BALANCE AND OPPOSITES THEME ANALYSIS

Throughout the novel, Haroun is confronted with opposing poles and concepts that are seemingly

unable to coexist. Good struggles with evil; stories and language struggle with silence; absurdity

struggles with logic. However, Haroun comes to realize that it's impossible to have, for example,

only silence—there must be a balance of silence and sound, and this need for balance remains a

common thread throughout.

The war between Chup and Gup, as well as the con icts in Al bay, are wars and battles of

opposites. As Haroun journeys through Al bay and Kahani, the reader is encouraged to make

comparisons between the two sides. When the battle between the Guppees and the Chupwalas

concludes thanks to Haroun's wish that the moon Kahani rotate, bringing day to Chup for the

rst time in many years, it becomes obvious that the victory wasn't just due to one side's

superiority. The victory came in nding balance, not in the triumph of one side over the other.

This balancing also demonstrated the bravery and heroism of so many of those souls who

stepped forward to ght, united against an enemy who they ended up working together with.

Opposites are explored often through the use of character foils. The most developed foil is that

between Rashid Khalifa and the twin characters Mr. Sengupta and Khattam-Shud. Rashid is loud,

imaginative, and at times too caught up in telling stories to pay attention to what's going on in

the real world. In contrast, Mr. Sengupta and Khattam-Shud are logical and down-to-earth to a

fault, and have no time for stories or imagination. Prince Bolo also acts as an opposite for Mudra,

the Shadow Warrior. Prince Bolo, despite speaking conventionally, never has anything particularly

useful to say, while Mudra is unable to speak conventionally. However, what Mudra does "say"

through the gesture language Abhinaya is fully thought out and taken seriously. By providing

examples of characters on opposite ends of a spectrum, the novel further indicates the need for

a happy medium. Every character is needed to truly tell the story, and as such the novel as a
whole presents the balance for which it advocates.

Several characters, including Haroun, present a more balanced array of beliefs and traits. Butt

the Hoopoe, as a machine, walks a ne line between scienti c rationality and more human feeling

and emotion. He is rational to a fault at times, which provides humor, but he also shows great

insight into the human condition and the state of the world in a very emotional and human way.

Mudra as well, because of his shadow, is able to achieve a great sense of balance, which helps

him to be a successful communicator and warrior. He stands in stark contrast to other Chupwalas

who have lost all sense of trust in their shadows, setting them completely off balance within

themselves.

The Kahani lands of Gup and Chup also act as foils for each other. Gup is warm, friendly, and

talkative, while Chup is a place of ice, fear, and silence. Chup, for all its seriousness, has to rely

on elements of absurdity to make life livable there. All the residents wear nose warmers that

look like clown noses to keep their real noses from freezing off, alluding to the idea that the

extreme censorship that Chup experiences is, to some degree, absurd. In the same vein, despite

Gup's belief in stories and nonsense, and an appreciation for the unpredictability of stories, the

Eggheads and the Walrus rely on complicated, inherently rational science in order to keep the

moon Kahani from turning, keeping life in Gup predictable and safe. In this way, despite

presenting two opposite ways of life, the novel indicates that it's impossible to be fully one way

or another. This idea becomes fully crystallized when the reader learns that Khattam-Shud,

despite wanting silence for all, speaks—he's unable to maintain his power to dictate silence if he

himself is silent.