Magical Realism in 'Midnight's Children' by Salman Rushdie

1. Magical Realism in
‘Midnight’s Children’
by Salman Rushdie
Prepared by Gopi Dervaliya

2. Personal Information
● Name : Gopi Dervaliya
● Roll no. 08
● Sem : 3
● Paper Name : Indian English Literature-Post-Independence
● Paper no. : 202
● Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English-M.K.B.U
● Email : gopidervaliya02@gmail.com

3. Road Map
1 2 3 4 5
About the Author
About the Novel
Magical Realism
History & Fiction
Conclusion

4. About the author
● Salman Rushdie, in full Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, born
June 19, 1947, Bombay, India, Indian-born writer whose
allegorical novels examine historical and philosophical issues by
means of surreal characters, brooding humour, and an effusive
and melodramatic prose style.
● His treatment of sensitive religious and political subjects made
him a controversial figure.
● In August 2022 Rushdie was attacked and seriously injured while
onstage in Chautauqua, New York. He had been scheduled to give
a speech about the United States being a refuge for exiled artists.
Rushdie faced a long recovery and ultimately lost one eye.
● Rushdie received the Booker Prize in 1981 for ‘Midnight’s
Children’. The novel subsequently won the Booker of Bookers
(1993) and the Best of the Booker (2008).

5. About the Novel
● ‘Midnight's Children’ is a groundbreaking novel written by Salman
Rushdie and published in 1981. It stands as a seminal work in
contemporary literature and is known for its rich fusion of history,
magic, and politics.
● The narrative revolves around the life of Saleem Sinai, who is born at
the stroke of midnight on India's independence day in 1947, imbued
with telepathic powers that connect him to 1,001 other children
born at the same moment.
● As the story unfolds, Rushdie masterfully weaves together Saleem's
personal journey with the tumultuous political and social changes in
post-independence India, creating a mesmerizing tapestry of
magical realism that offers a unique perspective on the country's
history and identity. The novel has been celebrated for its intricate
narrative structure, allegorical depth, and exploration of the
complexities of a nation's birth and identity.

6. What is Magical Realism ?
● Magic realism, magical realism and marvellous realism are highly disputed terms,
not only due to their complicated history but also because they encompass many
variants. Their wide scope means that they often appear to encroach on other
genres and terms.
● The term magic realism was coined by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925 to
describe a tendency in German painting which demonstrated an altered reality
(Bowers, 2004, p. 8).
● Some writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in
representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and
dreamlike elements, as well as with materials derived from myth and fairy tales.
● For example, Gabriel García Márquez's ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’(Abrams #)

7. How does magic realism differ from other literary genres, such
as fantasy and science fiction ?
● Any genre of fiction can get at truths. Some science fiction and fantasy do so, and are
serious fiction. Some SF and fantasy are escapist. But magical realism is always
serious, never escapist, because it is trying to convey the reality of one or several
worldviews that actually exist, or have existed.
● Science fiction and fantasy are always speculative. They are always positing that some
aspects of objective reality were different. Magical realism is not speculative and does
not conduct thought experiments. Instead, it tells its stories from the perspective of
people who live in our world and experience a different reality from the one we call
objective.
● If there is a ghost in a story of magical realism, the ghost is not a fantasy element but a
manifestation of the reality of people who believe in and have "real" experiences of
ghosts. Magical realist fiction depicts the real world of people whose reality is
different from ours. It's not a thought experiment. It's not speculation. Magical
realism endeavors to show us the world through other eyes.

8. Magic Realism in ‘Midnight’s Children’
● Rushdie adopts the device of Magic realism in ‘Midnight's children.’
● Magic Realism is a term originally coined by German out Critic Frantz Roh in 1925 to
describe the tendencies in the work of certain German painters in the early twenties.
(Kumar #)
● Salman Rushdie has written critically acclaimed magical realist novels.
● His ‘Midnight's Children’, ‘Shame’ , and ‘The Satanic Verses’ incorporate the technique
of magic realism.
● While reading the ‘Midnight's Children’ we find that the whole novel is a perfect
combination of reality and imaginary between the real and the unreal.
● There are many places in ‘Midnight's Children’ where Rushdie used the device of magic
realism for the framework of the novel.
● When we go through the novel, we find that Saleem Sinai, the protagonist, has the gift of
having an incredible sense of smell which allows him to determine other's thoughts and
emotions. This gift of Saleem is the same to that of his grandfather Adam Ajiz who also
had the same large nose and magical gift. In the novel we see Adam's incredible sense of
smell.

9. ● Magic Realism is a mythical movement connected with a style of writing or
performance that incorporates magical or paranormal events into realistic narrative
without questioning the questionability of the events.
● Magic realism is related to, but characteristic from, surrealism, due to its focus on the
material object and the actual existence of things in the world, as opposed to the
more cerebral, psychological and subconscious reality that the surrealists explored.
● Saleem's overtly unreliable narrative also calls into question readings of Midnight's
Children as magic realism. A defining trait of magic realism is that it’s supernatural
elements are "admitted, accepted and integrated into the rationality and materiality
of literary realism".(Barnaby #)

10. History and Fiction
● In Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie writes:
“History is always ambiguous. Facts are hard to establish, and capable of being
given many meanings. Reality is built on our prejudices, misconceptions and
ignorance as well as on our perceptiveness and knowledge. The reading of
Saleem’s unreliable”.(Parkash #)
● The protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ is Saleem Sinai
and through him Rushdie tries to make the connection between historical and
personal.
● This boundary between historical and personal, in the novel, is blurred in such a
way that historical becomes personal and personal becomes historical and what
is exactly personal and historical remains unclear for the reader. (Dr. N. H. KALLUR #)

11. ● Saleem Sinai’s life is connected to history in such a way that it cannot be
separated.
● So, Rushdie in the very beginning of the novel tells us that Saleem Sinai is
handcuffed to history. Beginning with Saleem’s birth on the day of India’s
independence,
● Rushdie very beautifully connects Saleem’s personal life with history as if history
is happening for him.
● His rewriting of Indian history is the part of subaltern historiography from the
viewpoint of an individual.
● Salman Rushdie says that history is not only which is documented in historical
archives or written in our history books but it is also which lives in the mind of
people who saw it happening. Thus, there are alternative histories also that are
based on memories.
continue…

12. The pickle
● Saleem Sinai, the narrator of the novel, is born with a pickle jar on his
head. The pickle jar is a symbol of Saleem's alienation and isolation. It
also represents the burden of history that he carries as a midnight's child.
● The talking pickle also plays an important role in Saleem's development
as a storyteller. The pickle tells Saleem stories about the history of India
and the world, which helps Saleem to understand his own place in the
world.
● The power of storytelling : Rushdie uses the pickle’s stories to explore
the power of storytelling to shape our understanding of the world.
● The importance of memory : The pickle’s stories help Saleem to
remember his past and to understand his own identity.

13. continue…
● Chutney is a cold sauce made from fragmented fruit,
vinegar, sugar, and spices.
● It is sold in jars and Indians often eat it with meat or
cheese.
● In Midnight's Children, Saleem Sinai learns the secret
of pickling the best chutney from Mary, his erstwhile
ayah.
● The secret is that “because she (Mary) puts her feelings
inside them.” (1981; MC)
● The pickling process for the Indian chutney is the
mixture of all sorts of fragmented sources. In Saleem’s
mind, the chutney recalls his own feeling and memory of
the past history, the ups and downs in his whole life.

14. conclusion
In conclusion, ‘Midnight's Children’ by Salman Rushdie is a masterful example
of magical realism, skillfully weaving together magical elements with the
ordinary, thereby creating a narrative that explores complex themes of
identity, history, and the intertwining of the personal and the political. The
magical abilities of the midnight's children and surreal elements like the
talking pickle serve not merely as fantastical occurrences but as metaphors for
the multifaceted nature of India's post-independence experience. Salman
Rushdie's use of magical realism in this novel enhances its richness and depth,
making it a thought-provoking and unique work that continues to captivate
readers with its imaginative storytelling and allegorical depth.

15. Referances
Abrams, Meyer Howard. A glossary of literary terms. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999. WordPress.com,
https://mthoyibi.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/a-glossary-of-literary-terms-7th-ed_m-h-abrams-1999.pdf. Accessed
16 October 2023.
Barnaby, Edward. “Airbrushed History: Photography, Realism, and Rushdie's "Midnight's Children."” Mosaic: An
Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 38, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-16. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44030365.
Accessed 17 October 2023.
Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magic(al) Realism. Taylor & Francis, 2004. London and New York: Routledge,
https://bayanebartar.org/file-dl/library/Linguistic1/Magical-Realism.pdf. Accessed 16 October 2023.
Dr. N. H. KALLUR, SRINIVASA G.N. “History and Fiction in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.” An International
Open Access, Peer-reviewed, Refereed Journal, vol. 10, no. 10, 2022, pp. 181-185. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF CREATIVE RESEARCH THOUGHTS, https://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2210254.pdf. Accessed 17 October 2023.

16. Kumar, Ashok. “Narrative Technique In Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.” Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in
Allied Education, vol. 9, no. 17, 2015, pp. 1-2. Ignited Minds Jounals, http://ipublisher.in/p/3314. Accessed 17 October 2023.
Liu, Yunou. “From Pickles of Chutney to National Identity: The Fragmentation in Midnight’s Children.” Academic Journal of
Humanities & Social Sciences, vol. 3, no. 11, 2020, pp. 62-68. Francis Academic Press, https://francis-
press.com/uploads/papers/Jw7cWTlyqIvc3xZ2bCjfd87BIDlNB21wtk91CWX1.pdf. Accessed 17 October 2023.
Mani Mehta, Shabir Wani. “Magical Realism Reflected in the Salman Rushdie’s Novel Midnight’s Children.” International Journal on
Arts, Management and Humanities, vol. 6, no. 2, 2017, pp. 186-188. Research Trend,
https://www.researchtrend.net/ijamh/pdf/Magical%20Realism%20Reflected%20in%20the%20Salman%20Rushdie%E2%80
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Parkash, Som. “Magical Realism, Narcissistic Narrative and Indian History in the Fiction of Salman Rushdie.” An Internationally
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Sociology & Humanities, http://www.irjmsh.com/article_pdf?id=327.pdf. Accessed 17 October 2023.

17. Thank
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