At first, I was convinced that Mumtaz was going to be Saleem's mother...she is, after all, described as coming out of the womb "black as midnight." The narrator is born at midnight. And the book is called, Midnight's Children...durrr.
Anyway...I can see that Rushdie is somehow linking the ideas of dark skin, darkness, and being underground. Thematically, that's clear. I'm just not sure what it is he's trying to say. Does it have something to do with social status? We are in a country where the caste system is rampant. Does it have to do with emasculation? (Nadir Kahn is a poet and a refugee, both of which are kind of "unmanly" things - and my gender studies mind twitches at the use of this word - to be. He even gets chased out of the cellar after they realize Mumtaz is still a virgin. Feminization? Yin and Yang, or is that too Confuscius for this book?
Young Mumtaz remarries later, in June, the bright, sunshiney month.
...???
I'm not really sure what to write about all these things. I can just see that they're slowly being developed as themes, and inevitably they'll be woven together, like threads. But if I made preemptive judgement, I'd be just talking out of my ass.
Not trying to be crude...just honest. Arrrgh.
Well, you're right. And this is how the reader feels... how to make sense of all these things. And will they be woven together? After all, the tale of birth and ancestry turned out to be the wrong tale! Robin.
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