Critical Writing on Salman Rushdie's Midnight’s Children

The novel midnights children is written by Salman Rushdie who is enormously famous for writing Satanic verses which is mostly condemned by Muslims all over the world as Muslims regard it as a falsification and critique of their religion Islam and it’s Prophet.

Midnights children is one of the most well-known yet narrative stories that is contented by people all over the world. 

It is a novel based on from British colonialism to partition of India and is a great example of magical realism and postcolonial literature. It revolves around a character called Saleem Sinai who is also the narrator of this story. He tries to picture his childhood and all the little incidents that took place earlier in his life which moulds his identity and gives this story a brighter look.

Saleem Sinai was born in Bombay, at the stroke of midnight on 15th August, 1947.Along with him are the other one thousand children all born in the early hours of India’s independence. Saleem Sinai starts off with his family background introducing his grandfather Adam Aziz who is a doctor. Saleem Sinai describes of how in Kashmir in the early spring of 1915 his grandfather Adam Aziz hits his nose while attempting to pray and decides never to bow in front of God or any other person. Moving forward, Saleem describes of how his grandfather Adam Aziz checks a patient named Naseem (future wife of Adam Aziz) who complains of having headache and is covered with white sheet. Once the sheet is uncovered Adam Aziz gets a chance to see Naseem’s face at which point he falls in love with her.

Furthermore, Padma is an important character because she keeps on reminding Saleem to hurry up and finish the story. She is basically a voice of reason, loves Saleem and takes care of Saleem and cooks food for him. Later on in the story, it talks about Adam Aziz’s daughters, Mumtaz who falls in love with Nadir and Emerald who falls in love with Major Zulfiqar. Nadir leaves out a note for Mumtaz announcing a divorce. After a short time period, Mumtaz gets married to Ahmed Sinai and changes her name to Amina Sinai.

Apart from this, a major milestone occurs that is Saleem Sinai was switched at birth with Ahmed and Amina Sinai’s baby. In reality Saleem is Methwold’s son who is an Englishman and came to India for trade.Therefore, the above mentioned are some of the main characters introduced in the story that evolves around Saleem Sinai’s life.

However, in my opinion Rushdie has written this novel in a very descriptive manner making it not only difficult but hard to keep track of so many characters. A variety of characters emerge, disappear, and recur later on, so one constantly needs to go back and check who is who and how they are related. The sentence structure is extremely long which makes it detached with other paragraphs. The overall plot of the story is perplexed. Whereas, the writing style is narrative and wordings are easy to understand but the stretch of long sentences makes it difficult for a person to concentrate. In this story, there are a lot of irrelevant instances which crafts it to be longer and thus, becomes boring.

Rushdie has used unreliable and enormous information in his novel which relies on memory and undermines the traditional forms of history as a unity of recorded fact. I believe, our truth of understanding differs from others and how memory is shaped and recreated is a symbol of Saleem Sinai’s flawed narration and historical exposition which cannot be phrased as pure reality and authenticity at all times.

Moreover, the story is quite fascinating but too stretched that a person can lose focus and can get puzzled with so much of unnecessary detail. However, the writing style is solid and initially annoying in a way that seems almost purposeful, with repeated instances of the narrator trailing ahead to a point that he feels is significant but then, before revealing anything of importance, he decides that things must come in their proper order. In short there is a lot of disorganization between instances which makes it mystifying. I think this story is quite happening as there’s too much of dramatic events and at the same time too much of action.

Honestly, while reading this story I actually felt that it is a history book as it doesn’t seem relevant that whenever something big happens in history at the same moment something occurs in Saleem’s personal life. I feel Rushdie's writing is a broad, viscous disharmony of sensory inspiration. The overall surroundings, different languages, different religions and style of living of India’s culture came alive through Saleem’s style of narrating the story.

Therefore, to conclude, I believe midnights children is a book which is well researched and a good example of magical realism. I feel Salman Rushdie has written this story in a very intense and expressive way which makes you curious to know of what will happen in the next chapter. In each chapter there is some what a major turning in the story which makes it an interesting read. Not only this, but I think it’s a good example of post colonialism literature and about changes which occurred in the Indian subcontinent during or after the partition of Indian sub continent.