67 pages • 2 hours read
Salman RushdieA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
As Saleem states in the opening passages of Midnight’s Children, his story is “handcuffed to history” (15). His family’s story is tied into the birth of India as a modern independent state, to the point where Saleem’s own birth is timed perfectly with the exact moment of Indian independence. For Saleem, history is not a large, unknowable abstract idea. Instead, history is an intensely personal concept tied to moments from his life and his family’s life. Marriages are timed to end with wars, births are timed with independence, and Saleem recalls these important events in the lives of the individuals by tying them to events from global, national, and regional history. In this fashion, Saleem heightens the importance of the people. People are not just powerless pawns who are subject to the ineffable passage of time. Instead, people are in constant dialogue with the events of the world around them. Saleem’s birth and his country’s birth are both important events, and, as he grows up, he shapes the history of his country just as his country’s history shapes him.
Saleem is not unique. As well as being a member of the Midnight’s Children and a rich family, other characters in the novel show they are equally in conversation with the history of India. Indeed, Saleem is not even biologically related to his rich parents. In truth, he is the nonmarital son of a penniless beggar family who is switched in his crib with another baby. Mary Pereira’s decision to switch the name tags on the babies may seem like a flash of chaos, but this is not the case. Mary, like every other character, is an individual who exists in relation to history. To Mary, switching the name tags on the baby’s cribs is a radical act and a tribute to her lover Joseph D’Costa. Joseph’s revolutionary ideals are shaped by the colonial history of India. Mary’s moment of action is the product of a long and complicated series of events that include historical incidents and individual relationships. The revolutionary ideas of history and Mary’s individual love for Joseph influence her decision; she cannot have one without the other. As such, something as seemingly chaotic as an impulsive decision to switch two name tags illustrates the complicated relationship between history and the individual. As well as Mary being influenced by both factors, her action further shows how Saleem as an individual is sculpted by her decision and how he affects the course of history. Every scene, action, and event in Midnight’s Children portrays the complex interplay between individuals and history.
At the end of the novel, Saleem finds himself caught in the brutality of the civil war between East Pakistan and West Pakistan (later Bangladesh). In this moment, Saleem has no memories. His status as a person is reduced, as he becomes a soldier with a special skill. Saleem is almost inhuman in this section of the novel and more like a tracking animal than a man. At the same time, he witnesses brutality and violence beyond his comprehension. He finds himself unable to stop the violence, so he disappears into the jungle. When robbed of his status as a person, Saleem loses his connection to history. The tight bond between history and people is severed and historical events become more terrible and Saleem becomes powerless to stop them. Only when he recovers his identity and his status as an individual does the war end. Saleem’s account of the war ratifies the relationship between history and people by portraying the absence of such a bond.
Saleem’s story is tied to the story of India’s independence from the British Empire, which had ruled India in official and unofficial capacities for almost two centuries. The legacy of British imperial rule can be found throughout the novel. Idioms, phrases, and patterns of speech borrow from the English language while street names are taken from other parts of the Empire. The institutions of the independent India, including its military and its laws, are modeled after their British equivalents, retaining many of the colonial prejudices as a legacy of rule. Midnight’s Children is the story of Indian independence, as defined in opposition to the colonial rule by the British that is almost impossible to completely remove.
Just as William Methwold leaves his Bombay estate at the moment of India’s independence, the British are leaving the country as well. As Methwold leaves a divided and fractured community behind on his estate, British efforts to partition India into India and Pakistan along religious lines result in terrible consequences. Methwold is an Englishman and a colonizer. Even as he is leaving India, he imposes his demands on people to whom he is selling his properties. He insists that they keep his possessions and his house’s contents in the exact same way right up until an agreed upon moment while also introducing the people to a number of rituals and ceremonies that endure long after his departure. The afternoon cocktail is one such ritual, one which Methwold insists on observing and which Ahmed continues after Methwold’s departure. When Ahmed develops alcoholism later in the novel, his penchant for alcohol can be traced back to the ritual imposed on him by the departing colonial presence. Methwold’s behavior is an allegory for colonialism as a whole. He owns and operates an estate in a country that is not his own, leaving Indians, such as Wee Willie Winkie, to beg him for scraps. He demands that others bow to his cultural and aesthetic demands, all while taking their money. He leaves behind a damaging legacy but dismisses all his behavior as mere games that must be entertained by the people who now own his homes. Even after Methwold’s departure, his rituals and behaviors linger in the family and around the estate. His colonial presence is impossible to entirely eradicate, forcing the Indian locals to knock down the houses and build something of their own instead.
The version of India portrayed in Midnight’s Children is a product of colonialism. Even before independence, the mixture of Western and Eastern influences on the characters is evident. Aadam Aziz studies medicine in Germany and then returns to Kashmir to help people. However, people like Tai are uncomfortable with the perceived Western influence on the Kashmiri man. Aadam exists on the colonial boundary between East and West, never quite at home in either. He is too Western for Kashmir and too Eastern for Germany, where his religious practices bemuse his fellow students. Saleem is a similar mixture of influences. He is not the biological son of Amina and Ahmed. Instead, he is the son of William Methwold and Vanita, the wife of a beggar. Saleem is a biological mixture of the same influences that defined his grandfather. Like the country with whom he shares a date of birth, Saleem is the product of colonialism. He is the residual biological legacy of the departing colonialist Methwold and the woman whose country Methwold’s people impoverished. India struggles to come to terms with the complicated nature of its colonial past, just as Saleem struggles to form his identity in the wake of the revelation about his ancestry. The struggle to escape colonialism and to define an identity concerns India and Saleem in equal measure.
Duality is a constant theme in Midnight’s Children. As Saleem presents the story, he notes these instances of duality. Frequent oppositional pairings are found in colors (such as black and white), light and dark, and even Saleem himself, who is part of a dual relationship with Shiva. Born alongside each other and switched at birth, Shiva and Saleem are similar and estranged in many respects. They may have been born in the same hospital at the same time, but they were raised in very different circumstances. Saleem was raised by a rich family while Shiva’s family were broke.
The duality of Saleem and Shiva’s relationship is a battle of ideologies. Saleem and Shiva represent creative and destructive forces, respectively. Following the strange circumstances of their births, they are raised in very different circumstances. Saleem becomes more empathetic and wants to create a bond between the Midnight’s Children, hoping the group can heal India’s problems. Shiva becomes more nihilistic, seeking to destroy everything in his path because he does not feel connected to the society that marginalized and alienated him. In a narrative sense, Saleem is even more creative.
There is an irony in their roles as creative and destructive forces, however. Saleem is impotent and cannot father a child. Conversely, Shiva is the father of many children who he immediately disowns, including the time when he impregnates Parvati and leaves Saleem to marry her and raise the boy as his own. Saleem cannot create new life, even though he is the creative force. Shiva can create life, but, in doing so, he can only destroy other people’s happiness. Parvati dies, and the lives of Shiva’s many mistresses are ruined. Even at his most creative, Shiva is a destructive force.
As the narrator of the novel, Saleem creates the world for the audience. Shiva is the antagonist who bulldozes Saleem’s ambitions just as he bulldozes the enclave of magicians in Bombay. Shiva runs his tank through Saleem’s creative ambitions at every opportunity, to the point where his destructive tendencies can be construed as a petty revenge against the random circumstances of their births. The duality of the lives of Saleem and Shiva creates an unbreakable cycle of creation and destruction. While many people die, the ideological battle between Saleem and Shiva rages on. Neither party ever truly wins; the cycle of creation and destruction, much like in the Hindu religion, endures above all else. Creation and destruction become a necessary duality. Destruction breeds creation, which in turn leads to destruction and then again to creation. Saleem and Shiva represent this cycle, their duality of creation and destruction becoming as entangled and as complicated as their relation to the country they are trying to create and destroy in equal measure.
By Salman Rushdie
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