One thing distinct about the narrator’s voice is that his voice shift from present to past tensed narration he seems to evoke himself as if in the present by speaking to the audience familiarly. Part of the familiarity, I think, comes from the self-abasing satirical undertones Salim employs in narration. Stating his actions as allegorical or symbolic reduces them to readership but then again empowers the narrator because of his ability to suspend judgment in his following by reducing himself before they get a chance to. Rushdie beats the hand of judgment to the punch by having his protagonist declare the artifice of his constructions, an “active metaphorical mode of connection.”
The pace picks up as Salim is woken up for the “real thing.” The list of objects being used for the game of strategy he is helping in set the pace as he is awoken by his uncle. His uncle also calls him “sonny.” Also, the text apologizes for Salim before it puts him in the abduction scene. “An eleven-year-old boy cannot judge whether a President is truly corrupt, even if gongs-and-pips say he is; it is not for eleven-year olds to say whether Mirza’s association with the feeble Republican Party should have disqualified him from high office under the new régime. Saleem Sinai made no political judgments…”
Rushdie sets the strange scene of the home invasion as it is happening in the present. “Black smoked-windowed limousine pausing at darkened house. Sentries guard the door with crossed rifles; which part, to let us through. I am marching at my uncle’s side, in step, through half-lit corridors; until we burst into a dark room with a shaft of moonlight spotlighting a four-poster bed. A mosquito net hangs over the bed like a shroud.” The opening of this sequence of events speaks of manhood as it pertains to fatherhood. Even though, Salim is inventing his father figures his initiation in manhood is very real and dire. (332-33)
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