Alas for poor pickle-nosed Saleem, disintegrating in a Bombay pickle factory, foretelling that—like Scheherazade—his life will end when (if not before!) he finishes his tale of 1001 ‘Midnight’s Children’.
If you ever have a chance to hear Salman Rushdie speak in person, I recommend it. He has more of the world in his head than most. He’s bitterly funny and furious, a man perennially condemned to death for his writing. He speaks with all the wit and eloquence of
Perhaps that’s the least we should expect from a best-selling author dubbed a Knight & an Apostate both.
I met Rushie once, if fleetingly. We were introduced one evening in
Fair enough. The “promising young” are a dubious lot.
He did share a magnificent anecdote, however, about the extremes of defending freedom of speech, which is roughly represented here, under International Guerillas.
The title, Midnight’s Children, is taken from a speech by then-prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, delivered at
This story comes at you through a fire hose—and not always one that feels under control. From its stuttering start to its full-bore finish Midnight’s Children is a tour-de-force, thematically & literally a giant work. There’s a different lens for every fan.
Rushdie is not an author you ask for lean precision; he’s a writer one turns to for the Truth.
Suffice to say it’s far more than any set of twenty questions can cover, so let’s just jump in for fun.
Discussion Questions & Suggestions
"There are so many stories to tell...so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane! I have been a swallower of lives; and to know me, just the one of me, you'll have to swallow the lot as well."
Personal Passages
• Last month, I suggested reading Midnight’s Children with an eye for short passages—a single image, exchange or event—on which to do a close reading & then bring as a personal contribution to your meeting.
• If you chose to do that, you might begin by sharing those.
• What were some of your favorite images?
The Storyteller’s Truth
When & with what image would YOU begin your own life story? Why would you start there?
• The ‘beginning’. Saleem begins the story of his life with his birth: the stroke of
• The Frame Story, ie: the narrator’s present-day story that frames the rest, a la Arabian Nights, where Scheherazade telling stories to save her life is the Frame for her 1001 tales.
(Most wonderfully, this device (a frame story) is also called: Rahmenerzahlung. Though take it from me, who's tipsily apt to pop off with words like Operculum & Rahmenerzahlung to pretty things at parties: it's really better not to use this word in public).
• Get yourselves on the same page with the frame story, in which the dying 31-year-old contrives to tell us his life story, literally & allegorically, before crumbling to dust.
What is this about? How does returning now & then to the Frame Story function as a valve for the histories this “swallower of lives” tells us?
• MC. Can you agree on a basic version of the story it contains?
• 1001. Saleem tells us
• Methwold’s Estate. Of what significance is Saleem’s growing up on the Methwold estate & the manner in which it, and everything inside it, is bequeathed to them?
• The Center of Everything. Saleem is a highly self-conscious autobiographer, often self-centered, needy, even narcissistic. He’s convinced (rightly?) that he is at the center of Indian nationhood, “handcuffed to history”, intent that his life means something. What do you make of the narrator’s attitude?
• Padma. How does Padma’s character, the narrator’s irreverent, illiterate care-taker & lover, guardian of ayah Mary’s chutney factory, balance Saleem’s narration?
• An Unreliable Narrator. Saleem gets some facts wrong & even tells some outright lies. He withholds critical information. When he gives the wrong date for Mahatma Ghandi’s death, for example, he admits: "But I cannot say, now, what the actual sequence of events might have been; in my
• How did you take to Saleem’s unreliable narration? Why do you think Rushdie made him that way?
• Are his ‘Remembered Truths’ more or less truthful or authentic than the Pakistani government’s Truths? What are the differences there?
• Rushdie has a very short essay here called: 'Errata': or, Unreliable Narration in Midnight's Children, which is worth glancing at if you’re going to talk about Saleem as an unreliable narrator.
• Not His Whole Story. He is ‘remaking’ his life, after all. For all his emphasis on biology & destiny, for all that Saleem appears to have ‘inherited’, this family history is not his biological own. Why does Saleem wait so long to tell us he was switched at birth? Or to say who his real parents were?
• How does his biological parentage change his relationship to his family history? To
• The Switcheroo. What is the effect & significance of switching these particular characters, Shiva & Saleem?
"Occult Tyrannies"
Several of our season’s books have made it clear that we are constantly surrounded by portent signs and omens merely waiting for our awareness & interpretation. Consider sharing (& interpreting) a distinctly Rushdian sign or omen from your own life.
• Talk about the role of Fate & Foreknowledge in the novel.
We know from the first pages that Destiny looms large here.
For example: Frozen ‘rubies’ of blood & ‘diamonds’ of tears fall from Aadam Aziz’s nose. A page later, after his father has suffered a stroke, his mother starts a gem business, selling rubies & diamonds. Later, Aziz sees his future wife’s face for the first time on the same day World War I ends, in 1918. There’s a self-conscious concern for fateful signs here, even if that only emerges in the telling.
• How do these signs work as forces in the story? In characters’ lives?
• Similarly: Pre-cognizance. That he would lose a finger. That the war would save Shiva. That Musa would bring destruction. On & on. Some of it is Saleem's exaggeration, an authorial license, but some of it is authentic. What is the reality, role & effect of such prescience?
( it is, of course, somewhat easier to seem 'omniscient' when you're narrating history.) • Handcuffed to History. Saleem claims he’s responsible for a great many things, from his father’s alcoholism to various affairs of state. Why does he believe that so much of what goes wrong is his fault? What does he mean by claiming fault? Is he responsible?
• One thing about Rushdie, he likes to interpret his own symbols for us sometimes, perhaps before anyone else can get them wrong. Were there any explicit authorial interpretations that you particularly appreciated?
• Why does Rushdie destroy Saleem's entire family with disease, war, and natural disaster?
Fragmentation
“Please believe that I am falling apart. I am not speaking metaphorically”
What would be the most allegorically appropriate way for you to depart the world?
Aziz falls in love with his wife by seeing her piece by piece through a sheet.
Saleem is inexorably falling apart, literally being ground to hundreds of millions of pieces.
• Other examples of fragmentation? What is this theme about?
• What do you make of Saleem’s fate—crumbling to dust, the hundreds of millions of pieces? What does that represent?
Biology & Destiny: the Super-Natural
Assuming you were born at the stroke of
• War-knees. A nose the size of the Indian subcontinent & birthmarks on either side. Talk about the Supernatural powers accorded to various MC, depending on how close they were born to
• Shifting Powers. What do you make of it when Saleem loses his telepathy with the surgery, then gains a sense of smell that detects emotions?
• Amnesia. Why does he lose (& then regain) his memory?
• Why is (Muslim) Saleem known as "buddha" during his time as an amnesiac soldier in the Indian-Pakistani conflict?
• Inheritance. Saleem has ‘inherited’ the huge nose & blue eyes of his grandfather, yet later reveals he was switched at birth. What does this say about biology & destiny? How does this personal twist in telling a life story parallel the turmoil of post-colonial
Proboscissimus! The Nasal Motif
Please point out for the group one of your own specific physical traits (for example, your birthmark the shape of the highly gerrymandered 64th district of
• The Noses! (& their vegetable counterparts: cucumbers (& their phallic associates)) play surprisingly significant roles in this book. List out some of the examples. What’s going on with this choice?
Strangers in Their Own Land:
• Consider our theme. At once heralded as the very embodiment of sovereignty & nationhood,
• What does this hunt reject? What does this choice mean?
• How does this relate to the Indo-Pakistani war, justified on religious grounds, cleansing a nation, purified for the good of the country?
• Why sterilize & release rather than, say, murder them all?
[Here it may be important to note two things:
1. “The Widow”,
2. Related sections of the original version of Midnight’s Children resulted in a libel suit with Gandhi, forcing Rushdie to make revisions.]
Religion, Morality, Authority:
• The hole. When Aadam Aziz bows in prayer, he cracks his great nose on the ground, & in doing so loses his faith in God. “A hole” opens up inside him. Discuss the significance & consequence of this. Is this related to the hole in “the perforated sheet”?
• Discuss the shifting Bases of Authority. Throughout the book we find people finding & losing faith, shifting bases for religious conviction, exploring the use & abuse of religion by the state (ie: when Ahmed’s assests are frozen, presumably because he is a Muslim) & the role it plays in daily fear (our characters terrified that Mahatma Gandhi’s murderer might turn out to be a Muslim, relieved when he proves to have been Hindu).
• Snakes & Ladders: is presented early as a childish, hopeful binary of Good & Evil. Later Saleem is saved by snake poison, giving him “an early awareness of the ambiguity of snakes.” How does the book deal with morality, good & evil? IS there any Good or Evil?
• Scriptural Authority. What is Saleem’s relationship to Islam?
• Muhammad. "(on whose name be peace, let me add; I don't want to offend anyone)" Do you think he (Saleem / Rushdie) does? Where & why?
• Taking on a great mantle indeed, Saleem claims to have heard "a headful of gabbling tongues" after which he "struggled, alone, to understand what had happened," and later "saw the shawl of genius fluttering down, like an embroidered butterfly, the mantle of greatness settling upon [his] shoulders" What’s happening here?
Characters:
• FYI: Salman Rushdie’s birth name is “Ahmed Salman Rushdie”
(Sir Ahmed to us.)
• Shiva & Saleem. Talk about this pairing, their switch, their powers, their relationship, their rivalry. Think about them not only as personalities, but economically, temperamentally, religiously, in terms of powers, motives & relationship to government / Partition.
• This book has a very full cast of powerful female characters. Do you find any trends to discuss along those lines per se?
• Are the women Saleem loves & woos critical to his story? Compare with Shiva's 'loves'.
• “The Widow” (Indira Gandhi) vs. the Dung-Lotus Goddess (Padma). How do these two women act as different motivating forces in Saleem’s present life (frame story).
• Parvati-the-witch. His friend & wife, who later has an affair & child with Shiva. (In the Hindu religion, Parvati is the consort of Shiva, god of Destruction.) Why do you think Parvati is attracted to Saleem?
• Whatsitsname! Grandmother Naseem Aziz, the Reverend Mother.
• Aadam Aziz.• Mian Abdullah, instigator of the "optimism epidemic". IS Aziz's optimism a plague?
• Tai, the ancient boatman.
• The Brass Monkey, Jamila Singer, Saleem’s sister, the Voice of Pakistan
Fatal Biographies
• A narrator aware that he will die when his story is complete may be tempted to go on longer than he should. Padma certainly agrees that he’s said more than enough. Do you? To the extent that you think the book is too long, what would you have cut & by how much?
