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HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES

What is the climax of the story?

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a book that appears quite simple on the surface but that has many
underlying adult themes. Haroun is haunted by the question he overhears Rashid ask Soraya: "What's
the point of stories that aren't even true?" This shapes much of the rest of the book up to the climax.
The climax occurs when Haroun makes a wish that causes the moon (Kahani) to rotate. In some ways
this seems to be an anti-climax, as there are many other characters and circumstances which would
seem to be pivotal to the development of the plot, and Haroun's wish is merely that of a frustrated and
confused young man. All further writings that come after Haroun's wish work toward the resolution of
the story and the self-knowledge Haroun must embrace in order to travel into manhood.

What are the symbolisms of pollution in the novel?

It has been argued by a number of literary scholars and critics that Salman Rushdie uses pollution to
symbolize the censorship of free speech. This is an issue of great personal importance to Rushdie, as
he was subject to death threats and forced to go into hiding after the publication of The Satanic
Verses.

In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the Oceans of the Streams of Story are so heavily polluted that
Haroun's friends, the fish Goopy and Bagha, become ill. Normally, when people drink from the ocean
they are transported into a completely different world, the kind of world that only stories can evoke.
The ocean is a precious repository of all manner of stories, a vital storehouse of cultural memory. Yet
thanks to the Chupwalas, that ocean's now become polluted by poison

The Chupwalas live in Chup, which is the land of permanent darkness. It isn't too much of a stretch to
see this as an allusion to the kind of Islamic fundamentalists who've threatened—and continue to
threaten—Salman Rushdie's life. The Chupwalas, just like the Islamic fundamentalists on which
they're based, seek to repress and destroy any cultural traditions that challenge their restricted,
narrow-minded world-view.

How is the story linked to contemporary realities?

Rushdie likes to use his literature as a means to represent contemporary realities. This can be seen in
Haroun and the Sea of Stories, where Haroun's predicament represents the contemporary condition
of history and power.  Rashid is nicknamed as the "Ocean of Notions" and "Shah of Blah."  He tells
stories from a perspective that embraces freedom.  Rashid is an artist and not controlled by a
politically directed end. As the story advances, Haroun recognizes that his father is directly positioned
against Khattam-Shud, “the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech."  Total freedom and expression-
driven creativity is poised against totalizing forces.  This can be seen on a personal level, as well. 
When Haroun's mother leaves Rashid for someone grounded in practical reality and devoid of stories,
Rushdie is articulating a contemporary representation of history.  The paradigm is one where freedom
is set against control. Those in the position of political power use their position to silence voices that
cannot be directly contained.  Control becomes the means through which history is represented and
how control is exerted.

Rushdie uses the story to illuminate how the artist can be seen as a threatening force to those in the
position of power.  The contemporary representation of history is one where a conflict narrative is
voiced in the face of a consensus vision of history.  The former seeks to explore the different aspects
of freedom, while control and focused totality drives the latter.  This contemporary representation of
history is evident in Rushdie's own narrative.  As an artist, he suffered greatly under the fatwa issued
against him, an act of control that sought to silence his own condition as "the ocean of notions."  A
sense of gravity is acquired when viewing the story in this light.  This contemporary representation of
history is one of the reasons why Rushdie's work is artistically advanced and philosophically
distinctive.
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In what ways is this story a post modern allegory?

One way in which Haroun and the Sea of Storiescan be seen as a Postmodern novel is how Rushdie
deconstructs the story telling process.  The ability by which stories are told and literary capacity is
envisioned is not a purely subjective one.  If one presumes that Rashid is enduring some of the most
intense "writer's block," it is not a linear process to resolve it.  The Postmodern idea of deconstruction
in the most complex of manners is seen in the journey to regain his voice, to find what was lost. 
Writing and composition is nuanced and filled with forces that seek to subvert it.  This subversion is in
the personal, embodied in individuals like Mr. Sengupta, and in the political through the force of
Khattam- Shud.  The ability to deconstruct the writing process in such a manner is one way in which
the Postmodern is evident in the story.

Another way in which the Postmodern elements are seen is through the depiction of the characters. 
Haroun is far from the traditional "hero" in how he embodies an attention deficit.  Rushdie depicts a
Postmodern form of "noble prince" in Prince Bolo, and the notion of  P2C2E is a Postmodern element
that is "too complex to explain."  The political reality that uses Rashid for his storytelling abilities is
another example of Postmodern irony in describing the fraudulent nature of political rule.  Khattam-
Shud's death is even Postmodern as he is crushed by his own creation of a statue.  In these
instances, Rushdie presents a "Postmodern allegory," reflective of the deconstruction that is so much
a part of Postmoderism.

How are the elements of Id, Ego and Super ego used in the story?

Rushdie uses his characters in Haroun and the Sea of Storiesto represent many elements.  This
same representation can be applied to how characters are viewed in terms of the Freudian
understanding of the human psyche.  Different characters can represents different elements of the id,
ego, and superego.  For Rushdie, the construction of characters to serve as symbolic representation
of reality helps to establish meaning and relevance.  For example, the forces of the Superego can be
seen in characters like Mr. Sengupta or Khattam- Shud.  Both forces represent a form of social
repression on both personal and political levels. Both forces prevent any emotional embrace, flight
into fancy, or social expression.  Soraya chooses Mr. Sengupta precisely because she tires of the
fantasy and fancy of Rashid.  Sengupta represents "a mousy clerk of facts and despiser of
imagination."  Khattam- Shud embodies a silence and a force of singularity that precludes any
complexity, a force of social repression who is crushed by his own statue.  In this, repression is killed
by repression.  Both characters embody the superego's repressive power on both individual and
social levels.

In his analysis, Freud argues that the "id is a great reservoir of insincts."  On some level, this is how
Rashid can be seen. Soraya sees him as this, as it becomes her rationale in leaving.  She has tired of
the "Shah of Blah" and his engagement in stories.  Rashid's embrace of instinctual behavior is
demonstrated in imaginations and stories.  Interestingly enough, Soraya is willing to forgo her own
instinctual notions such as singing when she leaves Rashid.  This indicates her complete repudiation
of the id.  When Soraya leaves him, Rashid becomes the sum total of the id.  He is only instinctual,
incapable of forming sentences or coherent thoughts as his instinctual principle to tell stories has
abandoned.  Consider that Rushdie has made Rashid so instinctual that his stories have become a
sort of id- ordering principle.  Stories have become such a part of his being, his id being so strong,
that when Soraya leaves him, the only order he knows in terms of the organization of his instincts
abandons him, as well.  If we accept this understanding of Rashid as embodying tenets of the id, then
Haroun would have to be the ego.  Freud argues that the "ego attempts to mediate between id and
reality."  Haroun is this force for his father.  He seeks to navigate through the reality that envelops
both of them in order to reclaim his father's ability to tell stories.  Haroun is the force that translates his
father's instincts of id with the world around him.  Thus, Haroun serves as the superego, a sort of
cable box, that unscrambles the signal of the id and the external world.  Haroun understands that his
father's id capacities in telling stories is his being.  To reclaim it becomes not only the central
message of the narrative, but also represents his attepts to serve as a potential representation of the
superego
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Give examples of figurative language used in the story.

There are examples of figurative language in Chapter 2. For example, the bus driver's hair is
"standing straight up on his head, like a parrot's crest" (page 33). In this simile (a comparison using
like or as), the bus driver's hair is compared to the tufts of feathers on a parrot. The vista of the Valley
of K is compared to "a view spread out like a magic carpet" (page 34), which is also a simile. 

There are several examples of alliteration, or the repetition of the beginning sounds of words, such as
"carrying chickens or children" (page 32) and "the result was a free-for-all out of which feathers and
feathers and toys and dislodged hats kept flying" (page 32). 

Another literary device employed by Rushdie in this chapter is personification. For example, "a
cloud...hopped up from the gorge below them and plopped itself down on the road" (page 38). In this
example, the cloud is given human-like abilities, such as the capacity to plop and hop.

How is the novel a personal allegory about Rushdie’s life?

As with much that Rushdie does, allegory exists on both political and personal levels.  It is difficult to
find where they exactly reside because both forms of allegory collapse into one another.  It is through
this allegory where more insight into work and author is revealed.

On one level, there is a personal allegory evoked in the novel.  At the time of writing the book,
Rushdie was dealing with the fatwa issued against him.  The allegorical connections are evident in
this context.  Soraya leaves Rashid, the Shah of Blah/ The Ocean of Notions, in much the same way
that Rushdie himself was abandoned by those he loved and the world, for the most part.  Rashid's
inability to compose his work comes from this rejection, something that Rushdie himself experienced
while living under the fatwa and the marginalization that resulted from it.  The idea that Haroun saves
his father and repatriates him with his gift of writing is allegorical to the dedication of the book to Zafar,
Rushdie's own son.  There is something profound about Rushdie, himself a father who has been
silenced by the fatwa, writing a book in which a storyteller's ability to recreate his art is restored by his
son, the only force of good in a world of impending evil.  In this light, the story operates as a personal
allegory for Rushdie.

At the same time, the allegorical connections on a political level are as present.  The rejection of story
telling by Sengupta, and essentially Soraya, as well as in the political force of Khattum- Shud are
allegorical statements against social and political authority that seek to silence artistic free speech. 
The fatwa helped to underscore Rushdie's unwavering commitment to liberalized notions of free
speech and artistic expression.  There are few better than Rushdie in the position to speak about such
a condition.  Rushdie's work operates an an allegorical criticism of these forces that work to silence
the artist's voice in the world.  The fact that Rashid was used by those in the position of power to
distract the body politic is another allegorical connection to how Rushdie views the relationship
between art and government.  Through his depiction of the artist in the story, Rushdie makes a clear
statement about how the voice of the artist should and must operate outside of the realm of the
political in order to remain true to their creation and their own gift.  Soraya's return and the defeat of
Khattum- Shud is a validation of this.  Again, one sees this in a sad allegorical light when it is
contrasted with Rushdie's own life under the fatwa and the abandonment he experienced as a result
of it.

What makes the language in the novel Powerful?

Haroun and the Sea of Stories involves a strong component of fantasy.  The events that happen to
Haroun are quite magical, and require the author to wield language in a way that allows the reader to
imagine the impossible.  Story and meaning are created by the author through the use of imaginative
language in order to create the magical world that the novel inhabits.  This, itself, is the power of
stories.  With the use of imaginative language an author can bring meaning to something that before
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that moment did not exist at all.  The creation of the magical and impossible through words is what
rends the language use so powerful.

How does the book reflect on community and culture?

I would think that Rushdie's work reflects a great deal about the culture of community in that the work
posits that "the answer" which needs to be sought is a communal one, and not an isolating notion. 
Consider that Rashid's primary purpose is to tell stories to the people of Alfibay, reflecting that his
sense of being is one tied to the community.  When he internalizes himself into a shell that thwarts
contact with others, Haroun must reach out to his father and both of them set off on a quest to restore
the father's storytelling abilities.  This is based off of community, in general.  They both search for the
"source" of all storytelling, indicating that nothing is constructed outside of the community setting. 
Every human being is driven to be a part of an intellectual community that helps to inspire and
generate thoughts.  Rushdie's construction is one whereby individuals are not left alone, and are not
isolated in their thoughts.  The characters that both father and son meet help to give back the power
of storytelling to the father, indicating that all literary and linguistic construction is communal, by
nature.  Finally, given the fact that the work is the first work from Rushdie's own fatwa period, I think
that there is a repudiation of isolation and an embrace of the idea of community and the culture of
commonality that is bred by the idea of the telling stories and sharing them with others.