Fragmentation in Midnight’s children

• Paper No. 11: • Name: Trivedi Hezal K. • PG Reg. No. PG15101040 • Roll No:32• M.A. – English Regular, Semester-3 Year: 2016 • Submitted to: S.B. Gardi Department of English • Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University • (Gujarat – India)

Sir Salman Rushdie: An early life history

• Born June 19, 1947 • British-Indian Novelist • Genre : Magic Realism,

Satire , Post colonialism• Major works – Midnight’s

Children(1981), Satanic Verses(1989), Imaginary Homelands(1991)...

• 20 prestigious Awards winner

Midnight’s children: A general view• Midnight's Children is a

1981 book by Salman Rushdie that deals with India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of British India. It is considered an example of postcolonial literature, Fragmentation element and magical realism.

Concept of fragmentation in literature

• Fragmentation can take place in language, sentence , structure or grammar.

• Various elements, concerning plot, characters, themes, imagery and factual references are fragmented and dispersed throughout the entire work.

• Fragmented narratives jumble up the sequencing of a story, challenging the reader to piece together the different components of the story to make sense of it.

Major Fragmentation

• Fragmentation within India as country

• Fragmentation within the Midnight’s Children

• Fragmentation within Saleem as a character

• Fragmentation within relationship

Fragmentation within India as a country

Fragmentation within the novel• In Midnight’s Children, Rushdie places importance on

fragments in characters and objects.• In the novel, fragmentation of time, structure and character,

and also Rushdie’s use of historical events as a literary device to expose the fragmentation of human minds been corrupted with religion, caste, race, and other social elements, which in-turn leads to the fragmentation of the country.

• Rushdie emphasizes the fragments within the family. The family that Saleem is born into is not one built of true love but a love forced and pieced together. Protagonist narrates his story in many parts by fragmenting his narration.

Fragmentation within Saleem as a character

• Inability to distinguish heritage, inability to contain single identity + invention of Indian identity

• “my inheritance includes this gift, the gift of inventing new parents for myself whenever necessary. The power of giving birth to fathers and mothers: which Ahmed wanted and never had.” (1.8.6)

• Saleem is physically fragmented• Body fragmentation and mutilation • Saleem can not separate his body

from the body of India and it has led him to become ill.

Fragmentation within relationship Relationship/ Love

• The perforated sheet serves as the first major form of fragmentation the reader encounters. through which Adam Aziz falls in love with his future wife. Adam Aziz unable to see his future wife as a whole, he falls in love with her in fragments.

• The perforated sheet performs several different symbolic functions through the novel.

• Amina’s attempts to fall in love with her husband are also fragmented.

Conclusion

• In this novel historiographic, metafiction and postcoloniality overlap in a fragmented narrative to reveal fragmentation of a Post – colonial country and its people and to articulate an inevitable relationship between them. By exploring fragmentation on the thematic and formal level, the novel deconstructs concepts of unity, stability and closure foregrounding the subject’s struggle for the construction of a Post – colonial identity within an extremely syncretic and plural reality like that of India.