Salman Rushdie is undoubtly one of the most famous novelists in presenttime. His second novel Midnight's Children received greater critical acclaimand made Rushdie a famous literary figure in English speaking world. The novelwon for him Booker of Bookers prize in 1993. In the novel Rushdie introduces aninnovator narrative technique which is different from the contemporary writers.He uses the first person narrative through Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of thenovel. Rushdie also makes good use of the device of Magic Realism in Midnight'sChildren. Further Rushdie's use of cinematic elements can clearly be seen inthe novel. All this shows Bombay Cinema's influence on Rushdie and Rushdie'suse of Indianized English is his biggest achievement. His use of Indian worldlike ekdum, angrez, firangee etc. give Indian flavor to the novel. Above all,Rushdie can be considered the master of narrative techniques at present time.
Narrated in first person in the voice of Saleem Sinai, Midnight's Children continuously alternates between the past and the present. Rushdie has employed this narrative technique to enable the narrator to move through time with ease. While we find Sinai's grandfather Adam Aziz performing Namaz in the valley of Kashmir at one point, the next page brings us to the present, in which Sinai is seated at his writing desk with Padma by his side.
Another technique which makes the narration rich is how the narrator holds creates suspense. There are various episodic revelations which fill the reader with awe and wonder. With revelations like the blindness of Ghani the landowner, Mumtaz's sexless married life with Nadir Shah, and the reality behind Methwold's middle-parted hair, the narrator doesn't fail to surprise the reader every now and then.
Also, the narrator has such a strong hold on his narration that he leaves no room for any disbelief or questioning on the part of the reader. The reader believes everything that the narrator says to be true unless the narrator himself proves it false (for instance, by changing the truth of his entire family lineage), and the reader believes this too. Such is the conviction in his narration.
The narration of all events, significant or not, revolves around Saleem. Hence, Midnight's Children is a narrative by a writer sitting at his writing desk, penning down all that he recollects or recounts, coating facts with magical words and spells like "abracadabra." While narrating the "magical" history of his birth, Saleem takes us through the "real" history of India. Thus, this novel is a fictitious account of many non-fictitious events, placing this narration in the genre of magic realism.
Hence, Saleem is a brilliant narrator and a master of the art of storytelling.
The narrative technique of the story is in first person. It is told from Saleem's point of view, and we understand the history of Indian independence, Partition, and all that follows through his eyes. Yet, it is within this that the greatness of the themes and story itself lies. Saleem is an unreliable narrator. He makes many errors in trying to be the sole font of knowledge and solitary light that guides the reader through the darkness that is called "history." The narrative technique of first-person narration fraught with errors is a deliberate attempt on Rushdie's part to bring to light the idea of subjectivity having limits but being the only guide one has. Rushdie has written that the work itself should not be seen as history, but rather be seen as art, as an example of how individuals have only their own subjectivity to guide them. This is evidenced in Rushdie's embrace of Saleem as the sole narrator. Although he makes obvious and subtle mistakes, we, as the readers, can only rely on him to help provide understanding through the emotional and political complexities of the time. We are thus left with a powerful stylistic and thematic statement on how human freedom is futile at many points, but it is all that one has in the modern setting.
CHARACTERS
There are some characters which are left out in the film adaptation. It is hard to describe every Characters in the film. So the narrator used the major and important Characters in the adaptation.
Satya Bhabha as Saleem Sinai
Shriya Saran as Parvati
Siddharth Narayan as Shiva
Darsheel Safary as Saleem Sinai (as a child)
Anupam Kher as Ghani
Shabana Azmi as Naseem
Neha Mahajan as Young Naseem
Seema Biswas as Mary
Charles Dance as William Methwold
Samrat Chakrabarti as Wee Willie Winkie
Rajat Kapoor as Aadam Aziz
Soha Ali Khan as Jamila
Rahul Bose as Zulfikar
Anita Majumdar as Emerald
Shahana Goswami as Amina
Chandan Roy Sanyal as Joseph D'Costa
Ronit Roy as Ahmed Sinai
Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh
Shikha Talsania as Alia
Zaib Shaikh as Nadir Khan
Sarita Choudhury as Indira Gandhi
Vinay Pathak as Hardy
Kapila Jayawardena as Governor
Ranvir Shorey as Laurel
Suresh Menon as Field Marshal
G.R Perera as Astrologer
Rajesh Khera
Salman Rushdie, narrator.
THEMES AND SYMBOLS
The Silver Spittoon
The silver spittoon given to Amina as part of her dowry by the Rani of Cooch Naheen is responsible for Saleem’s loss of memory. Even when he has amnesia, however, Saleem continues to cherish the spittoon as if he still understands its historical value. Following the destruction of his family, the silver spittoon is the only tangible remnant of Saleem’s former life, and yet it too is eventually destroyed when Saleem’s house in the ghetto is torn down. Spittoons, once used as part of a cherished game for both old and young, gradually fell out of use: the old men no longer spit their betel juice into the street as they tell stories, nor do the children dart in between the streams as they listen. The spittoon is the symbol of a vanishing era, which, in retrospect, seemed simpler and easier. And so, although Saleem may not be able to recall the specific association between the spittoon and his family, the spittoon maintains its symbolic quality as both a container of memory and source of amnesia.
Knees and nose
Saleem Sinai’s large, bulbous nose is a symbol of his power as the leader of the Midnight Children’s Conference, which is comprised of all children born on the moment of India’s independence from British rule. His nose makes his power of telepathy possible, and this is how he communicates with the other children of midnight (who all have varied powers of their own). Saleem inherits his rather large, and perpetually congested, nose from his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, who also uses his nose to sniff out trouble. Saleem’s nasal powers begin after an accident in his mother’s washing-chest, in which he sniffs a rogue pajama string up his nose, resulting in a deafening sneeze and the instant arrival of the voices in his head. Saleem’s power of telepathy remains until a sinus surgery clears out his nose “goo.” After his surgery, Saleem is unable to further commune with the other children. Ironically, after Saleem’s nasal congestion is gone, he gains the ability to smell emotions, and he spends much time categorizing all the smells he frequently encounters.
Pickle
Pickles are repeatedly mentioned in Midnight’s Children, and while they are often viewed as a phallic symbol, they are generally representative of the power of preservation within Rushdie’s novel. Saleem is the manager of a pickle factory, and he preserves pickles and chutneys each day. He also attempts to preserve his own life story like the pickles in his factory. Saleem largely manages to preserve his life through storytelling, offering a bit of immortality to a dying man, and he also labels and stores each chapter he writes in a pickle jar, so that they may be read later, by his son for example. This connection between pickles and the preservation of stories endures until the very end of the book, when Saleem ceremoniously labels his very last pickle jar as a way of closing out his story and his life as a whole.
The Perforated Sheet
In the movie we have seen two times The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz falls in love with his future wife performs several different symbolic functions throughout the novel. Unable to see his future wife as a whole, Aadam falls in love with her in pieces. As a result, their love never has a cohesive unit that holds them together. The second use we see while the performance of singing by Jamila.
THE TEXTURE OF THE NOVEL
Midnight’s Children is a faux autobiography in which personal farce and political realism fuse, only to disintegrate into contingency and absurdity. Its narrator, Saleem Sinai, combines the story of his own childhood with that of India itself, having been born at midnight on the day of India’s independence from British colonisation.
We see the good attempt by Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta. The film is not told in chronological order, but it is told in flashback. When Salim remembered something he told the audience and listener. And then come back to real life from that flashback. Whole story is told by Salim. And he described the things that he felt. This is my interpretation of the novel and film adaptation.
Well some symbols are used very closely in some movies, like Taj Mahal. But Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta haven't took very close up scene of Taj Mahal. That we can see in the movie.
EXPERIENCE
We better understand from movie instead of book. Book will take lots of time on the other hand movie will take shorter time. But if we want to read or understand whole novel we should read the book because in movie they don't show everything that written in the book. Although it's a good experience of watching movie. It's good one.
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