Magic Realism in Midnight's Children.

Midnight's Children is the story of Saleem Sinai, the narrator, whose birth parallels the emergence of independent India. By the apt use of magical realism, he narrates his life story and relates it to the national history of India. Rushdie uses the magical realist technique to talk about the postcolonial people of India, and different postcolonial issues. Instead of using realist technique, he employs this particular technique to expose and comment on different social and political problems a newly independent country like India has to encounter. Here, magic has been considered a regional alternative and a protest to the Eurocentric categorization of the world. It is used to reinterpret the colonial version of history and provide an alternative and nativized version.

International Journal of Social, Political and Economic Research

Colonialism and post-colonialism have led to the development of transnationalism that is the interconnectivity between people and the economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states. When transnational approach is applied to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), it allows researchers to analyse how transnationalism impacts on gender, class, culture and race both in host and home countries. The traditional cultural heritage of India and British imperialism’s impact on Indian society are told through dual identities of the narrator Saleem Sinai who has double parents. Saleem’s grandfather, Aadam Aziz, a Western-trained physician, scorns his wife Naseem who could not notice the difference between mercurochrome and blood stains. As a traditional Indian wife Naseem’s response to the immoral sexual desires of her husband who has adopted the Western culture is a reaction to British cultural environment in India. Saleem’s mother Amina’s cultural conflict caused by ...

Though the contemporary world is being looked at as a post-racial, post-national, and post-colonial world, there are moments from the history of the Indian subcontinent that are coming back to haunt us. Memory is no more an individual's psychic visit to the past; rather, it is from a collective memory that the nation is made out of a geographical space. In India, as in many other countries of the world, the rise of the fascist, fundamentalist, and rightist forces are creating major upheavals in the contemporary society. On the contrary, the advocates of globalization and multiculturalism are hailing the contemporary world as the best human history has witnessed yet. In such a bi-polar world, the " self " is suffering from a continuous pang of identity or the lack of it. Identities, like maps of the day, are becoming more and more elastic and lucid. How does such a perspective impact the literature of the age, especially literature that deals with a collective trauma from the past and is yet burdened with revealing the contemporary self's dilemma of belonging? Salman Rushdie, brought up with the memories of a fractured nation, deals with this search of the self in his fictional art. This paper is an attempt to look at Rushdie's fiction in general and his masterpiece Midnight's Children in particular to analyze the pangs of identity in a post-partition scenario. Towards the said purpose, this paper would make use of a postcolonial, postmodernist approach. As the all-pervading postcolonial narrator of the text, Saleem the " swallower of lives " (MNC 9) warns us that " Midnight's children can be made to represent many things, according to your point of view: " (MNC 200). The phrase " midnight's children " in the aforementioned sentence refers both to the children of midnight Salim is talking about as well as the author's conscious concern with the text itself. Drawing from the postmodern tradition of " disjunction, simultaneity, irrationalism, anti-illusionism and self-reflexiveness " (Woods 67) Rushdie concocts a heady mix of history and narrative technique to bring on the table a plethora of issues concerning the postcolonial identity of the Indian born after partition. By challenging the conservative comprehension of post-British India and simultaneously mocking at the utopian dreams of absolute freedom, the author creates an India in the text that resonates with alternative versions of history and narrative. As Saleem, confused with the intent of his presence in a particularly fragile point in the history of the nation, would ask himself in the self-reflexive pattern of a postmodern narrator:

Midnight " s Children is a turning point for Indian English novel writing. This novel brought Indian English novel a world recognition in an unprecedented way. No other novel by an Indian novelist has had such an impact as this novel. It also made Rushdie, at the very young age, into a major literary figure. His exuberant humor, brilliant wit, imaginative boldness, enormous talent and prodigious powers of storytelling became a part of the vocabulary of critical acclaim that greeted Midnight " s Children. The success of this novel led to a flood of novels by Indian English novelists and, like this novel, they too won numerous national and international awards. This novel has all the characteristics of " defamiliarization ". It conveys familiar through the unfamiliar. It defies comprehension. It has innovated daringly. Its highly imaginative quality, its unconventional word-play, the disarranged syntax and spirited metaphors, its stunning fusion of oral narrative, fiction and non-fiction, history, journalism, realism, Hindi film songs, fantasy, and the stream-of-conscious narrative style make it, certainly, not an easy book to read.

IJCRT, 2024

The Present research paper investigating Salman Rushdie's "Midnight Children" in the context of relativity of decolonization. The great distinguished relief from colonialism now-withstanding postcolonial as an effect on the divided or partition of India and further an eminent synchronise war consequences or political rivalry between the two countries. Comprehensive discourse of the process of decolonization, the formation of national identity with foregrounded historical relativity in the context of "Midnight children" as post-colonial novel. How the prominent figure/protagonist 'Saleem Sinai' stands as a metaphor for the 'Nation', his individual tremendous fictionalized experiences reflected or interconnected with broader highly influential historical events. This also contextualized partition trauma crises, religious conflict, portrayal of historical and diversified or political multi-culturalism. The role of Salman Rushdie's "Midnight children" and Homi Bhabha 'Nation and Narration' proclaimed the patriotic nationality and nation theory. II.

Borders and Beyond : Orient-Occident Crossings in Literature, 2018

The article examines the historical quality of the novel Midnight’s Children and the possible ways in which it can be interpreted today. In order to conduct this analysis, the article firstly provides introductory information about the novel. Then, the novel’s plot is summarised so as to correctly establish its most prevalent themes. Next, the novel’s connection with the twentieth-century history of India is outlined. This is done in order to indicate Rushdie’s literary intent of blending real historical events with magical realism. Finally, the article proceeds to an analysis of Midnight’s Children through the modern perspective. The analysis aims to show that contemporary re-reading of Midnight’s Children differs significantly from its initial reception due to major transformations on the political stage of India, which have taken place during the past 35 years. Consequently, certain historical inaccuracies may arise in the course of modern interpretation of the novel.

the-criterion.com

Displacement has no replacement and this is the reality of diaspora. Since the inducement of humanity, people have been straddling throughout the world without having any theoretical knowledge of boundaries. He has always been suffering from the disease of alienation without realizing the actual outcome of migration. However, in the 20 th century, the concept of coming and going was theorized and immigrants and migrants were compelled to be aware of the plight. India, once being the colony of the British Empire, has been suffering from her internal malady and misery. The plight and predicament of the native have also been miserable. Moreover, in the search of food and other necessity, they had to be dependent on their rulers and the later caught the nerve and exploited the former to the lees. The Indians had to migrate as indentured labourers for the sugarcane farming either in Caribbean countries or in South America.

Daath Voyage, 2017

In 1981, Salman Rushdie wrote Midnight's Children that allegorized the legacy of Partition and attempted to comment on its reality. The novel's protagonist, Saleem Sinai, is born on the midnight of 15th August, 1947, the time when India gained independence from British Rule. With the one thousand and one children born at the stroke of the midnight hour, all of whom are endowed with special powers, Saleem is telepathically connected. In this way, Saleem comes to signify India itself, the personal coalescing with the political. In his search for a "meaning," he constructs a past where he assumes himself responsible for the key events in the nation's history, the course of his life linked to that of India. This coincidence becomes both a blessing as well as a curse to him. But at the same time, the novel is Rushdie's critique of the idea of individual identity as entwined with nation, and diverse populations coming together under the unified banner of nationalism. Even though nationalism was important to fight against the British rule, the gradual foregrounding of the nationalist movement through religion became a weapon for the British. This led to new interpretations of historical events and ancient texts. The non-linear representation of time in the novel represents the artificiality of history. Moreover, Saleem's presentation as an unreliable narrator points to the same goal of showing nation as a construct. But Rushdie also hopes that the generation to follow will create a counter-myth of their country. This paper studies how Rushdie's novel shows his scepticism towards nationalism that he sees nothing more than a myth, and the construction of nation as an ideological tool.

JOLLS, 2025

This paper explores the intersection of identity, history, and memory in Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children. The paper explores how Rushdie created a central character that uses the complementary roles of history and memory to forge an identity that is at once personal and communal. In order to achieve this objective, the paper uses postmodern historiography as its theoretical framework to examine how Rushdie fuses the history of Indian independence with that of the central character, Saleem Sinai through the deployment of an ingenious narrative technique of parallelism. In this regard, we see how memory is used to narrate the stories of the life of Saleem in tandem with that of the emergence of an independent Indian nation. The two histories are simultaneously narrated based on fragmented recollections from memory. Consequently, it becomes difficult to separate the personal from the public, and fact from fiction in the narrative. In the end, the identity of Saleem Sinai is fused with that of the postcolonial Indian nation.

Ars Artium, 2014

The debate concerning Magic Realism's political efficacy had been ignited in the 1960s and 1970s with the Latin American prolific production of Magic Realist works. The insertion of the mode to the postcolonial literary production on this basis was confirmed especially with Stephen Slemon's essay, "Magic Realism as a Postcolonial Discourse". However, the Magic Realist approach to reality and fiction also ushered strong opposition focusing on what was perceived as the escapist nature of the trend. Realism has often been viewed as the appropriate genre to entrench literature in social and political critique by contrast to romanticism and modernism. According to this perspective, the introduction of magic within a realistic context would not only undermine realism but also would blur its ideological entailments and effectiveness. Salman Rushdie has often been charged with displaying an interest in political and social critique only to trivialize or to mask with the use of Magic Realism. The present study would endeavour to analyze Midnight's Children as a deconstruction and metamorphosis of collectively unconscious subjectivity rather than chronicalizing it as a metanarrative of factual 'ordering' of 'recorded objectivity'.

This article deals with the issue of violence in its colonial stages in South-Asia and also in its everyday postcolonial manifestations, as reflected in three novels by Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children, Shame and Shalimar the Clown. The symbolic violation of the National Body by the Imperial transgressor leads to national identity forging in the case of three territorial units once part of the British Empire: India, Pakistan and Kashmir. Violence is regarded as the basis of this quest for national identity; it is a dimension of people's existence, not something external to society and culture. Moreover, it is a cultural construct, a potential in essence that is given shape and content by specific people (victims and perpetrators, as well as witnesses) caught in conflicts that they can no longer control, within the context of their particular histories. Also, it is an " intricately layered phenomenon " , with each participant and witness bringing their own perspectives, which can vary dramatically.

Alochana , 2024

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children stands as a landmark novel in the realm of postcolonial literature, offering a complex exploration o f identity and nationhood in India during and after British colonial rule. This research paper delves into the novel's intricate narrative structure, characters, and socio-political context to analyze how Rushdie weaves a narrative reflecting postcolonial struggles in India. Through an examination of the novel's symbolism and storytelling techniques, this paper demonstrates how Midnight's Children serves as an epic tale encapsulating the diverse journey towards self-identity and nation-building in postcolonial India.

Shodh Sandarsh, 2019

The English novel began as a novel of social realism but not as a romance or historical romance. The raise of the novel in different countries was not purely a literary phenomenon. It was a social phenomenon, rather than a mere fulfilment of a social need or desire. It was associated with social, political and economic conditions of the country. Fiction is the offshoot of the impact of Western literature on the Indian mind. The novel in India was purely a foreign import. The

This paper explores the ways in which Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1980) re-visits the political history of post independence from the British Empire in 1947 including significant moments such as the Partition of Pakistan India and Indira Ghandi’s state of Emergency. What is significant in the literary text is Rushdie’s ability to fictionalise history, fantasize his depiction of historical reality and combine history with politics through the portrayal of the individual, Saleem Sinai the narrator, in relation to the larger historical context that fashions the Indian society. Midnight’s Children creates a history of India that is extremely heterogeneous and diverse, replete with stories, images and ideas- a multifarious hybrid history. By re-visiting the past of India, and re-writing one’s own history, one which allows for the infinite variety of experiences, cultures and perspectives that make up our world, Rushdie’s novel clears up a place in the historical record for those the suppressed and the silent voices of history. Keywords: History, Rewriting the past, Hybridity, India.