The Riddles of Midnight: Critical Study

Prepared by: Lajja Bhatt

Postcolonial Literature

Roll no 16 Enrollment No: PG13101003

Sem III

Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Bhavnagar

Salman Rushdie• Salman Rushdie is an intelligent arbiter

• It is difficult to distinct him as novelist or

essayist or travel writer,screen writer etc.

• Controversial surroundings.

• Having great erudite.

• He remains aloof from ordinary sphere of

existence, abstract, aloof and distance.

Imaginary Homelands• ‘books that draw new and better maps of reality,

and make new languages with which we can understand the world.’(Salman Rushdie)

• ‘I’ Narrator.

• Having symbols, figures from different myth systems

• Cultural exchange cheapen the literature.

• ‘is history to be considered the property of the participants solely?’ (Shame- Rushdie)

The Riddles of Midnight

• The India is the one nation and Pakistan is another. Both are the ‘children of the midnight’ of 15th August, 1947.

• Does India Exist?

• There can be word used for such big territory & realm with great natural resources, is ‘commualism

The Riddles of Midnight

• Communal Riots and Faith

• ‘ After all these religions are only words.whatis behind them is the same whichever faith is.’

• Here nationalism is in the mouth of the people but hardly found in heart.

The Riddles of Midnight

• The language of Rushdie is lucid.

• But it has some throny sharpness which pinch the reader’s mind.

• Rushdie also uses the parenthesis in the illustrative way.

• He has given good examples to elaborate his point and makes arguments rhetoric.

References

• http://www.indiamarks.com/Salman-Rushdie-An-author-novelist-essayist-and-sometime-critic/

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxd19zXorWY&feature=player_embedded

• Shame