all their colonies, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first phase is associated with a particular kind of aesthetic, which we now call realism. The second phase occurred in from the late nineteenth century until the mid twentieth century, ending about World War II. This second phase is referred to as the era of monopoly capitalism and is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with the period referred to as modernism. Now, we are in the third stage, multinational/consumer capitalism. The emphasis now is on marketing, selling, and consuming, not on production. This era is associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and is correlated in time to postmodernism.

Jameson's characterization of postmodernism in terms of production, economic models and technology is more closely associated with history and sociology than it is with literature or the arts. Jameson defines postmodernism in terms of an entire era of civilization, much more aligned with a definition like "the bronze age," than the baroque.

So what are we supposed to think of Midnight's Children in terms of a postmodern framework? It would be helpful to know a little about the author in order to answer such questions as, how did an Indian writer come to be associated with a movement that is so closely linked to the Western World, like Australia, Canada, the United States, Western Europe and England?

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India on June 19, 1947 to a middle class Muslim family. In 1968 he graduated with honors from King's college at Cambridge. He worked for a year as an actor in his early twenties and for ten tears worked as a freelance advertising copywriter. In 1975 his first work, Grimus, was published. He married his first wife the next year.

Midnight's Children was published in 1981. For this book, he won the Booker McConnell Prize for fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and a literary award from English Speaking Union. In 1983, Shame, Rushdie's second work, was published.

Rushdie's work has gotten him into quite a bit of trouble with Islamic leaders. Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the former Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini on Valentine's Day, 1989, after Satanic Verses was released. At first defended by other Islamic writers, his peers, like Naguib Mahfouz said that Rushdie did not have the right to insult anything, especially a prophet or anything considered holy. Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie was described by the Nobel writer V.S. Naipaul as" an extreme form of literary criticism.

Since the release of Satanic Verses, which was banned in India and South Africa and was burned on the streets of Bradford, Yorkshire. Rushdie was forced into hiding when Ayatollah Komeini issued the fatwa against him and his publisher. An aide to Khomeini offered a million-dollar reward for his death. In 1993, Rushdie's Norweigian publisher was wounded in an attack outside of his house. In 1997, the bounty on Rushdie's head was doubled and the highest Iranian state prosecutor reaffirmed the fatwa in 1998. During this time, violent protests in India, Pakistan and Egypt killed several people. Since the religious decree, Rushdie has been in hiding, but he continues to write and publish books, the latest one being Fury, which was published in 2001.

Midnight's Children is a comic allegory of India's history that revolves around the lives of the narrator, Saleem Sinai and the 1000 children born after the Declaration of Independence. All the children in the book have some magical powers, for example, Saleem has a large nose that gives him the ability to see "into the hearts and minds of men." Saleem's rival is Shiva, who possesses the power of war. Saleem, dying in a pickle factory near Bombay, tells his tragic story with attention to the comical aspects. Midnight's Children caused a ruckus in India because of its unfavorable portrayal of Indira Ghandi and her son, Sanjay. Sanjay was involved in a controversial sterilization campaign. The title, Midnight's Children, is derived from Nehru's speech delivered at midnight, as India gained Independence from England.

The book can best be described as a modern fantasy. The narrator is real, lives in the real world, but like all fantasy, the book requires that the reader suspend all disbelief. As already mentioned, the narrator tells his story. Born on the stroke of midnight on the day that India declared its independence from Britain, the tale is a series of flashbacks from the modern era. The story starts with Saleem's grandfather, Aadem Aziz, and his life in Kashmir in the first part of the twentieth century. From that point, Saleem Sinai tells us the whole story of his family, from Aadem to Saleem's mother, and down to Saleem himself and his sister. The reader follows Saleem as he grows up in a post-independence Bombay. Saleem is the leader if the Midnight Children, who, as mentioned already, all have special powers. The strength of their powers is stronger the closer that the child was born to midnight. Because Saleem was born at exactly midnight, his powers are the strongest. The story of Saleem's family and the story of the Midnight Children unfold in parallel. The fates of the Midnight Children are closely intertwined with the fate of the India. Another contrast is that half of Saleem's family ends up in Pakistan, and thus gives the novel the view from both sides of the conflict.

Several elements of postmodernism have already been touched upon, that is, the idea of history and the idea of the fairytale. The first element that I will look at is the element of the fairytale in this novel.

The idea of fantasy is one of the characteristics of postmodern literature. This is not a fantasy like Grimm's fairytales. This is the type of fantasy that is so believable, it is almost rooted in the magic of childhood, the magic that was there because it was so easy to believe in. Like Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude, this is a place to where magic has returned, or never really left to begin with. Given the subject matter of the book, this aspect has garnered criticism from others.

Rushdie's portrayal of India and Indian's might be seen as guilty of stereotyping in his use of magic realism and the implication that India can only be described in terms of disunity, fantasy and irrationality, precisely those terms used by the orientalists to 'keep the natives down' (Myers, 1996).

Another scholar writes a]lthough he writes about his native land, he carefully abstracts its features and makes them exotic, as if to reflect the uncomfortable similarities between himself and an adventurer stationed in London selling Oriental wares to a public whose tastes he knows from several decades of travel (Brennen, 1989).

There is no arguing about the existence of this postmodern element in Midnight' Children.

The question is, is the use of fantasy and fairytale a proper considering the subject? I think that it is a proper use of the tool, and I do not think that the text is at all disrespectful; I think that mystifying it is done almost as a term of respect. That Rushdie uses fantasy indicates that he does not fully understand is not capable of fully understanding. The fantastical elements of the novel hint at the fact that it is unknown and therefore something to be revered and respected. Magic is not something to be trifled with, it is to b e handled and treated with respect.

Besides respect, people often romanticize and mystify the things that they long for. Adults often associate childhood as being a magical time, when the wonders of the world abounded. Not all was known or though to be known. The world during childhood is still mystical, something that gets lost as we grow into adulthood. Even though it is a magical time, it is something that adults treat with great reverence and lament the fact that children seem to grow out of the magical stage so quickly.

Magic then, is not something to be frowned upon, not something that as meant as degradation to the people or the land or the culture, but something that honors the land, the people and the culture. Saying and showing that magic has returned to a place is not saying anything derogatory or bad, indeed, we should all be so lucky that a little magic would return to all of our lives.

Closely intertwined with the idea of magic and fantasy in this novel is the idea decolonization. This is central to the magic of the novel, for all the children's magical powers are derived from the Independence of India from Great Britain. The closer they were born to the moment when magic returned to The Indian Subcontinent, the stronger their powers are.

At its most basic level, the element of decolonization represents moving beyond colonization. Without getting too political here, if fantasy and magic and mystery are seen as good things, then the British, and by extension all colonizing countries can be seen as very bad indeed. In short, the pre-colonized country is magical. Rushdie treats as foreign because after the British left, life returned to what it was before the arrival of the British. Because Rushdie, or Saleem as it were, does not know anything about India prior to the colonization, he treats it as if he were a foreigner, because, in many ways, he is a foreigner in his own land. This brings up questions of authenticity in the representation of the world.

The rhetoric of authenticity strategically acts as a politics of resistance in the politics of decolonization, which urges a recuperating return to an "original" prior to the colonial period. The national narrative thus constructed not only interpellates the individuals as national subjects, but also upholds purification and a sanctification of an "autochthonic" culture which comes earlier then the hegemonic colonial culture. Such a fabrication of a national origin conjures up a sign of identification and recognition in cultural practices and regimes of representation, which, operating through an unproblematic, transcendental law of origin utilizes the authentic as a way of division. Authenticity, connected to the ideas of race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and nation thus predetermines the aesthetic and political validity. This limitless expansion of the ideal of authenticity dangerously hampers the growth of a culture in that it ionizes the concept of 'the authentic' and treats the alien cultural influences as something that hybridizes and thereby contaminates the pure indigenous culture (Su, 1999).

It can then be said that the idea of decolinization, alienation, and the idea of a fairytale world go hand in hand. Although Su seems to say that the outright condemnation of the foreign culture is a bad thing for the Indian culture and that the decolonization can be just as harmful as colonization seems to miss the point a little. The colonization was a bad thing, there can be no doubt about that in light of the events. But given that it happened, we have to make do. I said earlier that the magic is a good thing, this does not change that, although the magic does not always have good consequences, living in a place where the colonizers have left and the magic has returned is, well, magical. However, the idea that spreads and idea that all things were better before the colonization happened is not necessarily good, nor is the idea that, because the magic has returned and the colonizers have left is also a dangerous idea. A look at any newspaper will tell the reader that all is not well in the Indian subcontinent. In other words, the people of the Indian Subcontinent may not have had magic, but they did have peace.

It is alien too, as I have already mentioned, to Saleem, the land where the magic has returned is not foreigner for just that reason, and it is also foreign because strife and conflict have returned. Saleem does not recognize the place that the colonizers have left behind. It can be said and should be noted, that the author seems somewhat conflicted. The author himself adheres to no religion, and he is wanted dead by many radical Muslims. He also now lives in the United Kingdom, assimilated, presumably, into Western culture. This book then, seems to be about what the Indian Subcontinent had, and what the colonizers took with them when they left. It is not a condemnation of the British, it is almost sorrowful, but now that they (the British) are gone, the people of the Indian Subcontinent have little left to work with. The solution, it seems for Rushdie, is to try to continue, at least in part, some of the ways of the colonizers, even though the colonizers are absent.

Another postmodernist element that has already been touched upon is the idea of parallel history. The story of Saleem's family, the story of the Midnight Children and the history of the Indian Subcontinent seem to unfold in parallel.

Rushdie, and other postmodern writers abandon linear narrative forms and split open the division between the real and the imaginary. In this revisionist perspective, Rushdie merges fact with the fantastic, firmly linking the fate of his characters' with Indian history. Saleem's birth coincides exactly with Indian Independence, he is ' fathered... By history' (MC, p.118), Saleem is brought up in a house sold to the Sinai's by the mercenary Englishman Methwold on the condition that its British contents be preserved, explicitly highlighting the inescapable legacy of the British empire and the impossibility of building the new nation on purely Indian foundations (Myers, 1996).

Thus it is that so many postmodern elements of the story are very closely intertwined. The ideas of fantasy, and decolinization are linked firmly. With these two go the ideas of fragmented history that seems to run in parallel. Midnight's Children gives the reader a second look at the history of the Indian Subcontinent after they declared independence from Great Britain. Rushdie, wearing the hat of a historian tells us, that the one thousand and the children born on or near the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, have miraculous talents, the magic element that has already been discussed. It was, according to the book, "As though history arriving at a point of the highest significance and promise had chosen to sow, in that instant, the seeds of a future which would genuinely differ from anything the world had seen up to that time" (Rushdie, 1981).

These talents possessed by this people not only signal the magic that has returned to India, it also symbolizes the amazing and wondrous possibilities that India's future could hold. Anything is possible, the subcontinent had been given a Tabula Rassa, a fresh slate where they could make their own history.

Rushdie says it himself in the book, "India, the new myth- a collective fiction in which anything was possible" (Rushdie, 1981).

Saleem and Shiva are both born exactly on the stroke of midnight and swapped at birth. Shiva is raised as the son of Methwold and Vanita, the poor wife of a busker. This implicates Saleem in an Independence that is not one of India's own, but one that is built on and around the will of the British Empire. Shiva on the other hand, who should have been raised with the middle-class Muslim family, is instead forced into becoming a beggar. He become violent, destructive, and has a voracious sexual appetite that leads to many children, a problem that is paralleled with India's true historical problem of overpopulation. Adam Sinai, the second generation of India's independence is weak and sickly. He is stricken with tuberculosis, which points to the unhealthy, sickly state of post-independence India.