Thursday, March 30, 2000

Quentin's Tarrentino-esque Suicide in The Sound and the Fury

One of the main concerns facing many readers of Faulkner centres upon the interpretation of his frequently non-linear and freely associative narrative techniques, usually referred to as stream of consciousness writing. The Sound and the Fury is no exception, as the first two sections of the novel are written from the perspective of a mentally handicapped adult and a neurotic and suicidal adolescent (or young post-adolescent). However, it is through these rather disjointed narratives that one can more fully appreciate the relationships between the various family members. The principle focus of Faulkner’s text is Caddy, the sole daughter in the Compson household. While Benjy was certainly loved by his sister, there seems to be a much closer relationship between her and Quentin. Throughout his section of the narrative, Quentin almost single-mindedly concentrates on his sister, reliving old memories to the point of confusing them with his contemporary world: “How many where there?”. His narrative – in a sense ‘a day in the life’ of a mentally unstable individual – is much more disjointed and seemingly arbitrary than Benjy’s, which despite its free association of memories still retained a cohesive structure. Once a reader begins to understand Benjy’s conventions his text is rather easy to comprehend. Alternately, Quentin’s narrative continually degenerates into a neurotic stream of consciousness, especially toward the end of his section as he approaches the moment of his suicide.

Quentin’s section is perhaps most vividly able to portray the corruption of the entire Compson family (or dynasty, as Faulkner relates in his Appendix to this novel, which traces the Compsons from colonial times). It is he who seems to be the last “great white hope” for his family, and it is for him that a part of the estate is sold to pay for a Harvard education. Of all the members of the family except perhaps his mother, it is Quentin who most fully internalizes the concept of the majestic old South along with a sense of southern nobility. Within this context he is to be the defender of his sister, and indeed as the eldest son, he must act to protect the entire family. When Quentin reveals his feelings toward his sister in relation to her involvement with Dalton Ames, there is a profound sense of powerlessness in his thoughts. In fact, one could argue that he has not only internalized the southern chivalric code, but the extreme sense of meaninglessness and absurdity felt by the South after the American Civil War. It is possible to understand his rather pathetic “fighting spirit” in regards to this profound sense of purposelessness. There are in fact two fights in this section of the novel, although Quentin’s narrative confuses the two. Early in the year he had challenged Dalton Ames to a duel in order that Caddy’s honour could be reclaimed, which he of course believed to have been tarnished by their sexual relationship. Dalton had refused the challenge, and apparently while remembering this instance, Quentin proceeded to lash out at Gerald Bland, who promptly defended himself by bloodying his attacker. Such violent tendencies reflect a self-hatred and nihilism inherent in suicidal individuals: the urge to fight a superior opponent, which was the case with both Ames and Bland, is a repressed desire to kill oneself.

So what does in fact lead to Quentin’s suicide? Certainly there are numerous factors in such an maximal and final decision. The aforementioned sense of powerlessness, despite adherence to the Southern code of chivalry and nobility, extended into everything surrounding Quentin. He tried to argue against his father’s nihilism, yet everywhere he looked was evidence to support an absurd existence. Yet the most overwhelming element present in Quentin’s section is his relationship with his sister Caddy. Much like many men throughout recorded history he views his sister within the virgin / whore paradigm. For him his entire sense of Southern nobility is maintained by his sister’s virginity, and its loss is the final proof for Quentin of the degeneration of that mentality, and as well that all existence is absurd. When he proclaims to his father that it was in fact he who took his sister’s virginity, he is attempting to preserve her dignity by (in a sense) “keeping it in the family”. Yet this very passage demonstrates how corrupt his vision of Southern chivalry has in fact become. Perhaps it even portrays the extent to which his mind has become unhinged and all his thoughts are theoretical. Certainly his life is lived in the abstract: one cannot interpret Quentin’s perception of time, as depicted in the clockmaker sequence, as a perception of reality. When everything has lost its physicality and becomes completely abstracted, a concept such as self-destruction through suicide is entirely feasible.

There is very much a perception in Quentin’s section (as well as in Jason’s narrative) that Caddy’s awakening sexuality precipitates the downfall of the entire Compson dynasty. Faulkner’s emphasis upon her soiled underpants in Benjy’s section – she had climbed a tree that her brothers could not to look upon death, and consequently revealed her undergarments – is perhaps a rather obvious metaphor, yet it does succeed in anticipating both Quentin’s and Jason’s opinions of their sister as revealed in their later monologues. One is therefore left to wonder whether it was in fact the sins of Caddy – if such rather normal adolescent behaviour can be so negatively labelled – which will motivate the downfall of the Compson family.

Friday, March 24, 2000

Speaking: The Silent History of Coetzee and Rushdie

When looking at civilization, or indeed any notion of humanity whether collective or individual, one naturally presupposes language to be fundamental to its structure and development. Such assumptions are not without validity, as communication does principally create civilization on its many levels. Arguably, culture is itself the superstructure above this act of communication within a society. Within this context it is possible to observe how culture and language are determined by the social structures within a society; those that are in positions of power regulate both the medium and the content of culture. Throughout Foe, J. M. Coetzee consistently demonstrates the implications of power structures on language and the ability to communicate. The protagonist herself struggles to convey her story despite cultural limitations, as she begins to understand that though she cannot tell her own story, using another author removes her voice. Foe consequently uses his cultural dominance to dictate the constituency of a proper story, yet throughout the text Susan pursues her own narrative, and indeed the nature of her own position within that story. Most prominent however is the portrayal of the mute slave Friday, whose subservience is so thorough that he can barely understand or respond to others. Susan herself attempts to engage in a dialogue with him, but he remains mute to her. One cannot disavow Friday an element of his own agency however, as Susan’s pursuit of his story, despite his silence, largely precipitates the story that Coetzee presents to the reader. Indeed, taken as a whole the premise of Foe is that of the agency of the subservient. It is when the repressed characters become aware of their mutual relationship with authoritative voices and subsequently engage with them that a measure of independence and freedom is gained. In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie presents such a character in Saleem Sinai, who is able to find his voice over the course of the novel. Saleem’s struggle with identity emerges most prominently in the textual realm; his autobiography is the means by which he realizes his authority. Principally, it is the loss of his telepathic abilities which precipitates Saleem to find his ‘true’ voice, namely the creation of both the story itself and a child of his own. Rushdie’s text consequently seems to imply that the process of emancipation is itself both a creative and a living process, existing as both problem and solution. Harkening to the Lacanian concept of the infinite origins of mimicry and double articulation, Saleem struggles throughout Midnight’s Children to create the text which is ultimately to become Rushdie’s novel. Both Rushdie and Coetzee are aware of their fundamental mimicry and usurpation of power from colonial authorities; it is in this manner that their principle characters can themselves become authors.

The first section of Foe is a direct narrative of Susan’s life on Crusoe’s island told from her own perspective. As such it must of course be analysed in light of the narrator’s biases – in particular, that Susan does not have access to the ‘truth’ behind the events of their stay on the island as either Crusoe or Friday perceive it – yet that is precisely one of the main themes of the novel as a whole. Upon her return to England, she attempts to bring her experiences into a cohesive narrative to be shared with the reading public and endeavours to remain as ‘factual’ as possible. It is important for the narrative to be her own, and she commences in a similar manner as other tales of maritime adventure. The beginnings of both the first section and her story-within-a-story description of events to Crusoe are routine for such narratives: “At last I could row no further” (Coetzee, p. 5); and then speaking, like the famous Ishmael, to Crusoe, “My name is Susan Barton ... I was cast adrift by the crew of the ship yonder” (p. 9). Each instance stresses the importance of Susan as an individual within the narrative, and there is no doubt that this is her story. Yet such conventions originate in masculine adventure narratives, and Susan quickly learns that she cannot incorporate all the elements that she wants into this framework. Her desire to include accounts from both Crusoe and Friday to complete her narrative is frustrated when she discovers that she cannot do so. There is no possibility of Friday revealing his story to her, neither can the recently dead Crusoe, for “who but Crusoe, who is no more, could truly tell you Crusoe’s story?” (p. 51). While she does attempt to engage Friday in order to reveal his story, which will be further discussed below, it becomes apparent that regardless of its validity, his story – or indeed that of any of the characters from the island – is largely irrelevant to readers. Such becomes manifest during her supposed collaboration with Foe, who subsumes Susan’s account into his own narrative. She felt that she could not write the text herself, for she cannot truly find her own voice within the silence of both Friday and Crusoe. She does not feel that it is her right to speak for them, although others, namely Foe himself, do not hesitate to speak for her until she rejects his authorial methods, upon which he withdraws into silence.

Susan believes that she requires Foe for precisely the reason that she struggles to find her own voice. As a man involved with British culture, and indeed one of it’s most articulate exponents, Foe represents the dominant culture from which Susan as a woman is largely excluded. Susan doubts her ability to produce a cohesive narrative within the confines of the patriarchal culture. Literary society – which in the eighteenth century largely restrained women as marginal figures – required a focus for texts, a point to be reached, and one which Susan could not provide: “my stories always have more applications than I intend, so that I must go back and laboriously extract the right application and apologize for the wrong ones and efface them. Some people are born story tellers; I, it would seem, am not” (p. 81). Susan is here fighting with the knowledge that history does not emerge from a single narrative, instead it is much more subjective. The very existence of the text of Foe proves the disparity that Susan feels between what she should say according to social convention and what she believes needs to be said. It is this struggle which provides thematic and narrative continuity to Coetzee’s text and proves, to modern readers at least, that Susan would indeed have been an able storyteller. She believes that storytelling is a live medium better suited to oral transmission since “a liveliness is lost in the writing down which must be supplied by art” (p. 40), and therefore any story will contain more of the soul of the author than elements of truth. Stories are living entities informed by the teller, they are products of a creative process akin to eroticism, and therefore requires the participation of the author within the narrative. Susan continually refers to physical love as the basis for narratives, saying that the “tongue is like the heart” (p. 85) and that “without desire how is it possible to make a story?” (p. 88). Certainly there was some level of desire on the island, foremost was obviously Susan’s desire to escape back to England, but also her sexual feelings shared with Crusoe were important. Regardless, such themes would be ill-suited to the phallocentric British society, which would inscribe its own voice on her narrative for “he has the last word who disposes over the greatest force” (p. 124), which of course if not necessarily Susan herself.

Perhaps most important to finding her own voice is Susan’s desire to engage others in a dialogue to conjoin her own narrative. It is in this sense that a sense of ‘truth’ would emerge from a multiplicity of voices. Yet such simultaneous narration is deemed too divided by the contemporary literary culture, as personified by Foe in the text. Susan wants the truth of the events that occurred on the island to liberate her, in a fashion, from the dominance of others. Her story would demonstrate that a woman is just as independent a creature as a man. Symbolically and practically the island was her freedom, as it was there that she was agent to her own emancipation. Yet upon her return to England, she finds that she cannot convey her story as she lacks both the publishing credentials of someone like Foe and the ability to write as a woman within British culture of the time. It is because of the internalization of cultural norms which exclude her that Susan feels that she must apologize for her “wrong applications”. She therefore denies the validity of her own voice and instead believes herself to be as a Muse to Foe while he writes her story. However, she quickly learns that she will not achieve freedom by his pen. Foe’s writing is not any real account of her life on the island but instead a more elaborate account which she ultimately rejects: “You know how dull our life was, in truth. We faced no perils, no ravenous beasts, not even serpents. Food was plentiful, the sun was mild. No pirates landed on our shores, no freebooters, no cannibals” (p. 81). Susan does not gain the liberation of free communication through Foe, quite contrarily his writing literally imprisons Susan and Friday within his house. Foe wants Susan to be secondary to his narrative, and indeed his writing leads to the creation of a second Susan, a character who believes she in fact is Susan Barton. He begins to contradict her, and attempts to convince her to accept this second Susan and presuppose a narrative which she is trying to reject:

Foe smiled. ‘Tell me more of Bahia,’ he said.
‘There is much to be said of Bahia. Bahia is a world in itself. But why? Bahia
is not the island. Bahia was but a stepping stone on my way.’
‘That may not be so,’ replied Foe cautiously. ‘Rehearse your story and you will see.”
(p. 116)

Foe then proceeds to create his own narrative, effectively removing Susan from her own story; to him a sequential narrative is more important. Only one hero is required for Foe, and other narratives – namely those of Friday, Crusoe, and in effect Susan herself – would only be distracting and more importantly it would be outside of the literary tradition. Despite being aided by numerous assistants, Odysseus, Jason of the Argonauts, Aeneas, and Crusoe in Defoe’s original text – all effectively stood alone during their travels. Foe in fact creates her story as if it were his own, as though he had himself been a castaway, and more importantly it becomes a story which adheres perfectly with the patriarchal society in which they live, with “five parts in all ... it is thus that we make up a book” (p. 117).

Susan does not allow Foe to be sole narrator of the text, however. Initially she counters Foe’s authoring of a palatable story for the English masses by rejecting his attempts to subserve her life to that narrative as well as the inscriptions that he places upon her:
if I were a mere receptacle ready to accommodate whatever story is
stuffed in me, surely you would dismiss me, surely you would say to your-
self, “This is no woman but a house of words, hollow, without substance”?
‘I am not a story, Mr. Foe.
(pp. 130-1)

Despite what Foe is trying to do to her, Susan firmly believes that she is greater than the story, and indeed, there is more to the character than is presented by Coetzee; her life does not begin with the first paragraph of part I. She learns from her isolation with Friday in Foe’s house that she must more actively involve herself in the story’s creation. To this end she attempts to engage both Friday and Foe himself into the narrative. Susan intends to become a subject for Foe in both senses of the word. His repressive acts do remove her identity to a great extent, yet not to the extreme of her entirely doubting herself or her voice. She never displays any uncertainty concerning the second Susan but remains adamant that she herself is the real Susan, despite Foe’s intentions. Simultaneously however, in many instances she does demonstrate her own agency: when she has a sexual encounter with Foe; the letters of Part II, originally meant for Foe but much more of her own narrative voice to be read by others.

More informative are the initiatives taken with Friday in order to allow his story to emerge. It is from these instances that a voice emerges for Susan. At the same time however, these passages demonstrate the extent to which Friday has himself become a subject to both the colonial power and the narrative itself. He had of course once been a slave, and to the British he will always remain so. Susan’s efforts to ‘free’ him from servitude do not in fact liberate him from colonial rule; indeed, that she inscribes her own values and an identity upon him is made quite evident when she fashions for him a ‘freedom sack’, containing his manumission papers, to be worn around his neck. Many times she mimics Foe in inscribing her own words upon Friday in place of his own voice: “I say he is a cannibal, he becomes a cannibal; I say he is a laundryman and he becomes a laundryman ... what he is to the world is what I make of him” (pp. 121-2). More telling are her attempts to probe Friday for his story, despite his inability to communicate in any but the most basic manner. It is this probing that allows Coetzee’s narrative a continuity and indeed remains the locus for the text. Susan senses something in Friday that she cannot truly fathom until the final part of the text. Throughout her interaction with Friday, there is an agency in his silence and indeed in his slavery on the island of which she becomes aware:

Why, during all those years alone with Crusoe, did you submit to his rule,
when you might easily have slain him, or blinded him and made him into
your slave in turn? Is there something in the condition of slavehood that
invades the heart and makes a slave a slave for life”
(p. 85)
Friday has to a certain degree internalized his own servitude, yet more importantly, he exists within a different medium than either Susan, Crusoe, or Foe, and one in which Susan herself longs to live. Friday is not confined to the slippery signification of identity with which all of the other characters remain burdened, continually exchanging positions of master-slave, self-other, and Subject-subject. Instead he remains outside of such a system; his existence is more pure and untainted by the identity construction which others inscribe upon him. To a great extent it is his lack of language which allows Friday to be free of such encumbrances of society. The final part of the text suggests that Susan herself has begun to understand the nature of his existence: “This is a place where bodies are their own signs. It is the home of Friday” (p. 137). It is within this context that one can more fully understand the association continually made between writing and sexual desire. By doing so, Susan is endeavouring to unite Friday’s pure world of ‘body-as-sign’ with the literary world of slippery signification, and consequently find a means of communication. Arguably, Susan cannot remove the social constructs which bind her from such a place, however much she longs to join Friday. She is far too much like Foe, and her dependency on language is far too great.

Rushdie’s text is very much a literal interpretation of this concept of ‘body-as-sign’; indeed, in many respects it is fundamental to his narrative. Certainly Saleem never lives in the pure state that Friday inhabits, as throughout most of his life he is defined by others, first as the miracle First-born of the newly liberated India, and later in much more insulting terms by his childhood peers. More significantly, Saleem never transcends language as Friday had. Coetzee’s slave is very much an outcast from society, and in this sense he achieves purity. Saleem’s (and as an extension, Rushdie’s) quest is not to reject society but rather to subvert its traditions. Language therefore becomes what he desires it to be, namely an Indian language spoken using English. Rushdie appropriates the narrative and stylistic traditions of the English canon to cohere into a new unified whole. The novel consequently becomes an apparatus by which Saleem-as-native-Indian becomes the dominant voice, and does not remain the mysterious Other of western convention. Throughout Midnight’s Children, Rushdie emphasizes the physicality of life, ostensibly as a counter to the idealizing process in which India had been previously defined. Consequently all of the references to traditional Indian culture are used to subvert the dominant language structure. Rushdie invents new words to describe his process, which can perhaps best be expressed by his equation of the text with cooking, and in particular with chutney. Rushdie uses this term as a signifier for this re-appropriation: his “chutnification” of the text is the process of claiming traditional elements of narrative construction and re-creating them within a new context, inflected with ‘Indian’ elements. It is this fundamental subversion of conventional narratives which allows Rushdie (and of course Saleem; the text is “autobiographical”) to extract himself from the hierarchy of language constructed by the west, critique it objectively, and ultimately to tell his narrative using his own voice.

Saleem himself exists in a world in which every part and function of the body is a representation of the body-politic of India. Every one of the midnight children is gifted in terms of bodily ability, Saleem and Shiva having inherited the most potent abilities as they were born most immediately after India’s independence. It could be argued that Rushdie is being quite blatant in his metaphor of the children of midnight. Certainly they represent the new hopes and desires felt by India upon achieving sovereignty, yet Rushdie quickly demonstrates the complexity of his allegory. The midnight children are uniquely Indian, at least in terms of western stereotypes derived from Moslem origins. In structural terms they are the spices which contribute to the “chutnification” of the text. Nearly all of them are copies of the djinn and mystics of the tales from the Thousand and One Nights, and this textual citation serves to hint at Rushdie’s intentions. Throughout British rule India was given an identity, inscribed by the western world and one to which it could not live up. Rushdie appropriates these images into his narrative to demonstrate the adversity India has to face in order to truly achieve independence. The children of midnight are not solely the hopes and dreams of a nation, they are the old baggage of colonial bondage which must be excised from India’s consciousness in order for the nation to become free. They must become not the special Thousand-and-One Others representing Indian fantasy to the Western world, but alternately they need to be sublimated as 0.00007 percent of the modern Indian population as Saleem states in the prison sequence. Ancient mysticism must be sublimated in turn to modern rationalism. Consequently the thousand-and-one are captured by the government; some are never to be released, some are castrated and some are killed. Saleem is doubly lucky, in a sense, as he is merely castrated, released and lives to construct his story. His castration ultimately does not hinder his procreative ability, as he adopts a child fathered by his Other, Shiva. The final chapters of the text concentrate on this child, upon whom he casts his own dreams and expectations for the future.

Saleem’s struggle for freedom in a very real (and Lacanian) sense becomes the liberation that he is seeking after; his efforts to achieve self-realization are in fact themselves the elements of that self-realization. Much like Susan he has to contend with desire as the basis for narrative expression, yet he never embraces physical love as she had. Throughout the text Padma acts as an agency for his desire, yet Saleem sublimates his feelings into the creation of the text itself, rather than realize them with her. True enough, his reticency is influenced by his inability to produce children, and especially in the early part of the text his ‘procreative’ concerns are very real and become manifest in terms of doubts towards his text as often he stops and begins writing again. He is once afflicted by writer’s block, but frequently doubts the validity of his text. Padma leads him to continue along his narrative, in fact her urges seem almost desperate at times: “You better get a move on or you’ll die before you get yourself born” (Rushdie, p. 38). By the end of the text it becomes quite clear that he has in fact been reborn, and part of this process involves the realization of his feelings for Padma. Consequently it is hardly surprising that they engage to be married in the final chapters. More to the point, this process of self-actualization through the text leads Saleem to the creation of his own history. There is little denying that history is itself a construction and not in any way a ‘fact’, therefore we can excuse Saleem – as he excuses himself – a few non-factual creations in his story:

I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the
illusion that since the past exists only in one’s memories and
the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible
to create past events simply by saying they occurred.
(p. 529)

Yet it is his history, in which he is his own agent; despite Rushdie’s allegorical implications for national representation, its immediate relevance is only to himself. More importantly it is a modern tale, and one of progress and self-actualization. Any sense a reader may have about Saleem’s oppression by the traditional history of India-as-repressed-nation is ultimately rejected by Rushdie’s use of fantastical elements. India will not be defined by its history or any other convention which have to a great extent been ascribed to it by western writers. In other words, India will become modern India by a re-appropriation of western stereotypes in order to write a history for itself. Saleem achieves his own independence in this manner, and in actuality from the very start of the text Rushdie hints that this will occur:

I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that
won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in
Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the
time? The time matters too.
(p. 1)

Saleem’s story will not begin like another fantastical tale from the Arabian Nights; he gives himself all the details which are important in the construction of his history. The fact that his birth is the birth of an independent India is of course part of Rushdie’s allegory, yet to Saleem it is important that this is his story, and not of India as a whole. It is for this reason that Saleem envies himself in his domestic position – as dwarf with no greater purpose – by the end of the text.

More importantly, Saleem’s connection to the other children allows him to use their voices to realize his own. At first he believes himself to be the voice of India, or more accurately the voices of all India. It is his telepathic abilities which allow the children of midnight to become a unified group, who would then ostensibly communicate to the world through him. Rushdie immediately undermines such romantic dreams by portraying the MCC as a group of bickering children who cannot truly be unified. Regardless, the children ultimately do not exist for such a purpose; their downfall is not the tragedy of the novel. Saleem cannot be the leader of India nor even of the MCC – despite his continual statements that his fate is the fate of all nations. Indeed, such turns out to be true, but not in the literal sense which he expects in the early sections of the novel. He will not be a leader by example, but rather a leader by allegorical representation. When he loses his telepathic ability, he realizes his fate is in fact true as he becomes a symbol not only for India, but for every nation as he so frequently says. Both colonial and imperial nations will achieve independence by using their national history as an informative text used to aid progress, not as a set of rules which need to be followed. Saleem cannot remain a djinn just as India cannot remain a colonial dependent viewed by the Western world as the mysterious Orient. He is consequently relieved when his powers are taken from him: “The young-old face of the dwarf in the mirror wore an expression of profound relief” (p. 534). India must exist as a living entity not oppressed by its history; it must be omnipresent in the wholly literal meaning of the term. In order for this state to be realized, any rigid definitions must be rejected, most notably those which are inscribed involuntarily. India will not be what it once was, it will not be what other nations prescribe it to be; India will define itself. The turmoil of the middle section of the novel demonstrates that this process is not a clean one, but rather it is violent and uncertain. Yet it is a process which India will undertake for itself. It is for this reason that Saleem feels that he achieves purity as the Indian bombs fall on Pakistan and his family is annihilated. Saleem’s story, at this point equated with the history of India, enters into a pure state in this sequence because the war is a demarcation of Indian self-governance and self-reliance. It is perhaps a bit problematic that Rushdie here implies that one cannot achieve independence until both life and death – and the ability to kill – are signifiers for liberation. Yet the war between India and Pakistan is to a great extent a purifying incident in the sense that it is the means by which the past becomes a mere narrative and not the sole influence for the future of the country. Neither will history – which of course had been created in both the narrative and the physical worlds by the west – be a defining influence on the present state of India. Rushdie’s implication remains: it is only in this context that nations as well as individuals can realize true freedom.

Many texts have examined the impact of social structure on language and communication, and a number of theoretical works have been advanced sharing similar views. The relationships between the dominant and subservient classes are not simple ‘give-and-take’, but instead form a complex of interdependency; each internalizes the supposed roles of the other. Within this context, Susan – a character repressed in many way by her society – must find a voice with which she can create her story. It is her struggle to find this voice, undertaken largely through the voices of others, that forms the locus of Coetzee’s narrative. The final section of the text seems to suggest that she has succeeded in finding such a voice by understanding Friday’s silence, and there is little evidence to doubt her newly discovered communicative freedom. For Rushdie the process of reclaiming authority over language is similar. Saleem uses the voices of others to find his own, yet more important is their silence. His loss of the gift he was given at birth is the means by which he unites the imperial voice with the silence of colonial dependency to create a new language, namely the “chutnification” of the old one. The process of self-liberation for both Susan and Saleem is a purifying one as each becomes aware of the importance of their authority. Fundamentally this rejection of foreign agency and identity construction is the goal of all post-colonial literatures.



Bibliography

Coetzee, J.M. Foe. London: Penguin Books, 1986.
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Penguin Books, 1991.