How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Smile, smile, it is your history I am keeping in my head. Once it was set down in old lost books. Once I knew where there was a grave with pierced feet carved on the tombstone, which bled once a year. Even my memory is going now; but I know, although I can't read.' Illiteracy, dismissed with a flourish; literature crumbled beneath the rage of his sweeping hand. (1.1.22)
Tai's statement pits oral histories against written ones. Which side wins?
Quote #2
Padma—our plump Padma—is sulking magnificently. (She can't read and, like all fish-lovers, dislikes other people knowing anything she doesn't […]). (1.2.1)
By being illiterate, Padma gets linked to Tai the boatman and his nonliterary heritage. At least she doesn't think as much as he does.
Quote #3
'But what is so precious,' Padma demands, her right hand slicing the air updownup in exasperation, 'to need all this writing-s***ing?' (1.2.1)
Well, that should tell you how much Padma cares about writing.
Quote #4
'You do it on purpose,' she says, 'to make me look stupid. I am not stupid. I have read several books.' (1.2.56)
This should probably put it into perspective for you how strange it is for the characters in the novel to see Saleem writing every day. Naseem says this to Aadam Aziz, and it makes you realize that you have probably read more books than she has ever seen.
Quote #5
And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings-by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks. (1.3.3)
We guess that kids these days probably don't pickle anything, but you should know that pickling is thought to have been invented in India over 4000 years ago. It is one of the oldest ways of preserving food, you know, before refrigerators were invented.
Quote #6
But here is Padma at my elbow, bullying me back into the world of linear narrative, the universe of what-happened-next: 'At this rate,' Padma complains, 'you'll be two hundred years old before you manage to tell about your birth.' (1.3.4)
This novel is so meta. Do you know what a linear narrative is? It's when a timeline moves from point A to point B to point C. That's normal. Midnight's Children is totally not linear. It goes from point X to point H and maybe over to number five for fun.
Quote #7
[...] He once told me: 'When Muhammed prophesied, people wrote down what he said on palm leaves, which were kept any old how in a box. After he died, Abubakr and the others tried to remember the correct sequence; but they didn't have very good memories.' Another wrong turning: instead of rewriting a sacred book, my father lurked in a ruin, awaiting demons. (1.6.10)
It looks like Saleem isn't the only one obsessed with a book. His dad is, too. But while his dad wants to put things in the right order, Saleem doesn't even care about getting events entirely wrong.
Quote #8
By the time the rains came at the end of June, the foetus was fully formed inside her womb. Knees and nose were present; and as many heads as would grow were already in position. What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book-perhaps an encyclopaedia-even a whole language. (1.7.44)
What a cute paragraph! Can he walk yet? What do you think it tells you about Saleem that he imagines himself as completely made out of words?
Quote #9
'Oh yes.' my father said as Methwold cocked a grave unsmiling head, 'many old families possessed such curses. In our line, it is handed down from eldest son to eldest son-in writing only, because merely to speak it is to unleash its power, you know.' (1.8.18)
Just as Tai prioritized the spoken word over the written word, Ahmed Sinai acknowledges that the spoken word has more power than the written word because the written curse doesn't do anything, but the spoken curse does.
Quote #10
Matter of fact descriptions of the outre and bizarre, and their reverse, namely heightened, stylized versions of the everyday-these techniques, which are also attitudes of mind, I have lifted-or perhaps absorbed-from the most formidable of the midnight children, my rival, my fellow-changeling, the supposed son of Wee Willie Winkie: Shiva-of-the-knees. (2.15.42)
More meta! Whether you call it magical realism or hysterical realism, the style of writing described here is exactly how literary critics would describe Rushdie's writing style. Why do you think he attributes this to Shiva?