Midnight children

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mitternachtskinder is the German title of the 1983 German translation of the novel by Salman Rushdie , which originally appeared in 1981 under the title Midnight's Children and for which the author received the Booker Prize . The translation into German was done by Karin Graf .

In 2012 the book was filmed in a Canadian-British co-production under the same title .

Brief summary

Mitternachtskinder describes the history of Saleem Sinai on 640 pages . He was born exactly at midnight on August 15, 1947, the day of India's independence . His life story is closely interwoven with that of India.

In retrospect, he describes the story of his ancestors who have taken part in the important events in political India since the beginning of the 20th century , even if mostly only as spectators. This is how the carnage in Amritsar in 1919 is described, the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi , and again and again the conflict between Pakistan and India .

Saleem himself gets involved in all major conflicts, moves with his family from India to Pakistan and back, is traumatized in the Indira -Pakistani war and suffers in particular from the regime of Indira Gandhi . Its story ends in the present, shortly before the book was published in 1981.

Magical realism

What makes the novel so special is the skillful combination of myth and reality. Saleem's India is steeped in myths and mysteries; magic is more than just superstition. The actual historical events are embedded in a framework of magic and unusual powers.

“Truth and reality are not necessarily the same. Truth has been something to me since my earliest childhood that was hidden in the stories Pereira told me: Mary; my ayah. who was more and less than a mother at the same time; Mary; who knew everything about us. Truth was something hidden just beyond the horizon pointed to by the fisherman's finger in the picture on my wall as the boy Raleigh listened to his tales. While I am now writing this in the beam of light from my swivel lamp, I am measuring the truth against these early things: Would Marie have told them like that, I ask? Would the fisherman have said that? [...] And by these standards it is incontestably true that one day in January 1947, six months before I showed up, my mother found out everything about me while my father was clashing with a demon king. "

- pp. 104-105

The “midnight children” are a phenomenon somewhere between reality and magic. With the onset of puberty, Saleem finds out that all children born on the night of Indian independence have special powers. As someone born exactly at midnight, he has the most outstanding: He can read and convey the thoughts of others. In this way it is possible for him to track down the midnight children scattered all over India and Pakistan with their special tasks and to offer them a forum in his head, which functions as a medium.

But as it turns out, even these special people are not able to overcome old prejudices such as those that exist between Muslims and Hindus , for example .

subjects

Coupling biography / history

The fate of the characters in the novel is inextricably linked with historical events. The hour of birth of the narrator Saleem Sinai, the midnight hour of August 15, 1947, is at the same time the founding time of India, the development of which makes the life of the narrator understandable.

"[...] my fate was inextricably linked to that of my country."

- p. 9

But other events in the Saleems family also point to historical parallels. In 1918, at the end of the First World War , the grandfather sees the face of his grandmother for the first time (see 34), great-grandfather and great-grandmother die (35).

The mother publicly announces her pregnancy in order to save a Hindu from a Muslim tempogrom. “From the moment of my conception, it seems, I have been public property.” (102) The wait for Saleem's birth becomes a countdown. The period from June 4, 1947 until India's independence is narrative coupled with the waiting for the midnight children through the government's price for the first birth. (121 ff., 132) Even during labor, M.  A. Jinnah found Pakistan. (149)

Methwold's handover of the house to the family represents the English conditions for the handover of power to India. (128)

exile

The grandfather Saalem Sinais had studied medicine in Germany and stubbornly refused to adapt there. Only after he has returned home does he feel the effects of exile: His "widely traveled eyes" (11) turn the "beauty" of his homeland into "limitation" (11). He feels rejected in "hostile surroundings" (14). Through his love experience with his German fellow student Ingrid, his image of women has changed. He is faced with Ingrid's contempt for his beliefs (12). He sees himself and his homeland through the colonial gaze of his friends. India - and thus also himself - appears to his friends as an invention of their ancestors ( Vasco da Gama [12]). As much as he was perceived abroad as an exotic representative of his distant homeland, it is still difficult for him to really return. He lives in an "intermediate realm" (13).

time

One theme of the novel is the non-simultaneity , the lack of objectivity even of time:

“'It was only a matter of time,' said my father with all signs of joy; but in my experience time has always been an uncertain thing and not something that can be relied on. It could even be divided: the clocks in Pakistan were half an hour ahead of their Indian counterparts [...] Mr. Kemal, who wanted nothing to do with the division, liked to say: 'Here lies the proof of the idiocy of their plan. These league people plan to quit for a full thirty minutes! Time without division, 'exclaimed Mr Kemal,' that is the solution! ' And SP Butt said, 'If you can change the time just like that, what else is really, I ask you? What's true?'"

- p. 104

The Hindus use the same word for yesterday and tomorrow, according to the narrator (142). He refers to the electricity-dependent time announcement and comes to the conclusion:

"In my experience, time is as changeable and unstable as Bombay's power supply."

In an old clock tower, of all places, Saleem Sinai finally finds his retreat from the maddening time, a place where time stands still (198).

India / colonialism

A central theme is the Indian struggle for independence. Gandhi's general strike in 1918 (1942) and the Amritsar massacre are shown , as well as the merger of Free Islam and its defeat by the dogmatists (1942). The conflict is documented in a radicalization on both sides. The Hindu arson attacks and extortion by the Muslims in 1945 are also told (93 ff.).

“Division brings destruction! Muslims are the Jews of Asia! "

- Leaflet, p. 95

The family home in Bombay becomes a parable for the surrender of India by England. The Sinais and their neighbors (→ the rich Indians) buy a property with four houses from William Methwold, a descendant of the founder of the English Bombay (→ the English) . According to the terms of the purchase contract, the houses and furnishings must be taken over and all household items must be kept by the new owners, at least until the transfer of ownership. The new owners adapt to the environment and, with a few exceptions (Amina), adopt the English way of life and thinking up to the imitation of the stretched Oxford way of speaking (127).

“[…] The wind comes from the north and it smells of death. This independence is only for the rich; the poor are made to kill each other like vermin. In the Punjab, in Bengal. Riot, riot, arms against arms. It's in the wind. "

- p. 139

India appears as “... a mythical land, a land that would never exist except through the exertion of phenomenal collective will - except in a dream we all consented to dream; it was a mass fantasy in which Bengali and Punjabi, madrasis and jats participated to varying degrees and which required at regular intervals the sanctions and renewals that only bloody rituals can provide. India, the new myth - a community invention in which anything was possible, a fable that only the other two powerful fantasies could match: money and God. "(150)

Coincidence or destiny?

The life of the characters in the novel is full of absurdities and coincidences: Aadam Asiz (Saleem's grandfather) German friends, the anarchists Ilse and Oskar Lubin, die in a grotesque way. Oskar trips over his shoelaces and is hit by a staff car. Ilse drowns on the lake in Kashmir (see 38). On the other hand, a fit of sneezing saves the grandfather's life by avoiding a salvo from the British military (cf. 46). Human attempts to turn fate tend to produce random consequences or remain ineffective. The interpretation of historical and private events as purposeful always seems ironic.

"[...] then we should either - optimistically - get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a purpose, and we are spared the horror of recognizing ourselves as random products without why; or we could - pessimistically - give up on the spot, since we see the futility of thought, decision, action, because nothing we think is relevant anyway; everything will be as it will be. Then where is the optimism? In fate or in chaos? Was my father optimistic or pessimistic when my mother gave him her news (after everyone in the neighborhood had heard it) and he replied, 'I told you so; it was just a matter of time '? My mother's pregnancy, it seems, was fate; my birth, however, owed a lot to chance. '"

- p. 104

Saleem Sinai was exchanged at birth, his family history is that of a strange family, however much it shapes him.

Narrative technique

language

Midnight Children is originally written in English. Since Rushdie himself comes from India, belongs to a Muslim family and tries to depict almost a century of Indian history, but also the Indian way of life, mentalities and peculiarities, his language is interwoven with words of oriental, especially South Asian origin. This applies not only to the choice of words , but also to the way of writing. Against the background of oriental narrative traditions, the protagonist Saleem plays the role of the narrator, the listener is his wife Padma, whose reactions are occasionally registered. In its volatility, variety, confusion but also lightness, the tone is reminiscent of an orally presented story.

At the same time, the twisting language, the rich use of motifs, the particular situation of the narrator, whose reliability must be constantly doubted, requires the reader to concentrate and pay more attention.

Writing appears as a creative birth process, the narrator is the creator of himself (cf. 133).

“[…] The fetus […] fully formed […] What [at the beginning] was no larger than a point, had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it developed traces of more complex forms, became, so to speak, a book - perhaps an encyclopedia -, even a whole language [...]. "

- p. 133

“[...] my legacy also includes the gift, if necessary, of inventing new parents for me. The power to give life to fathers and mothers [...]. "

- p. 144

imagery

Metaphors quickly become reality in the midnight kids. The grandmother is inflated by the unspoken words during her long protests of silence (77). Their change in character creates a witch-like appearance (77).

Pickle production is a central figure . Life appears as greedy food (10), the variety of pickles illustrates the overabundance of life. The “dual talent for culinary art and language skills” (49), the “work of preserving” (49) the dishes and stories by writing down mirror each other. As with cooking, the right seasoning is important when telling stories .

“Family history, of course, has its own ritual dietary prescriptions. One is expected to swallow and digest only the permitted portions, the halal portions of the past that have had their redness and blood drawn from them. Unfortunately, that makes stories less juicy, so I'm about to become the first and only member of my family to mock the laws of Halal . Without letting blood run out of the body of the narrative, I come to the unspeakable part and push forward. "

- p. 78

Another picture is the disintegration of the narrator, he gets cracks and thus reflects the turmoil of the subcontinent.

The omniscience of the narrator is also reflected in the reports of Saalem, who is nevertheless never completely in control of the story. Nevertheless, a novelist has surprising abilities, even if there are limits to the storytelling, everything appears "[...] through my view from high up in the sky" (99). Nevertheless, the narrator remains master of space and time: "[...] fly over the city" to "St. Thomas Cathedral "(137)," because something happens there. "

Color symbolism

India as a cosmos of colors and smells also shapes the imagery of the novel. Kashmir , the home of the grandfather, is an area of ​​centuries-old mixture of peoples. His blue eyes and red beard refer to Kashmir's history of conquest , but also to the colonial English ("Strangeness of Blue Eyes"; 143)

The white patches of skin of the Rani von Cooch Naheen, grandfather's lover, document their diverse cultural interests: "My skin is the outward expression of the internationalism of my spirit" (58).

Red is the juice that is spat into the spittoon, iodine and blood are red with anger.

Dark and light skin are social standards in India . Saleem's mother, the dark Mumtaz, draws her mother's hatred through her dark skin.

“How awful to be black, cousin, to wake up every morning and be stared at, to see evidence of your inferiority in the mirror. Of course they know, even black people know that white is more beautiful [...]. "

- Cousin Zohra about Amina, p. 92

Only the gods can circumvent this categorization:

"[...] our Lord Jesus Christ of beautiful crystalline pale sky-blue color [...]."

- p. 137

The color is also reminiscent of the love god Krishna, depicted with blue skin, and avoids the contrast between black and white. (cf. 138 f.) “ Saffron yellow and green” (153 ff.) are the colors of India.

Leitmotifs

Holes and gaps

In the grandfather, the loss of faith creates a void that makes room for women and history. So he is called as a doctor to a wealthy, blind landowner whose daughter he is to treat. But since the father is strictly religious, the doctor is only allowed to see the part of the body to be treated through a hole in the sheet. So his future wife developed all sorts of illnesses in order to gradually show himself to his grandfather.

The gradual becoming visible of the body, the growing knowledge run synchronously with the loss of faith as a loss of innocence. The narrative principle becomes visible here: Saleem Sinai does not present a systematic or chronological development of the event, but rather a series of individual images, whereby the most important is often left out or shown late. This creates tension, the role of the reader's imagination as a synthesizing force is emphasized (cf. 32).

Although Saleem's grandmother controls the game herself through her imaginary and real illnesses, she still feels ashamed. Grandfather sees “a shy but oncoming blush of shame rising up in the buttocks.” (33) The sheet with the hole becomes something sacred and magical for the family, because through this sheet he had seen the things that made it through the Had filled the hole in him that had caused loss of faith. As a leitmotif, the sheet appears again and again in the story, in the defloration of the grandmother (39), in the ghost play of the nine-year-old narrator (40).

Amina's piece-by-piece development of love for Ahmed Sinai also follows the logic of the gap.

"[...] she fell under the spell of her own parents' sheets because she decided to fall in love with her husband little by little."

- p. 90

Noses

The grandfather's oversized nose refers to the trunk of the elephant god Ganesha . It is "the place where the outside world meets the world in you" (21), at the same time the organ of memory (23). Grandfather hopes that it guarantees the genuineness of the offspring. But not only Saleem and the grandfather have this mark, William Methwold is also a possible father (“French aristocracy from Bergerac”) (126).

In contrast to the nose, the stethoscope is a symbol of objectified perception (11), it is called an artificial nose (26) and refers to the loss of natural orientation.

The nose is also an organ of perception for the diverse, sometimes drastic smells and scents of India. The acrid stench of the great-grandmother's boils creates shame (23), the ferryman Tai stops washing (34) to chase away his grandfather, Padma, the dung goddess (40) not only exudes holiness, the holy Amritsar smells after 1918 Excrement (41) during the bloodily suppressed peaceful protest. The Tadch Mahal (76), smelling of urine, disillusioned romantic ideas about India. Drastically also the "snot cascades", the abundant excretory substances of Baby Saleem (168).

grotesque

On the run from his burning warehouse, Ahmed Sinai is slapped for his failure by a barely “nibbled Parse hand ” that falls from the beak of a vulture that flies over him from the towers of silence (121). The element of the grotesque , the deliberate exaggeration of certain events, highlights the absurdity of many developments. The individual defends himself against the constraints of family and history with grotesque behavior and absurd quirks.

"If I seem a little strange, think of the irrepressible abundance of my heritage [...] perhaps one has to be grotesque if one wants to remain an individual."

- p. 146

In this context, the narrator's disintegration is also typical, he becomes “cracked”, dries up, and finally even slowly dissolves. Telling is his only antidote, against forgetting (47), against the destruction of the dreams embodied by the midnight children.

Predictions

Numerous preliminary interpretations irritate the reader and create strange connections, for example between the bleeding nose of his grandfather when he loses his faith and the blood on the sheet from the defloration of his wife. They create tension, arouse false and justified expectations. They are an expression of the overabundance of life, signs of coming stories that want to come out.

"[...] these events, which I don't know how, tumbled off my lips, mutilated by haste and emotion, should be judged by others."

- p. 39

With reference to Scheherazade , storytelling turns into the life-saving production of meaning, the events push ahead, overflow, mix.

Analogies to film technology

The novel deliberately uses film forms of representation , shows close-ups and long shots, names cuts (cf. about 42). The mixture of different time levels, streams of thought and storylines is explicitly linked to analog film techniques , although the novel will be difficult to film in view of its complexity. Comparisons with the medium of film make literary techniques visible, such as the montage of reality-related reports with the individual fates of the characters, the connection of the historical macro level with the microcosm of the novel.

Discourse with the reader

Padma, Saleem's lover, embodies the needs of a naive listener. She can't read and Saleem has to earn his food by reading to her (40)

"I sang for my bread."

Saleem slips into the role of Wee Willie Winkies, the clown with the accordion.

"Wee Willie Winkie is my name, singing for my bread is my gift!"

- p. 135

The narrator sees himself in the "tradition of the fool" (136), who entertains people with his clowning and stories. The audience, however, proves to be critical of experiments, demands traditional storytelling ("shies back into the universe of what-happened-afterwards." [49]), higher tempo (49). But the narrator knows how to defend himself:

"My story grabbed her by the throat."

- p. 49

Padma has "bitten" (49), metaphorically the author appears as an angler who catches the reader. Fascinated by his storytelling art, Padma loves Saleem even though he is "emasculated" (50). The ability to write appears as a phallic potency ("your other pen"; 50). On behalf of the reader, Padma is addressed directly as a listener (118). It's an impatient audience that she represents. (135)

“I sometimes wish for a more insightful audience; one that understands the need for rhythm, tempo, the subtle introduction of minor chords that will later rise, swell, usurp the melody [...]. "

- p. 135

The writing intervenes in Saleem's “reality”; Padma leaves him temporarily because he writes that she loves him (163).

Poetry and truth

Salman Rushdie is not the first man of letters to alienate Goethe's self-confident portrayal of his own birth in " Poetry and Truth ":

“On August 28, 1749, at noon when the clock struck twelve, I was born in Frankfurt am Main. The Constellation was happy: the sun was in the sign of the Virgin, and culminated for the day; Jupiter and Venus looked at each other kindly, Mercury not disgusting; Saturn and Mars behaved indifferently, only the moon, which was just becoming full, exercised the power of its counter-light all the more when at the same time its planetary hour had come. "

- Goethe : Poetry and Truth

His version is based on the alienation of Günter Grass in the " Tin Drum ":

“It was in the first days of September. The sun was in the sign of the Virgin. From afar, a late summer thunderstorm pushed boxes and cupboards shifting through the night. Mercury made me critical, Uranus resourceful, Venus made me believe in my little luck, Mars in my ambition. The scales rose in the house of the Ascendant, which made me sensitive and tempted to exaggerate. Neptune moved into the tenth, the midlife house, and anchored me between miracles and delusion. It was Saturn who questioned my origins in the third house in opposition to Jupiter. "

- Günter Grass : The tin drum

"13. August 1947: Dissatisfaction in the Heavens. Jupiter, Saturn and Venus are in a quarrelsome mood, the three stars on the orbit of the cross move into the worst house of all. "

- Salman Rushdie : Midnight Children

The motif of poetry and truth appears in Rushdie varied as fairy tale and truth: "Once upon a time there was a little boy who was born in the city of Bombay." The fairytale-like experiences of the protagonist symbolize the birth and development of the Indian subcontinent. However, it is not the poor environment, as with Grass, illuminated by the light of "two sixty-watt lightbulbs", but Dr. Narlikar's private maternity hospital, so a comfortable place, where Saleem and thus symbolically India saw the light of day on August 15, 1947.

But it is not only Grass and Goethe who influence Rushdie's literary work. Musil's irony can be found in various places, for example when, alluding to a chapter title in " Man without Qualities ", it says:

"It appears that my grandfather, Doctor Aadam Aziz, acquired a most dangerous form of optimism in the late summer of this year."

- p. 50

chronology

time event place
1890 Birth of grandfather "1942 [...] fifty-two years old" (50 f) cashmere
1910 ... 1915 Study of grandfather Aadam Aziz in Germany (told from the perspective of 1915) Germany
Spring 1915 Grandfather's loss of faith cashmere
1918 "Day the World War ends"; grandfather sees the face of grandmother Naseem Ghani / Aziz for the first time (death of great-grandfather and great-grandmother)
Winter 1918 / -19 Tai gets sick
April 6, 1919 Gandhi "orders" a general strike (42) Amritsar
~ 1921 Alia born (first daughter)
~ 1923 Mumtaz born (second daughter)
~ 1924 Hanif born
~ 1926 Mustapha born
~ 1927 Emerald born (third daughter)
1932 the grandfather takes care of the upbringing of his children (54)
1942 (time jump) "That my grandfather, Dr. Adam Aziz, incurred a highly dangerous form of optimism in the late summer of this year. "(50)

"Foundation of the Free Islam Association" by Mian Abdullah (the hummingbird) (51)

Agra
January 1945 Preparations for independence (85)
Amina (Mumtaz) and Ahmed Sinai in Delhi (85 ff)
Announcing the birth of the narrator
anti-Muslim pogroms in Delhi
Delhi (house on Cornwallis Road)
August 6, 1945 "Everything changed" (77)

Death of Rani von Cooch Naheen

6th of August (78): Mumtaz still a virgin after two years of marriage → divorce from Nadir, betrayal by Emerald
January 1946 Wedding Emerald-Zulfikar

Mumtaz spans Alia Ahmed Sinai (83), changes her name to Amina (84)

January 1947 anti-Muslim arson attacks, pogrom mood

public announcement of the narrator's birth when the mother rescued the peep-box man (102) "My proclamation saved a life." (102)

in the mosl. Quarter (Muhalla)
June 4, 1947 Parents travel to Bombay

Earl Mountbatten Announces the Partition of India Summary of Countdown Beginning So Far (121)

Delhi → Bombay
June 19, 1947 Purchase of a house from William Methwold Bombay
Aug 15, 1947 Birth of Saleem Sinai

India's independence
swapping of children
death of birth mother

Bombay
1956 Saleem's ghost game with the sheet
~ 1978 “Now, however, time is running out (since it has no further use for me). I will soon be thirty-one years old. Maybe."

"My grandfather's vision sixty-three years ago." (23)

literature

Editions of the novel

  • Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children , Jonathan Cape Ltd., London 1981
  • Salman Rushdie: Mitternachtskinder , Kindler Verlag, Munich 1997; Paperback edition: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-499-23832-2

Further reading

  • Batty, Nancy E.: The Art of Suspense. Rushdie's 1001 (Mid-) Nights. In: Fletcher, MD (ed.) Reading Rushdie. Perspectives on the fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi 1994. 69-81.
  • Harrison, James. Salman Rushdie. New York: Macmillan 1992.
  • Hirsch, Bernd: history and stories. On the relationship between historicity, historiography and narrativity in Salman Rushdie's novels. Winter, Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3-8253-1248-8 (also dissertation at Heidelberg University 1999).
  • Juan-Navarro, Santiago: “The Dialogic Imagination of Salman Rushdie and Carlos Fuentes: National Allegories and the Scene of Writing in Midnight's Children and Cristóbal Nonato .” Neohelicon 20.2 (1993): 257-312. ( PDF )
  • Petersson, Margareta: Unending Metamorphoses. Myth, Satire and Religion in Salman Rushdie's Novels. Lund: Lund University Press 1996.
  • Wilson, Keith: Midnight Children and Reader Responsibility. In: Fletcher, MD (ed.) Reading Rushdie. Perspectives on the fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi 1994. 55-67.

Film adaptations

Midnight Children of Deepa Mehta