How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
For the next three decades, there was to be no escape. Soothsayers had prophesied me, newspapers celebrated my arrival, politicos ratified my authenticity. I was left entirely without a say in the matter. (1.1.1)
You'd think that Saleem would be happy about all these people celebrating his birth, but he only sees it as condemning him to a certain future.
Quote #2
Soumitra the time-traveller said, 'I'm telling you-all this is pointless-they'll finish us before we start!' we all ignored him (2.16.26)
Do you guys know the story of Cassandra? She's a character in Greek mythology, and she's condemned to being able to tell the future without anyone ever believing her. Sounds just like this quote doesn't it?
Quote #3
This: waiting to be drafted, I went in search of friendly, obliterating, sleep-giving, Paradise-bringing bombs. (2.23.6)
You can't get very much more fatalist than this. Not only does Saleem believe he's going to die, but he's totally accepted it, and even embraced it.
Quote #4
The terrible fatalism which had overcome me of late had taken on an even more terrible form; drowning in the disintegration of family, of both countries to which I had belonged, of everything which can sanely be called real, lost in the sorrow of my filthy unrequited love, I sought out the oblivion of-I'm making it sound too noble; no orotund phrases must be used. Baldly, then: I rode the night-streets of the city, looking for death. (2.23.52)
Why do you think Saleem feels that the end of his world is inevitable? Why doesn't he try to fight it?
Quote #5
Wrath enabled me to survive the soft siren temptations of invisibility; anger made me determined, after I was released from vanishment in the shadow of a Friday Mosque, to 'begin, from that moment forth, to choose my own, undestined future (3.26.39)
Well this is an entirely different Saleem than we're used to. After he regains his memories, Saleem is obsessed with the idea of saving India. Do you think losing his memories has anything to do with that?
Quote #6
In the Widows' Hostel, I was taught, harshly, once-and-for-all, the lesson of No Escape; now, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Anglepoised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. (3.26.41)
The Widow sterilized all of the midnight's children, which Saleem interprets as destroying their futures and possibilities. Saleem says that there is no escape, but he also says that there are tons of new midnight's children out there waiting to be born. Which one is it?
Quote #7
Of late, in spite of my stoic fatalism about the spreading cracks, I have smelled, on Padma's breath, the dream of an alternative (but impossible) future; ignoring the implacable finalities of inner fissures, she has begun to exude the bitter-sweet fragrance of hope-for-marriage. (3.27.3)
Padma, unlike Saleem, is not fatalistic. She believes in a future, and the possibility for change.
Quote #8
If I, snot-nosed stain-faced etcetera, had had a hard time of it, then so had she, my subcontinental twin sister; and now that I had given myself the right to choose a better future, I was resolved that the nation should share it, too. I think that when I tumbled out into dust, shadow and amused cheers, I had already decided to save the country. (3.27.5)
Even though this seems like a bright moment where everything can change, it ends just like everything else. Saleem fails to accomplish anything, and somehow ends up even worse than when he began.
Quote #9
'You were born from bhangis, you will remain a dirty type all your life'; on the four hundred and twentieth day after my arrival, I left my uncle's house, deprived of family ties, returned at last to that true inheritance of poverty and destitution of which I had been cheated for so long by the crime of Mary Pereira. (3.27.39)
Saleem's aunt says that his birth determined his whole life, but is that true? Elsewhere he says that he doesn't belong to the rich or to the poor, so hasn't he escaped the fate of his switcheroo?
Quote #10
But what was in my mind was that once again destiny, inevitability, the antithesis of choice had come to rule my life, once again a child was to be born to a father who was not his father, although by a terrible irony the child would be the true grandchild of his father's parents; trapped in the web of these interweaving genealogies, it may even have occurred to me to wonder what was beginning, what was ending, and whether another secret countdown was in progress, and what would be born with my child. (3.28.52)
This happens when Celine is freaking out before Aadam is born. It's funny that Saleem should talk about family being without choice. That's the way most of us see it, but he's talked throughout the whole novel about how he was able to make new parents for himself at will. Darn it Saleem, get your story straight.