Identity in Salman Rushdie essays

Identity in Salman Rushdie essays Examine the construction of identity in Salman Rushdies Midnights Children. Colonialism is the consolidation of imperial power through the attempt to govern lands that are now occupied. Postcolonial literature sets out to oppose the colonialist perspective. They develop a perspective that retrieves states of marginality and is concerned with mans quest for his identity. Postcolonial theories relate the quest of their individual hero or heroines to the past of their lives. Salman Rushdie born in an Indian Muslim family is a postcolonial writer. After graduating Rushdie returned home to Pakistan where his parents had moved, whilst there he felt a sense of alienation having been so long away from his cultural roots that he decided to return to England. This is a feeling that many of the postcolonial writers identify with. Many of these writers like Salman Rushdie, Sunetra Gupta and Rukhsana Ahmed are caught in between two cultures that in many cases are very contrasting. It is very difficult for these writers to adapt to both cultures and because of his they find it difficult to construct their identity. This is a problem that the narrator Saleem Sinai faces in Salman Rushdies novel Midnights Children. The search for a country with secular ideals is one of the themes of Midnights Children. Rushdie makes an attempt to explore some of the darkness of that experience by relating the family history of Saleem to the history of Indias freedom struggle. Saleems search for identity parallels to and is directly connected with the history of a nation that is constructing itself. Saleem was born at the hour that ends the British Raj, sustains the identities of a narrator and becomes the consciousness of the whole country. Saleem assumes many identities he is a distinctive mixture of the creation of Indian culture and that of Islamic tradi...