Unreliable narration in

Midnight's children
Prepared by Nishtha Makwana

Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

On the special occasion of Teacher’s day 2020

Salman
~Most controversial Indian
Rushdie Writer.

~British Indian novelist

essayist.

~Man Booker Prize winner.

~A fierce defender of freedom

of expression.

~A frequent critic of the U.S. led

war in Iran.
Most famous works :
- Midnight's children 1981
- The Satanic Verses 1988

For which he was accused of

Blasphemy against Islam
Imaginary
Homelands - Collection of Essays -
published during 1981 to 1991

-Originally Published in 1991

-It propounds an anti -

essentialist view of place

-Based on the experience of

Rushdie and his contemporary
Divided into six sections:

Midnight's children
Politics of India and Pakistan
Indo-Anglian literature
Movie and Television
Experience of migrants, Indian migrants to
Britain
Thatcher/foot election, question of Palestine
 Midnight's
Children 1981 -Won the Booker Prize and the
James Tait Black Memorial
Prize in 1981

-Deals with India's transition and

Partition in 1947

-Example of Postcolonial,
Postmodern and Magical realist
literature
 Errata or Unreliable narration in
Midnight's children

- The story is told by the main protagonist Saleem Sinai

- Set in the context of actual historical events

- Saleem narrates the history in a wrong way

- People raised questions against it

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 Fact or myth
Narration
Ganesha sat at the feet of Ganesha sat at the feet of the
the bard Vyasa and take poet Valmiki and took down
down the entire text of the
the Ramayana
Mahabharata

Where is Mumbadevi’s day?

The calendar of festivals City's Patron Goddess
includes a perfectly Good Mumbadevi had fallen out of
Mumbadevi day favour with contemporary
Bombayites, the calendar of
festivals reveals her decline..
How could Lata Mangeshkar have been
heard singing on all India Radio as early
as 1946 ?

Why does Saleem allege that the brand

of Cigarettes, state Express 555, is
manufactured by W.D. and H.U. wills ?

-Pakistani Army
-Bombay bus routes

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About Amritsar Saleem says…

“Dyer entered the Jallianwala Bagh compound followed

by fifty white troups”

In fact there were fifty troups but they were not white…

- This odd behavior requires an explanation by the

author

10
An old gentle man told to Salmaan Rushdie in one of his
Seminar…

“If you're going to use Hindu traditions in your story Mr.

Rushdie, don't you think you could take the trouble to look it
up ?

11
-Unreliable narrators - stupid or less able to work out what's
going on around them then reader

-Narrator’s faulty Vision

-Then why all this errata ?

12
Defend his mistakes:

“When I wrote the novel and whenever a conflict arose

between literal and remembered truth, I would favour the
remembered version”

It is Memory's truth

13
Conclusion :

- Saleem's unreliable narration might be, I believed, an

useful analogy for the way in which we all, every day,
attempt to read the world… Rushdie
- He says Saleem's story is not a history, but it plays with
historical shapes

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Works cited :

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and

Criticism, 1981-1991. 1st American ed. London : [New York,
N.Y., U.S.A.]: Granta Books ; In association with Viking, 1991.

Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. Toronto: Vintage

Canada, 1997.

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