Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

 This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip barad sir to critically engage with the Novel Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie , To explore various point like Character Study—Midnight's Children, Narrative Technique—Midnight's Children, Deconstructive Reading of Symbols, Mr. Rushdie and Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Nation and Hybridity: Postcoloniality in Midnight's Children.

Video 1

1. More Than a Machine

• The bulldozer starts as a literal piece of construction equipment, but Rushdie uses it as a metaphor that contains two sides—construction and destruction. The etymology of “bulldoze” (to intimidate/coerce) deepens this meaning.

•  This point sets the foundation. The bulldozer is no longer neutral—it embodies both the promise of progress and the threat of erasure. Rushdie’s choice of this object makes it an ideal vessel for exploring how something designed to build can also be weaponized to destroy.

2. A Symbol of Emergency

• Rushdie situates the bulldozer in the historical context of India’s Emergency (1975–77) and Sanjay Gandhi’s slum clearance drives. These events inspired the fictional bulldozer’s role in Midnight’s Children.

•  The bulldozer here moves from metaphor to historical-political emblem. It represents state overreach, authoritarianism, and the suspension of civil liberties. The Emergency context cements the bulldozer as a recognisable shorthand for state power in moments of crisis.

3. Machinery of Erasure

•  Rushdie depicts bulldozers literally and symbolically wiping people away—dust covering individuals like ghosts, official language masking chaos, homes snapped like twigs, and lives dismissed as collateral damage.

• This is the heart of the metaphor. The bulldozer becomes the tool of a state that erases not only physical spaces but also dignity, humanity, and voice. The “machinery” is not just mechanical—it’s bureaucratic and ideological, operating with chilling efficiency to overwrite memory and identity.

4. Losing a Piece of History

•  The destruction of the silver spittoon is equated with the loss of freedom. It’s not about the object’s monetary value—it’s about its role as the last physical link to family, identity, and heritage.

•  This personalises the political. The bulldozer doesn’t just flatten houses—it obliterates individual histories. Rushdie uses the intimate loss of a single object to mirror the collective loss experienced by a community, making the tragedy emotionally tangible for the reader.

5. A Timeless Symbol

• Even decades later, the bulldozer remains a potent emblem of coercive state power. The metaphor resonates globally, wherever governments use the language of “improvement” to mask displacement or erasure.

• The bulldozer escapes its original time and place, becoming a universally recognisable image of authoritarian control. Rushdie’s use ensures the reader keeps questioning who benefits and who disappears when power is exercised under the guise of progress.

Video 2

1. Need to Study the Narrative Before the Film

Before watching the film adaptation of Midnight’s Children, it’s essential to understand the novel’s narrative design because the film does not fully replicate the structure or techniques Rushdie employs in the text. The book, studied as a postcolonial work, combines multiple storytelling traditions and intentionally disrupts conventional Western realism. Its layered narration, temporal shifts, and cultural references create an experience that cinema, due to its time and format constraints, can only partially capture. Without grasping these features, viewers may miss the richness of its form and meaning.

2. Hybridization of Techniques

Rushdie fuses Western postmodernist strategies with Eastern oral storytelling traditions, creating a narrative that is both experimental and deeply rooted in Indian culture. The Western side contributes the novel form itself, attention to historical realism, and Aristotelian cause-and-effect logic, while the Eastern side adds the “masala” quality—episodic adventures, fantastical incidents, and mythic echoes. This blending produces a hybrid narrative form that reflects India’s colonial past and postcolonial identity, making the story a literary embodiment of cultural fusion.

3. “Story Within a Story” Structure

Western frame narrative metaphors: 

• Russian dolls – A narrative structure where stories are placed one inside another, like nested dolls, with each inner story revealing more depth or a new perspective on the outer one.
  

• Chinese boxes – A frame-within-a-frame approach where narrators or contexts keep shifting, giving the reader layered points of view and an evolving interpretation of events.Examples – In Frankenstein, the story moves from Walton’s letters to Frankenstein’s account, and then to the creature’s own voice, echoing Plato’s layered dialogues.

Indian oral narrative parallels:

• Panchatantra – A wise Brahmin, Vishnu Sharma, teaches a king’s foolish sons life skills through a chain of animal fables, each carrying moral lessons that connect back to the main frame story.

• Kathasaritsagara – Begins with Shiva telling tales to Parvati, which are passed through Gunadhya and Somadeva before reaching Queen Suryavati, creating multiple storytelling layers.

• Vikram–Betal – King Vikramaditya repeatedly carries the spirit Betal, who tells him a moral tale each time, ending with a riddle that forces Vikram to start the journey over.

• Simhasana Battisi – King Bhoja is stopped by 32 magical statues, each narrating a story about King Vikramaditya’s virtues before allowing him to sit on the throne.

• Arabian Nights (Alif Laila) – Scheherazade keeps herself alive by telling King Shahryar a new story every night, each tale leading into another, sustaining suspense and delay.

4. Mythological Storytelling as Frame

In Indian epics, stories are often framed by a larger mythic context that shapes the audience’s understanding. The Ramayana begins with Valmiki’s philosophical question to Narada, which sets the stage for Rama’s story, while the Mahabharata is told through multiple narrators across generations. Modern dramatists like Girish Karnad adopt this method, using myths as frames to comment on human nature and contemporary life. In all cases, the frame narrative gives cultural resonance and emotional depth to the embedded tales.

5. Application in Midnight’s Children

Rushdie adapts the frame narrative concept through the metaphor of pickle jars, each preserving a specific memory or chapter from the narrator’s life. Saleem tells his story to Padma in a way reminiscent of Scheherazade in Arabian Nights, where storytelling becomes an act of survival and identity-making. The 30 jars correspond to the 30 chapters of the novel, with one left empty, suggesting the open-endedness of history and personal memory. This structure both organizes the novel and emphasizes the act of preservation through storytelling.

6. Fusion of Western & Eastern Devices

Western	Eastern/Indian
Unreliable narrator	Sutradhar/Natya style
Social realism, historical events	Magical realism, fantasy
Historiographic metafiction	Mythic parody, episodic frames
Myth for universality	Myth for parody and cultural satire

7. Significance of the Structure

The novel’s structure is not an ornamental device but a core element of its meaning. Rushdie’s layered narration mirrors the fragmented nature of memory and the subjective retelling of history. By embedding stories within stories and using the pickle jar metaphor, he underscores how myths, historical facts, and personal experiences are all subject to alteration over time. The form itself becomes a commentary on the nature of truth, suggesting that all narratives—whether epic, historical, or personal—are essentially “pickled” interpretations.

8. Film Adaptation Limitations

Translating the complex structure of Midnight’s Children into film presents significant challenges. The cinematic medium often demands a more linear, time-bound narrative, which means much of the novel’s multi-layered storytelling, shifting perspectives, and embedded tales are lost. While Rushdie contributed to the screenplay, the adaptation cannot fully replicate the richness of the novel’s chutnified narrative. A long-form web series or multi-episode adaptation might be better suited to preserving the book’s intricate storytelling methods.

References

 “ How a Bulldozer Became a Metaphor for Power | Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie.” DoE-MKBU, youtu.be/opu-zd4JNbo?si=Si9WA-hutCp0Zko-. Accessed 14 Aug. 2025.

“ Narrative Technique | Midnight’s Children .” DoE-MKBU, youtu.be/opu-zd4JNbo?si=Si9WA-hutCp0Zko-. Accessed 14 Aug. 2025.