Jason - Rushdie - 2/28

The further along in the book I get the more it seems the structure of it deals with the juxtaposition or superimposition of the workings of the inner mind and the workings of the everything else outside of the mind. Much of Saleem’s narrative style could be explained as having the quality of attributing the processes of his mind, which he describes as being “messy” (with ideas and ideas of things leaking into one another so that they overlap and create new meaning or meanings that otherwise wouldn’t exist), and placing those “messy” associations into the world outside of his mind.

By doing this, Saleem implicitly creates meaning in things. This is evident in almost any section of the novel where one object is associated with another. This practice of creating meaning seems to finally come into direct opposition with Shiva, the other original Midnight Child, who holds the exact opposite opinion: there is no meaning or purpose for why things are the way they are.

On Pg. 252-3, Saleem has a mental conference with Shiva, during which time Shiva essentially states that he seeks to control the M.C.C. and make it do what he wants. This seems to set the stage for an “epic battle between good and evil.” The joke might be that this encounter with Shiva, and all other M.C.C. members for that matter, are all within Saleem’s mind. If so, the story in which Saleem the character exists might just be a veneer for a debate over whether things have meaning or not.

And because Saleem seems to believe in form (by performing his duty as narrator he implicitly looks for it) that belief might be justification enough to say that meaning exists in the world (which appears to consist of a mixing of the inner mind and the outer enviorment). But because there seem to be two sets of inner-minds (that of the young Saleem the character and that of the older Saleem the narrator) and two sets of external realities (that of the family history and political history in which Saleem the character lives and that of the pickle factory and Padma in which Narrator Saleem lives) it seems difficult to attribute more truth to one set of perspectives over another. They all could be the same illusion, which might mean: that to believe in meaning and purpose is to deceive yourself.