Extended Essay in English A, IB Diploma, Sarala Birla Academy, Bangalore, February 2018. Written at seventeen. The research question: how do the narrative structure and technique of Salman Rushdie’s novel carry its leitmotif of fragmentation? Two paragraphs of IB methodology are left out.

Introduction

This essay examines the question - “How do the narrative structure and technique aid in the portrayal of the leitmotif of fragmentation in Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’?”. Being awarded the ‘Best of the Bookers’ twice and having garnered wide critical acclaim,1 ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie is considered by many as one of the greatest postcolonial novels about India, even going as far as being called the “watershed in the post-independence development of the Indian English novel”2. The novel has wielded tremendous influence, especially over young Indian writers, for it’s historiographic metafiction narrative style, usage of postmodern tropes and the manner in which it deals with complex thematic subjects of identity and fate.

While much review has been done on the narrative style, particularly of the poioumenon characteristics - metafiction about the creation of a story - and of the self-conscious and biased nature of narration; little material exists dealing with Rushdie’s use of thematic patterning, especially in regards to his leitmotif of fragmentation. Fragmentation is often merely considered as a post modern narrative technique and its role as a theme is erroneously treated as unimportant. However, it will be argued in this essay that fragmentation as a leitmotif, limned through thematic patterning, is a major thematic message of the work and is crucial for the critical reading and understanding of the text. The relation between this thematic fragmentation and that of narrative fragmentation has also been poorly studied in literature, seldom being concretely analysed. Therefore, this essay will focus on how the specific narrative and structural choices by Rushdie have facilitated an effective portrayal of the leitmotif of fragmentation as well as explore its overall significance.

Usage of narrative technique and structure

The plot of ‘Midnight’s Children’ is set in the Indian sub-continent and revolves around the narrator and protagonist Saleem’s life and his retelling of his family’s saga to Padma, his wife. Utilising a non-linear narrative, the novel is pivoted on the dialogue between Saleem and Padma, with the latter’s embodiment as the audience creating characteristics that are typical of an oral narrative. The work dabbles heavily in the theme of magic realism, with Saleem being bestowed with telepathic powers that enable him to view events from the past and present and through the eyes of other characters. Hence, while Saleem acts as the first and central person narrator, a pseudo-omniscient tone is present as well.

Midnight’s Children is replete with leitmotifs which allow Rushdie to express his varying thematic messages without being explicit and are used “instead of using symbolism in its conventional form”3 . A leitmotif in literature is traditionally defined as “an often repeated word, phrase, image or theme” and is essentially a dominant motif. It is often rendered by4 the use of thematic patterning, which was famously used in ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ and can be defined as the use of recurring motifs with the aim of developing a salient idea or a unifying theme. Rushdie has used leitmotifs in ‘Midnight’s Children’ differently, as “recurring things in the plot, incidents or objects or phrases which in themselves have no meaning or no particular meaning but which form a kind of non-rational network of connections in the book.”5 . Leitmotifs will be used with this meaning for the remainder of the essay.

The leitmotif in question is that of fragmentation, with fragmentation literally meaning ‘the process or state of being broken down into fragments’ and is constantly alluded to, either6 directly or indirectly through the placement of ‘objects or phrases’ in the text. The primary purpose of this leitmotif is to depict how the characters and events in the world of ‘Midnight’s Children’ are all fragmented and emphasise on the ironic absurdity of humanity’s futile attempts to piece together these fragments in the hope of a unified picture. As Rushdie writes in an essay - “Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood memories…” and it is this meaning, that Saleem so desperately tries to find and never succeeds in finding. Moreover, the work emphasises that an utopian wholeness is non-existent, and that humans are innately incapable of perceiving a whole picture and are mere “cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions.”7

The genius of ‘Midnight’s Children’ lies in the ability of Rushdie to depict this leitmotif of fragmentation through his narrative style and structure. By using several techniques, Rushdie essentially designed the narrative to emulate his thematic message with the fragmented and twisting narrative mirroring the chaotic thematic fragmentation. Furthermore, Rushdie opts for stylistic choices that allow him to freely use an extensive system of thematic patterning. These narrative techniques and stylistic choices will be discussed for the rest of this segment.

The first technique Rushdie employs is ensuring his narration style is strongly evocative of an oral style of narration allowing for the repetition of words, phrases and motifs throughout the course of the work - a formulaic repetition that is key to the thematic patterning in the book. In fact, a crucial component of oral storytelling is this repetition, according to the Journal of American Folklore. Saleem is well aware of this, and in fact,8 does it with the intent of making it epic like, as evidenced by his comparison of himself to Valmiki - the author of the Indian epic ‘The Ramayana’9 , as he says “Other men have recited stories before me”10 .

This self conscious nature of Saleem is another narrative decision Rushdie takes in the work, and is utilised effectively to allow Saleem to discourse freely on the literary elements present. Several times Saleem highlights the existence of a pattern or brings attention to a motif, strengthening the ‘non-rational network of connections’ in the reader’s mind and complements the repetition to enhance the effect of the thematic patterning.

The chaotic and non chronological narration where the linearity of the central plot arc is constantly offset by the anti-linear manner of returning to the dialogue between Saleem and Padma is a key technique to take note of. This constant oscillation by Saleem, from his narration of the events in the past to his ongoing circumstances in the present, coupled with constant prolepses, digressions and asides to the readers, create a disordered pandemonium that is difficult to make sense of, and thereby creates a spitting image of the fragmentation leitmotif. This is as Rushdie intended, as he explains how the work “often reiterates something that has happened earlier to remind you, and then takes off again, sometimes summarises itself, it frequently digresses…”11

In this context, the role of Padma is crucial, as Saleem mentions self consciously “but here is Padma at my elbow, bullying me back into the world of the linear narrative”12 . It can be argued that Padma is symbolic of the human need for order, who constantly expects the story to follow in an ordered and coherent fashion and is exasperated with Saleem’s free flowing narration. Saleem however, wishes for a more “discerning audience”, someone who would understand the “need for subtle introduction of minor chords which will later rise, swell, seize the melody”13 . Throughout the work, we see how Saleem was in perpetual search of meaning, and by the time he began retelling his story, he had realised the futility of such a search and had instead learnt to relinquish the need for control and just live. Hence, his preferred style of storytelling is redolent of this realisation, with no inherent chronological order, and stories that blend in with each other. This is also an allusion to Rushdie’s own style of writing, to ensure he adhered to his own thematic message, Rushdie only shows readers what he calls “blobs and slabs of the scene”14 .

A different aspect of how the narrative structure emulates the thematic fragmentation is described vividly by Saleem himself, where he uses a cinema metaphor of moving closer to the screen till the point where “tiny details assume grotesque proportions”15and when “illusion itself is reality”. While Saleem said this in reference to a plot detail, the metaphor applies to the progression of the narrative, as like the movement into the screen, the narrative starts slowly with varied detail and numerous characters and events but begins to focus exclusively on single ideas and fewer characters by the ending. Rushdie himself confesses, “As it nears contemporary events, quite deliberately loses deep perspective, becomes more ‘partial’”16 .

Yet another instance of the narrative mirroring the plot is Chapter Six. Rushdie splits the narrative into two parallel segments for the whole chapter, as he narrates two journeys that Saleem’s ‘parents’ - Amina and Ahmed were undertaking. Both these segments are alternated through the use of ellipsis at the start and end of each movement. These segments hint at the cracks in the marriage between Amina and Ahmed, essentially foreshadowing the future collapse. Symbolic dualities are used in each segment, like the presence of monkeys in both journeys that imbibe a sense of irony, while both of them face similar situations, they face them separately.

Finally, Rushdie lends a distinctive narrative voice to Saleem, with special regard to his use of punctuation and syntax. As Rushdie explains, “I found I had to punctuate it in a very peculiar way, to destroy the natural rhythms of the English language. I had to use dashes too much, keep exclaiming…That sort of thing just seemed to help to dislocate the English language”17 . The evidence of this can be seen throughout the work, with a jarring syntax and a constant use of ellipsis and caesura. Rushdie also utilises various devices like the asyndeton and anacoluthon to interrupt the flow and remove logical links while still retaining the same essence of meaning. This is especially used when Saleem dives into a recollection of haphazard events, “There were rubies and diamonds. There was the ice of the future, waiting beneath the water’s skin. There was an oath: not to bow down before god or man. [ . . . ] And There was a sheet in a gloomy room”. The anaphora of ‘There was’ with the vigorous tempo created by the short phrases and caesura all serve to emphasise on the disorganised nature of Saleem’s memories and the narrative as a whole. Rushdie also makes occasional occasional use of colloquial Indian words and phrases borrowed from Urdu and Hindi. This interposition of languages and an infusion of distinct Indian cadence into the speaking patterns of characters, confers a quality of authenticity to the book while forming a lingual dissonance that is replicate of the narrative and thematic ones.

Ultimately, these narrative techniques build up a complex narrative that serves to be engaging to readers as well as aiding in the creation of an atmosphere for Rushdie to effectively convey his thematic message of fragmentation.

The Perforated Sheet

The particular motif of the perforated sheet deserves special consideration for both its thematic significance as well as its allusion to the narrative technique. It is hence a fitting example of the union of narrative and thematic fragmentation mentioned previously. A recurring object, the perforated sheet first introduces the motif of fragmentation and makes its appearance by being the title of the first chapter of the book.

The chapter begins with the introduction of Aadam Aziz, Saleem’s grandfather, who works as the local doctor in Kashmir in the year 1915. He is shown to be distraught and conflicted, torn between his modern education and traditional upbringing. This makes him skeptical of religion and he decides to stop worshipping God, an act which Saleem opines “made a hole in him”18and resulted in him being “vulnerable to women and history’”19 . This void, bred by the absence of religion wavers him towards other sources of meaning. Hence, Aadam serves as the introduction to the archetype of Rushdie’s fragmented character.

Aadam makes regular visits to Naseem, a landlord’s daughter, who frequently complains of a variety of ailments. During these appointments, Naseem was examined through a makeshift hole in a bedsheet, due to the conservative environment that prevailed at that time. These constant meetings distilled with enigmatic excitement, soon bloomed a romance and the two end up getting married. As Saleem observes “my grandfather had fallen in love and had come to think of the perforated sheet as something sacred and magical”20 . As such the ‘perforated sheet’ acts as the beginning of the plot, setting the story into motion. However, the disjointed nature of their marriage, of it being rocky and fraught with hostility, is constantly alluded to by Rushdie, that Aadam had “made the mistake of loving in fragments”21 .

This essence of the perforated sheet is echoed later on in Amina and Ahmed - Saleem’s parents. Though their marriage was born from pragmatism rather than love, Amina makes it her mission to romantically love Ahmed and sets out to achieve this by focusing on parts of him, “she selected one fragment of Ahmed Sinai”22 , and forced herself to become familiar and to eventually love it.

This splintered devotion is starkly reminiscent of the perforated sheet, with Saleem quick to discern that it was the “ghostly essence of the perforated sheet, which doomed my mother to learn to love a man in segments”23 . In both cases, the sheet is used to deliver the message that love and its corresponding emotion that is piecemeal does not last the test of time.

The sheet also serves as an allusion to the partition of India, with Saleem describing Naseem as “This phantasm of a partitioned woman”24. India’s partition plays a central role in Midnight’s Children and the implied absurdity of the perforated sheet and the eventual failings of the romances it precipitates is emblematic of India’s partitioned beginning and the violence that follows.

The spirit of the sheet continues to trickle through generations; in Book Three, Jamila - Saleem’s sister, performs in traditional Pakistan where the audience only “glimpsed her through a gold-and-white perforated sheet”25 . Rushdie uses this opportunity to touch upon other themes such as individualism and fate, as the symbolic importance is spelt out “our family once again became the fate of a nation.”26

Saleem himself strongly connects with the sheet, going as far as calling it his “talisman, my open-sesame”27at the beginning of the book. Readers are witness to Saleem ‘cracking’ up, with him stating that it was not figurative, “Please believe I am falling apart. I am not speaking metaphorically”28 . The quintessence of the perforated sheet has imbibed itself into him, and Saleem mentions how he will eventually collapse into “six hundred and thirty million parts”29. This number is not arbitrary, being representative of the Indian population at that time and implying that Saleem believes he is a reflection of India’s fate. Rushdie highlights this relation between Saleem and India, frequently connecting his personal life with the happenings in India, techniques that Uma Parameswaran calls, “birth images and metaphors”, that are used to mark the “turning points in history”30. This is supported by the text, an example being Saleem’s birth at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the date of India’s independence. Saleem is also a patchwork of the identities in India, his biological parents are a British aristocrat and a poor Hindu servant, he is brought up by Muslims and a Christian nanny, the latter who influenced by her boyfriend’s Marxist ideologies, had switched him at birth with another baby. Hence, the leitmotif of fragmentation is literally present in the narrator, causing him to see his “life - its meanings, its structures - in fragments”31 . As Parameswaran comments, Saleem represents the “compression of history as a less harmonious process”32 and that “his individual identity is by turn fragmented and enlarged”, making him feel that it is his duty to construct ‘meaning’ from the various intertwined lives that jostle inside of him.

Using Saleem as another facet of the motif has a significant effect on the work, as his own preconceived conviction of his fragmentation imparts the same in his narrative style. Moreover, it manifests itself in the ending of the work, wherein keeping with Rushdie’s concept of the novel expressed in his previous book Grimus, that a novel should be “frayed at the edges” and have “loose ends”33 , Midnight’s Children ends with Saleem seemingly trampled by all the voices and stories in his head. This abrupt end delivers the final note in Rushdie’s thematic message, as having an ending where everything is explained and without loose ends would be contrary to the whole point of the work.

It can be claimed that the perforated sheet is analogous to Rushdie’s own narrative style in the work. The style of narration shows us parts of the narrative before moving to a different time and place, never giving sufficient attention to one segment before diverting elsewhere. The polysemic word ‘sheet’ lends weight to this comparison, with sheet meaning both linen and page. It is also worth comparing this analogy to that of the cinema metaphor as described before. While it might seem both metaphors are at odds with each other, they are in fact harmonious. While the cinema metaphor describes the nature of the temporal progression of the narrative, the perforated sheet describes the seemingly random shifts and movement at roughly similar moments in the narrative.

Significance of Thematic patterning

Due to Rushdie’s maximalism style of writing, Midnight’s Children is bursting with characters and ideas, many of which are replete with other dimensions of fragmentation and form the thematic patterning in the work.

The significance of the leitmotif of fragmentation was expressed clearly by Andrew Teverson and is worth evaluating for the depth it adds. He notes that fragmentation is not merely “abstract speculation but springs from a particular conception of the composition of the Indian sub-continent and from a desire to resist ‘singular’ conceptions of Indian national identity.”34 . This seems to agree with the motive behind the book, as Rushdie points out that the beauty of ‘Midnight’s Children’ lies in its ability for ‘non-stop self regeneration’ which echoes the “35infinite possibilities”36 that India possesses, an identity that cannot sum up to a single story. Hence, the significance of fragmentation as a leitmotif is its representation of the choice Rushdie makes, to narrate a story of India with all its ingrained complexity whilst not eliminating the connate variety and contradictions that are omnipresent in the country. Thematically, fragmentation is the belief that combats the irrational need for form and uniformity and questions the imposition of such qualities arbitrarily on that which has no inherent order, ultimately revealing the tyranny of such attempts.

As Andrew Teverson further remarks, Saleem’s failure to make sense of the anarchy present in history and humanity, was an intentional choice by Rushdie to represent the “successful overcoming of the nostalgia for totality”37. On consideration of the text, Teverson’s remarks seem to hold true. A minor character in the work, Lifafa Das illustrates this “nostalgia for totality”, and is evidence in favour for Teverson’s interpretation. Lifafa Das is a peepshow showman who makes a living by showing pictures to the public through a small hole in a box, attracting them with his catchphrase - “See the whole world, come see everything”. However, we see how this hyperbolic formula begins to prey upon his mind; as he puts up more picture postcards in his peepshow in his desperate attempt to deliver what he promises, that is to put ‘everything’ in his box. Rushdie uses him as a symbolic representation of the hollowness of attempts of achieving entirety. Saleem himself becomes aware of this later, as he wonders “Is this an Indian disease, this urge to encapsulate the whole of reality? Worse: am I infected too?”38

Fragmentation significance is also due to its connections with memory and on the manner in which our dogmas and ideas form. Saleem’s unreliable narration, due to his dependance on his flaky memory embodies this aspect, as Rushdie elaborates that “the shards of memories acquired greater status, greater resonance, because they were remains; fragmentation made trivial things seem like symbols, and the mundane acquired numinous qualities.”39 . What Rushdie implies is that the very nature of our memory results in our perspective being fragmented, where voids in our mind were filled by a magnification of the ‘remains’. Another interpretation is of how time erodes our memories, which is supported by the relationship between two minor characters - Mary and Joseph.

Jospeh, who was once Mary’s lover, disappears from the story and appears only as a ghost in Mary’s mind. He is shown to be withering and falling apart, with specific features being blown up and enlarged, in a manner akin to a caricature.

Overall, the reason and effect of the thematic patterning of fragmentation has important implications for a deeper understanding of the work’s thematic message, as well as acting as a study of society and the human condition.

Conclusion

At the beginning of the work, Saleem believes he can assemble the tumultuous and intertwined stories that were ‘jostling and shoving’ inside his head into a narrative that has ‘meaning’. However, by the end, readers are witness to the futility of such an endeavour and that the fragments of history and memory cannot be assembled into a meaningful whole. We also bear witness to the cracks immanent in people and their ideas and how the acceptance of fragmentation, which Saleem finally does, is the only way one can make peace with the world.

Throughout the essay, the narrative structure and various techniques used by Rushdie to effectively limn the leitmotif have been identified, analysed and evaluated. The most important technique was found to be the constant fusion of the narrative fragmentation and the thematic fragmentation, with aspects of the narrative such as the self conscious style, oral narration and the non-linear movement being especially vital to the effective portrayal of the leitmotif. The perforated sheet is strong evidence of the above techniques, especially the blend of narrative and theme. Overall, this union of narrative and theme challenges the notion that is held in literature that both should be disparate and is proof that interlinks between the two can be of vital significance in understanding the work as a whole.

Since the focus of research was on the text itself and Rushdie’s own writings, a widespread literature review was not undertaken, which might have acted to limit the scope of the essay. However, it is believed that this allowed for a more focused essay on the work itself.

Ultimately, it is the skilful portrayal of leitmotif of fragmentation through the use of Rushdie’s masterful use of narrative and technique that ensures that the novel is as influential and important in literature as it is.

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  9. Dalrymple, William. “William Dalrymple on India’s Living Epic the Ramayana.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 22 Aug. 2008, Retrieved October 22 2017, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/aug/23/art.ramayana. ↩︎

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  22. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 87 ↩︎

  23. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 143 ↩︎

  24. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 26 ↩︎

  25. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 435 ↩︎

  26. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 435 ↩︎

  27. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 4 ↩︎

  28. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 43 ↩︎

  29. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 4 ↩︎

  30. Parameswaran, Uma. “The Perforated Sheet: Metaphor as Method and Meaning.” The Perforated Sheet: Essays on Salman Rushdie’s Art. Madras: Affiliated East-West P, 1988, ↩︎

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  32. Parameswaran, Uma. “The Perforated Sheet: Metaphor as Method and Meaning.” The Perforated Sheet: Essays on Salman Rushdie’s Art. Madras: Affiliated East-West P, 1988. ↩︎

  33. Rushdie, Salman. Grimus: a Novel. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006. 149 ↩︎

  34. Teverson, Andrew. Salman Rushdie. Manchester University Press, 2010, 125 ↩︎

  35. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta & Penguin Books, 1992. 16 ↩︎

  36. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta & Penguin Books, 1992. 16 ↩︎

  37. Teverson, Andrew. Salman Rushdie. Manchester University Press, 2010, 124 ↩︎

  38. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, n.d. Print. 97 ↩︎

  39. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta & Penguin Books, 1992. 12 ↩︎