Midnight's Children Summary

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Recommended: Impacts on cultural identity

“To study the nation through its narrative address does not merely draw attention to its language and rhetoric; it also attempts to alter the conceptual object itself. If the problematic ‘closure’ of texuality questions the ‘totalization’ of national culture, the its positive value lines in displaying the wide dissemination through which all construct the field of meanings and symbols associated with national life” (Homi Bhabha,1990). National identity is essentiality defined by its heterogeneity from what is perceived as other, outside the national boundaries Heteroglossia the different discourses and tongues contained within the normative framework of the novelistic language - is shown to be emblematic of civilization system of social, religious, …show more content…

The narrator protagonist Saleem-Sinai is the embodiment of a nation. Saleem Sinai is one of the “Midnight’s Children” born between 12 midnight and I A.M. in the night of August 14-15, 1947, the time when India coming into existence. The birth of Saleem Sinai at midnight signified the birth of modern India. The Novel contains three births, three national formations – India’s, Pakistan’s and then in 1971, Bangladesh- kept in the reader’s sights by Salman’s movement from India to Pakistan to Bangladesh and then back to India. At the same time, the novel contains a perfectly surreal break-down of borders and divisions, and its chaotic, frenzied pace offers a dramatic and sassy comeback to the staid contours of nation. Both Midnights Children and The Shadow Lines have been weighted by the responsibility of narrating the idea of nation. But unlike Salman Rushdie, …show more content…

I would not have completed this paper if it were not for his expert guidance, patients and keen interest in my paper. I am deeply thankful to the editors and reviewers of this journal for their kind review of this paper.

Works Cited

1. Ahmad, Aizaz.. 1992. In Theory: Classes, Nations and Literatures. Bombay: Oxford UP, 95–122.
2. Aloysius, G. 1998. Nationalism Without a Nation in India. Delhi: Oxford UP.
3. Bhabha, Homi. 1993. (Ed) Nation and Narration Routledge. 1990. Print.
4. Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton NJ: Princeton UP.
5. Gosh, Amitav. 1988. The Shadow Lines. Ravi Dayal Publisher, India.
6. Hawley,JohnC. 2005. Amitav Ghosh: An Introduction. Foundation Books, New Delhi.
7. Hazarika, Sanjoy. 2000. Rites of Passage: Border Crossings, Imagined Homelands, India’s East and Bangladesh. New Delhi: Penguin,
8. Kaul, Suvir. “Separation Anxiety: Growing Up Inter/National in The Shadow Lines.” In Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. 1988. CULT Educational ed. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998. 268–286.
9. Rushdie,Salman. 1995. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage.
10. ———. 1991. Imaginary Homelands: Essays in Criticism 1981–1991. London:

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