Postmodern Elements in Rushdie's Midnight's Children

Introduction to Postmodernism and Its Literary Context

Salman Rushdie is one of the most famous authors of the modern era. In the tradition of Gabriel García Márquez, Rushdie sweeps the reader up in his novel Midnight's Children. Like One Hundred Years of Solitude — the Márquez novel that clearly had a great deal of influence on Rushdie — Midnight's Children is a postmodern look at the modern fairytale that Rushdie weaves for those who wish to pick up the book.

This paper includes a brief description of postmodernism followed by a closer 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 does the book contain that make it a postmodern work? The analysis that follows examines various elements of postmodernism including the contrast of information and knowledge, the idea that the novel parallels history, decolonization, feminism and post-feminism, dispersion philosophy, ontology and the role of chance, and the use of fantasy in Rushdie's novel.

Postmodernism is a word that critics and the general public like to use whether or not they fully understand what it means. The term emerged in academic literature during the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is difficult to define because it appears across a wide variety of fields — art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. Furthermore, postmodernism cannot be described as a purely temporal phenomenon; it is difficult to pin a date on it in the way one might date the Baroque period.

In order to understand postmodernism in literature, it is helpful to look at the movement from which it grew: modernism. The main characteristics of modern literature include:

An emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing — on how perception takes place rather than what is perceived — such as stream-of-consciousness writing. A movement away from objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators and clear-cut moral positions. A blurring of the distinction between genres, where poetry becomes more documentary and prose becomes 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. And rejection of the high/low distinction in popular culture.

Postmodernism follows most of these same principles, but there are important differences. Modernism presents a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history and treats that fragmentation as tragic. Postmodernism, by contrast, does not present fragmentation as something tragic but rather celebrates the fragmented nature of existence. In other words, postmodernism is more lighthearted than modernism and tends not to take itself as seriously.

According to Fredric Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations that accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism that dictate particular cultural practices, including the kind of art and literature produced. The first is market capitalism, the type that prevailed in Western Europe, England, the United States, and their colonies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This first phase is associated with a particular kind of aesthetic now called realism. The second phase ran from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, ending around World War II. This period is referred to as the era of monopoly capitalism and is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, as well as with the cultural period called modernism. The third and current stage is multinational or consumer capitalism, in which the emphasis falls on marketing, selling, and consuming rather than on production. This era is associated with nuclear and electronic technologies and corresponds in time to postmodernism.

Salman Rushdie: Author and Context

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

Given this framework, what are we to think of Midnight's Children in postmodern terms? It is helpful to know something about the author in order to answer questions such as: how did an Indian writer come to be associated with a movement so closely linked to the Western world — 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, Cambridge. He worked for a year as an actor in his early twenties and for ten years worked as a freelance advertising copywriter. In 1975 his first novel, Grimus, was published. He married his first wife the following 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 the English Speaking Union. In 1983, Shame, Rushdie's second major novel, was published.

Rushdie's work has brought him into serious conflict with Islamic leaders. He was condemned to death by former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini on Valentine's Day, 1989, after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Initially defended by other Islamic writers, his peers — including Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz — eventually argued that Rushdie did not have the right to insult a prophet or anything considered holy. Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie was described by Nobel writer V. S. Naipaul as "an extreme form of literary criticism."

Overview of Midnight's Children

The Satanic Verses was banned in India and South Africa and burned on the streets of Bradford, Yorkshire. Rushdie was forced into hiding when Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwa against him and his publisher. An aide to Khomeini offered a million-dollar reward for his death. In 1993, Rushdie's Norwegian publisher was wounded in an attack outside his home. In 1997, the bounty on Rushdie's head was doubled, and Iran's highest state prosecutor reaffirmed the fatwa in 1998. During this period, violent protests in India, Pakistan, and Egypt killed several people. Despite living in hiding, Rushdie continued to write and publish, with his novel Fury appearing 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 one thousand children born after India's Declaration of Independence. All the children in the book possess some magical power; 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 its comical aspects. The novel caused controversy in India because of its unfavorable portrayal of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay, who was involved in a controversial sterilization campaign. The title 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 lives in the real world, but like all fantasy the book requires that the reader suspend disbelief. Born on the stroke of midnight on the day India declared independence from Britain, Saleem tells his story through a series of flashbacks from the modern era. The narrative begins with his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, and his life in Kashmir in the early twentieth century. From that point, Saleem recounts the whole story of his family — from Aadam 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 of the Midnight's Children, who, as noted, all have special powers. The strength of their powers corresponds to how close the child was born to midnight; since Saleem was born at exactly midnight, his powers are the strongest. The story of Saleem's family and the story of the Midnight's Children unfold in parallel, with the fates of the children closely intertwined with the fate of India. An added layer of contrast is that half of Saleem's family ends up in Pakistan, giving the novel a view from both sides of the subcontinent's conflict.

Several elements of postmodernism have already been touched upon — the ideas of history and of the fairytale. The first element to examine in depth is the use of fantasy in the novel.

Fantasy, Magic Realism, and Decolonization

Fantasy is one of the defining characteristics of postmodern literature. This is not a fantasy in the vein of Grimm's fairy tales. Rather, it is the kind of fantasy so believable that it seems almost rooted in the magic of childhood — a magic present precisely because it was so easy to believe in. Like Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Rushdie creates a place to which magic has returned, or perhaps never truly left. Given the subject matter of the book, this aspect has attracted criticism from some scholars.

Rushdie's portrayal of India and Indians 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 orientalists to "keep the natives down" (Myers, 1996). Another scholar writes that "[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" (Brennan, 1989).

There is no disputing the presence of this postmodern element in Midnight's Children. The question is whether the use of fantasy and fairytale is an appropriate choice given the subject matter. The use of fantasy does not render the text disrespectful; rather, mystifying the subject is done almost as a form of reverence. Rushdie's use of fantasy suggests that he does not — and perhaps cannot — fully understand the world he is depicting. The fantastical elements hint at the unknowable and therefore at something to be respected. Magic is not something to be trifled with; it is to be handled with care.

Beyond reverence, people often romanticize and mystify the things they long for. Adults frequently associate childhood with magic — a time when the wonders of the world abounded and not everything was known or assumed to be known. The world of childhood is still mystical, a quality that tends to be lost as we grow into adulthood. Even though it is a magical time, adults treat it with great reverence and lament how quickly children seem to move past it.

Magic, then, is not something to be frowned upon — it is not meant as a degradation of a people, land, or culture, but rather as something that honors them. Saying that magic has returned to a place is not derogatory; indeed, we should all be so fortunate as to have a little magic return to our lives.

Closely intertwined with the idea of magic and fantasy is the theme of decolonization. This is central to the magic of the novel, for all of the children's powers derive from India's independence from Great Britain. The closer a child was born to the moment when magic returned to the Indian Subcontinent, the stronger their powers are.

At its most basic level, decolonization represents moving beyond colonization. If fantasy, magic, and mystery are seen as good things, then the British — and by extension all colonizing powers — can be seen as forces that suppressed them. The pre-colonized country is magical; Rushdie treats post-independence India as foreign partly because, after the British left, life returned to what it had been before their arrival. Because Rushdie — or Saleem, as the narrator — does not know anything about India prior to colonization, he treats it as a foreigner would, because in many ways he is a foreigner in his own land. This raises important questions about authenticity in the representation of the world.

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

It can therefore be said that the ideas of decolonization, alienation, and the fairytale world are closely intertwined. Although Su seems to argue that the outright condemnation of foreign culture is harmful to Indian culture — and that decolonization can be just as damaging as colonization — this view risks missing the point. Colonization was undeniably harmful, and yet, given that it occurred, a society must find a way forward. The magic in the novel is a positive force, though it does not always yield good consequences. Living in a place from which the colonizers have departed and to which magic has returned is, in its own way, magical. However, the uncritical claim that everything was better before colonization is not necessarily sound, and the assumption that the departure of colonizers alone restores all that was lost is also dangerous. A glance at any newspaper confirms that all is not well in the Indian Subcontinent.

The land to which magic has returned is foreign to Saleem not only for that reason, but also because strife and conflict have returned alongside it. Saleem does not recognize the place the colonizers have left behind. The author himself seems somewhat conflicted: Rushdie adheres to no religion, is wanted dead by radical Muslims, and now lives in the United Kingdom, presumably assimilated into Western culture. The novel, then, seems to be about what the Indian Subcontinent once had and what the colonizers took with them — or left behind — when they departed. It is not a condemnation of the British so much as an expression of sorrow. Now that the British are gone, the people of the Indian Subcontinent find themselves with limited foundations from which to rebuild. The solution Rushdie seems to suggest is to continue, at least in part, some of the practices of the colonizers — even in their absence.

Conclusion

This book may be postmodernist writing at its finest — a beacon for controversy. Rushdie, a foreigner in terms of the origin of the genre, lends credence to the idea of the postmodern. There can be no doubt that the book contains elements of postmodernism, but beyond that it is a complete work, one that shows the promise of humanity and the mess that humanity makes so well of the promise and hope with which it is endowed. The conflict the author obviously feels is entirely natural; it is, of course, very difficult to reject all the ideas with which one grows up.