Hallucination and Fantasy in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children

Exploring the Magic Realism and Political Commentary in Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children

by Sandeep Kumar Pandey*,

- Published in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education, E-ISSN: 2230-7540

Volume 16, Issue No. 6, May 2019, Pages 2739 - 2743 (5)

Published by: Ignited Minds Journals


ABSTRACT

Salman Rushdie is considered one of the leading politicians of politically motivated fiction and an educated and often fearless commentator for the state of global politics today. He has written magical realistic novels with critical acclaim. The methods of magic realism, fantasy, and hallucination include his The Satanic verses (1989). Shame (1983) and Midnight Children (1981). It is a writing style that sometimes describes dreams as real and actual events as dreams. It implies the merging of the fantastic the daily transformation and the real, into the enormous and the imaginary. Magic realism combines realism and fantasy in a way which organically transmits magical elements from the depicted reality. Critics and readers see that a German art critic, Franz Roh, coined the term in the 1920's to describe a rather surrealist painting of a group of German painters. Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Márquez is considered a prominent exponent and is generally recognised as the founding father of hallucination and magical realism.

KEYWORD

hallucination, fantasy, Salman Rushdie, Midnight Children, magical realism

INTRODUCTION

In India as well as abroad, Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children (1980) won huge lobbies. Living in the British, he is understandable indifferent to western literary modes and therefore mainly writes about the Indian subcontinent's socio-political issues. The microcosmic India caught in the crust of tradition, battle and change is reflected in his fiction. Midnight Children is a novel about the independence struggle, the division of India and its consequences and post-independence days. This novel has realistically presented the holocaust of India's division. The novel reflects the events which lead to the division and beyond for about 70 years in Indian modern history. Midnight children cover three generations of the Sinai family in Srinagar Amritsar, Agra and Bombay, then moving to Karachi. The narrator of events is Saleem Sinai. Saleem Sinai is the focal character of the novel and it features the association between the general population and the private existence of Indian culture. He works day by day in the pickle plant and his meetings at night. The novel helps Saleem to draw nearly every major event in the Indian history of the twentieth century with its own collective experiences. In addition to traditional values and modernization efforts, there's a genuine picture of Indian typical divisions and dissolutions, chaos and delusion, community tensions, religious fanatism. In the best of times, Saleem Sinai is aware of all historical events and his birth is a dangerous kind of involvement in the benighted movement. A midnight child is a poetic novel that presents the most realistic photos of many Indian political events. He presents the events so vividly that the Indian subcontinent's political history seems re-designed. The novel's plot is more about the bildungs roman, an early development novel about a person. As Salman Rushdie himself was conceived at 12 pm, the story was called Midnight Children as Saleem's Saint. The novel often looks like a 'autobionological' fiction, since in the same part of Mumbai and at the same time i,e, the hero salesman and the writer rushdie were born. History and individual characters in the novel are clearly interrelated. Bangladesh's Liberation and Emergency Movement in India is a major factor behind the theme of this novel. Part III of the novel is politically more important than the early part of the book. The characters of the novel act interact with virtually every major Indian event. The story of the novel is complex and contains several stories under its topic. The characters are nor stereotypical or predictable.

Salman Rushdie

Quite possibly the main authors in the diaspora is Salman Rushdie. The Indian novel in English and the long literary relationship between India and to Pakistan. His higher education was in England. Thus he was part and parcel of three countries. So the works of him are moved by a sense of displacement. Like the Midnight Children protagonist Rushdie, Saleem Sinai travels around India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but it is not possible for him to settle in a certain place. The relocation is therefore the root of each character's problem. They are part of an eternal search, the search for a "imaginary home."

Hallutination and Fantasy in Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight Children

The technique of fantasy, hallucination and magical realism is incorporated into his Midnight's Children (1981). Magic Realism is a composing style that sometimes depicts dreams like genuine occasions and real dreams. It combines the genuine with the fantastic and the transformation into the wonderful and the incredible from normal to the ordinary. In such a way that magical elements grow organically from the reality portrayed, Magical Realism combines realism and the fantastic. Critics and readers believe that the term was coined by a German art critic, Franz Roh, to describe a rather surreal painting by a group of German artists in the 1920s. We learn in Rushdie's Children Midnight that Saleem is "bound to history" and later witnesses his head's assault with his colleagues' voices. We see that the whole novel shuttles between the real and the unreal as we go through Midnight's Children. Fantastic, strange and bizarre things happen and characters are involved in unlikely acts. Midnight's Children owes García Marquez its "magic" and Gunter Grass its "realism" One very important thing about magic realism in general is what people think the reality and truth may not be happening. And sometimes even unbelievable events can be true if people start believing in them. There are a few cases with Midnight's Children where Saleem reveals to Padma that although he's unusual, they should nevertheless rely on him. Rushdie once said that the arrival of a train is greeted with utter unbelief in Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, while the ascension of a character The Beauty to Heaven is not called Remedios. Rushdie named the "town" worldview now, a few characters who share Rushdie's epic with this worldview can be found. The reference to Padma's response to the ability of the Reverend Mother to enter the mind of her daughter in Midnight's Children cannot be missed, because Padma believe this without flashing. According to Mary, what is true involves fortune tellers prophesying the birth of a two-headed son, sadhus waiting for the Blessed One to arrive, little girls speaking in the talking of cats and birds in drawing up the country's first Five Year Plan, or when a young woman The superstitions of the analphabet with an intentional mainstream childhood could be rejected as the prediction of a Ramram Seth with a cobrawallah, a monkey, and a bone setter encompasses. Instead of wavering, one finds a belief that is supernatural, places and lines of sexual orientations. As Saleem puts it, even "educated individual in this India of our own" isn't "insusceptible from the sort of data I am currently disclosing" Saleem may be a sceptic, but this does not make him immune to the uncanny mysteries of the wonderful. The difference resides in that Saleem may need to justify his position through philosophical arguments if a Padma or Mary can swallow wonderful events without the slightest reluctance. Midnight's Children is considered to be a fairy tale full of grotesque elements, a fairy tale with a difference because of its attempts to take readers to the political and social world's unapproachable realism of the circumstances. In it, we find different instances of fanciful prophecies of events that will take place in the near future. In fact, the whole novel is a mixture of fantasy and reality. His dreams have been turned into reality by Rushdie, mystery into magic, truth into fantasy and fantasy into prophecy. Saleem, the main character, is able to enter into other people's minds supernaturally. He represents an intellectual, imaginative Indian who is able to think, feel and interact with others. His mind is a parliament of different perspectives. Fantastic ironies and ironic fantasies fill the novel. Saleem begins to realise at the age of ten that he has the capacity for telepathy. In his head, he is able to communicate with other children born that same night. He finds out that there is some supernatural ability for all the midnight children. They can blind others with their superhuman beauty. And yet others know the secrets of alchemy, and they know it. You can travel in time, perform magic and transform yourself. These miracles are described quite naturally, without any surprise or doubt. In the basket, the voices of midnight children in Saleem's head or the Parvati's spirit in a basket from Pakistan in the India are obviously magical, as Saleem travels from Bangladesh to Bombay. Magic realism is closely linked with the mythology and religion of a nation. Most of the miracles, ghosts and metamorphoses come from tradition and mythology. There's an image of mirrors in Shame. The division between two worlds is generally represented by Magic Realist novelists. "The magical pragmatist vision exists at the convergence of two universes, at a fanciful point inside a twofold sided reflect that

multiple times. Looking into the mirror was symbolised mostly by looking into both one's past and the world of the other. Bilquis set her lips in a tight and bloodless smile when she heard this, and her eyes stared ferociously through the mirror on the wall that divided her on the empires of her past."When she heard this, Bilquis set her lips in a tight and bloodless smile, and her eyes stared ferociously through the mirror on the wall which divided her on the empires of her past." There is also an angel-devil relationship and an angel metamorphosis. In the novel, Omar's brother, who lives in the mountains with the guerrillas, becomes an angel before he dies. Summary of Midnight Children: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie is a 1981 magical realism novel revolving around the independence of India. The novel is semi-autobiographical, although Rushdie's main character and stand-in have magical powers. Midnight's children were fundamentally recognized and won numerous abstract honours, including the Booker Prize and the 25th Booker of Bookers Special Prize commemoration, which commemorated the award. Saleem Sinai, the protagonist, was born on August 15, 1947, at the exact moment that India gained independence from Britain. Saleem feels as though he is kicking the bucket after thirty years, so he chooses to tell his darling, Padma, the story of his life. The tale of his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, who lived in Kashmir, India, begins with Saleem. In Saleem's tale, Aadam is a specialist who really focuses on a lady named Naseem, who becomes Saleem's grandma. When she is treated by Aadam, property dictates that she must remain behind a sheet. Naseem's father, who wanted Aadam to fall in love with his daughter, also used the sheet as a trick. It works and he finally gets to see her face when she has a headache. Naseem and Aadam getting marital. They are moving to Amritsar, where Aadam is witnessing the independence of India from British rule. These protests are violently suppressed and end with the massacre of the protesters. Aadam turns into a supporter of an extremist named Mian Abdullah after having three little girls and two kids. Because of his beliefs, Abdullah is killed and Aadam agrees to get his right hand, Nadir Khan. Naseem describes Nadir as cowardly and protests against his stay at their house. Ultimately, Nadir Khan and Aadam's daughter Mumtaz fall in love. They marry, but they fail to consummate their marriage, even after two years. Nadir Khan is discovered to be hiding by Aadam and Ahmed Sinai, a trader. Mumtaz decides to change her name to Amina and she moves to the big city of Delhi with her husbandAmina gets pregnant before long and visits a psychic to find out about her future child. The prophecy concerning her child states that he is never going to be older or younger than his nation. Due to some complications with Ahmed's factory being burnt down by terrorists, he decides to move them to Bombay. Unbeknownst to Willie, Vanita took part in an extramarital entanglement with Methwold and is the father of her youngest. Despite the fact that Vanita does not endure labour, Vanita and Mumtaz both begin giving birth and have their young people at 12 pm. The midwife, who recently had an affair with a socialist, decides to change the babies to allow the poor child to live a privileged life and vice versa. Saleem is not truly Mumtaz and Ahmed's biological child, but Vanita and Methwold's. Out of guilt, the midwife becomes Saleem's nanny. The birth of Saleem is widely covered by the press, as it coincided with Indian independence. With a cucumber-shaped nose and blue eyes, Saleem is strange looking. Saleem is punished one day for hiding in the bathroom, where he witnesses his mother accidentally using the toilet. She forces him to be silent for a day, and he notices that he can hear others' thoughts. Ultimately, he realises that the thoughts of those children born at the same hour as him can also be heard. He also discovers that all of them have powers; the strongest ones are born closest to midnight. Shiva, the baby he was switched to at birth, is physically strong and capable of fighting. Saleem is rushed to the hospital and loses a portion of his finger. When the doctors get his blood type, it is revealed that Saleem is not the biological son of Ahmed and Mumtaz. Saleem's nanny admits that the two boys had switched at birth. Ahmed, now an alcoholic, becomes violent upon hearing the news, prompting Amina to take Saleem and her sister to Pakistan's newly created nation to live with her sister. He has an enlarged sense of smell, however, and can detect the feelings of people. The family moves back to Pakistan after India loses to China. His whole family was killed there, except for his sister Jamila, during a war between India and Pakistan. After he is hit in the head, Saleem loses his memory. He ends up in the army, even though he doesn't know exactly how he ended up there. Saleem has witnessed many war crimes and barbarism, and he flees to the jungle of Bangladesh. Saleem recovers a portion of his memory there, but does not regain his name until Parvati wants Saleem, which he refuses to do, to marry her. At that point she'll engage in extramarital relations with Shiva, presently an acclaimed war saint. Shiva and Parvati have relationship problems, and Parvati returns, pregnant and unmarried, to the ghetto of the magicians. Saleem agrees to get her married. Indira Gandhi, who is India's prime minister, has begun sterilisation camps to reduce the population of India. She destroys the ghetto of the magicians as well. After childbirth, Parvati dies, and Shiva captures Saleem to bring him to a sterilisation camp. All the children of Midnight are sterilised there to protect the prime minister from their powers. Her first election was not won by Gandhi. Each of the children of Midnight is freed, and Saleem goes out to discover Aadam, Parvatiti's child. He finds him in the ghetto with the snake charmer they knew, and the three of them travel to Bombay. Saleem eats a little chutney there that reminds him of his nanny. He tracks down the chutney factory owned by his former nanny, and he meets Padma there. He chooses to marry her, but he is certain that he will kick the bucket and detonate into dust on his thirty-first birthday celebration, the commemoration of India's freedom.

CONCLUSION

Saleem makes one last attempt to continue thin hope in Midnight's Children that might preserve some possibilities for his nation's future. Early in his life, he confesses that his greatest fear is absurdity, and so he tries tremendously to make some sense of it. For him, the only way out of absurdity is to tell his own story, which is also his nation's story, and, above all, his own version of history. It is this very act of narration and the narrator's outstanding point of view that indicates the possibility and alternative presence. The text itself demonstrates that not all has been lost in the damage done to the nation by history. To conclude, it becomes clear by analysing the main characters of Midnight's Children that they have a strong sense of nation, which I have shown in this article. As far as my judgement on the text I have analysed is concerned, through various major characters in the text, Rushdie is successful in presenting the notion of country. I recommend two deserving theoretical fields for further research, such as 'the notion of globalism' and 'the notion of cosmopolitanism' in Midnight's Children.

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Corresponding Author Sandeep Kumar Pandey*

Research Scholar, Pandit Shambhu Nath Shukla University, Madhya Pradesh