CHAPTER FOUR

Mythical Past in Haroun and the Sea of Stories

and The Moor’s Last Sigh: An Archetypal

Perspective

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CHAPTER FOUR

Mythical Past in Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The Moor’s Last

Sigh: An Archetypal Perspective

This chapter applies a mythical and archetypal critical framework for reading

myth and history in Rushdie‘s two novels, Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The

Moor’s Last Sigh. The aim of this critical approach is essential to this study because it

unmasks the ideological imperatives of a fictional work. Two approaches are followed

in this chapter: C.G. Jung‘s theory of archetype and archetypal image and Northrop

Frye‘s theory of myth and archetype and their manifestations as a literary creation.

Jung‘s theory remains one of the most helpful theoretical explorations of the relation

between the archetypal narratives and the figurative expression of individual and

collective impulses which prove aptly relevant to this study because it provides us

with psychoanalytical interpretations of the author‘s historical and cultural allusions

and archetypes. Moreover, Jung‘s theories on archetype and archetypal image are

most helpful in reading these novels, especially the relationship between the

archetypes of the past and their parodical reflections of the present.

Moreover, in the field of myth criticism, Northrop Frye provides the most

coherent use of a structuralist model that utilizes archetype. In his several critical

works, Frye proposes a reading of literary genre that outlines the relation of myth to

the form of a literary piece. Drawing primarily on the theories of Giambattista Vico

and Ernst Cassirer (and peripherally on Oswald Spengler and Jung), Frye developed

what was later termed ―archetypal criticism‖, a method of critical reading that focuses

on the function of mythical structures in literature. In The Bush Garden: Essays in the

Canadian Imagination (1971), Frye argues that myth is a structuring principle of

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narrative (ix). This idea of the structuring principle derives from an understanding of

archetype as a drive to formal consistency in any narrative.

Archetypal criticism has been largely overlooked in critical analysis of

postcolonial literature because Frye‘s structural readings of genre and plot seem at

odds with issues of narrative fracture, dislocation and palimpsest that abound in the

postcolonial novel. Postcolonial myth criticism that uses Frye tends to focus on his

schematic readings of genre as pre-fabricated categories. This method of reading

Frye‘s archetypal analysis forestalls the capacity to develop socio-politically nuanced

readings of mythical function in postcolonial literature. History is constructed as

romance, tragedy or satire with differing levels of ideological persuasion

characteristic of each. In romance and tragedy, the ideological impetus of myth is

established via a persuasive rhetoric of identification. In mock epic, the authorial

voice punctures the conflation between subject and object of the mythical narrative.

As a result, the ideological codes of the myth are exposed and demystified. However,

this process of demystification, in turn, demonstrates the urge to construct newer

myths that revise the ideological hierarchies of the text. In each case, reading with an

awareness of the function of genre recalibrates our understanding of the socio-

political genesis of a text and provides a helpful subtext from which to scrutinize an

author‘s response to issues of ideology.

Nevertheless, archetypal criticism rests heavily on Jungian psychology with

support from comparative anthropologists like Sir James Frazer and comparative

mythologists like Joseph Campbell. The principle common to most branches of

mythological criticism is the hypothesis that the structure of myth and ritual is

connected with that of literature. Therefore, knowledge of myth and ritual is primary

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to the critical understanding of literature. Mythological criticism focuses on images,

symbols, characters, plots, events and themes that continually recur in works of

literature. The symbolic structures from myths, legends and fairy tales are subjected to

comparison with similar structures in literary works. The aim of these interpretative

efforts, psychological and literary, is the establishment of harmony in the psyche,

unity in the work. From the standpoint of archetypal criticism, the creation of

literature is a subconscious process. This fact can be easily detected in the intimate

relationship between myth and art co-factors in the production of human knowledge.

Here is a brief note of the two novels. The issue of the fatwa (proclamation)

against Rushdie marked an important stage in his intellectual career. A year later, he

wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories as an immediate counter-response to that fatwa.

The novel is both an indictment of the authoritarian and religious regimes and a call

for individual freedom. While religious repression is the explicit target of the attack,

its underlying theme is the political hegemony. The story of Haroun and the Sea of

Stories revolves around a young boy who lives in a city so ruinously sad that it has

forgotten its name. It stood by a mouthful sea, had buildings that looked like broken

hearts, and had mighty factories in which sadness was actually manufactured. His

father, Rashid, is exceptionally endowed with the greatest gift of story- telling. As we

discover later, the source of Rashid‘s stories was his subscription to the Story-Water

from the Great Story Sea located on the earth‘s other moon, called Kahani. Haroun

seeks the help of the Water Genie, Iff, who has come to connect his father‘s water

supply, to have it restored. Water Genie, Iff, takes him to the earth‘s second moon,

Kahani (which literally means a story) where there are the two cities of Chup and

Gup. Haroun discovers that the two cities are at war with each other. The two cities

are fighting for control over the Ocean of Stories .The Chup city, the city of Silence,

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headed by the Cultmaster of the Union of Zipped Lips, Khattam-Shud, and the Arch-

Enemy of all stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe

of Speech, who worships the idol Bezuban, is busy polluting the Sea of Stories

running each story with an anti-story expressly designed to take all the fun out of it.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is brilliantly structured with twelve chapters in

form of twelve stories around a central theme with the central figures of a father and a

son, Rashid and Haroun. The novel is a protest form as well as a plea for justice. Both

characters are named after the legendary Caliph, Haroun al-Rashid, the archetype of

justice and freedom. The story-teller, Rashid Khalifa was famous for his cheerfulness.

His unmatched inventiveness earned him two nicknames: the Ocean of Notions, and

Shah of Blah. In the end of the tale, he regains his power of narration and the ―sad

city‖ becomes happy again.

If Haroun and the Sea of Stories is seen as a passage to ―Baghdad of al-

Rashid‖, The Moor’s Last Sigh, in the same fashion, can be viewed as a passage to

―Moorish Spain‖. The story of the Moor in The Moor’s Last Sigh starts as a literary

apocalypse, with the ―revelation‖ of his story of ―fall from grace,‖ and his confession

and testament, and how he was nailed to the door as a crucification to ―sing of

endings.‖ The Moor’s Last Sigh describes the journey of Moraes Zogoiby, a half

Christian, half-Jewish narrator living in India, who was born into a country divided

along Hindu-Muslim lines and occupied by Christian Westerners. The novel narrates

Moor‘s struggle to The novel mainly deals with the contemporary context, the

exclusion of others in the name of religion. The Moor’s Last Sigh also records several

generations of a powerful Indian Christian family, whose fortune has been made in

the spice trade centered round the old coastal part of Cochin, south of India. However,

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it is mainly a story of the fall from grace of a highborn, crossbreed Moraes Zogoiby,

called Moor. Moor, the last of a decaying family, is in search of a better place to live

in. Besides, the novel is richly spiced with the dichotomies of love and hatred, humor

and sadness, exiles and homecoming, separation and union as well as private and

public history. Moraes Zogoiby, a victim of his circumstances, is an offspring of

Abraham Zogoiby, mere duty manager in Da Gama‘s. He inherits bloodline of a south

Indian Jew of doubtful lineage of an illegitimate descendant of Boabdil, the last

Muslim Sultan of Granada, who was driven away from Spain in 1492. The novel

deals with the use of history and its relation to the realist political situations in India.

Rushdie connects the distant history of Arab Spain to the present history of India. He

treats history from a view of myth and fiction in this novel. He uses the historical

story of tolerance in Andalusia, the myth of tolerance as a material for his story in

order to criticize the intolerance and bigotry of the present-day society. The mythical

representation of The Moor’s Last Sigh serves archetypal critical insights into the

postcolonial situation. In this rewriting act of history, Rushdie recuperates both a

specific and a mythic early modern past, which functions as a trope that modulates

between history and myth.

Known for his mythical representations and deployment of mythical thought,

Rushdie‘s fictional oeuvre has productively drawn the interest of critics and scholars

in the field of archetypal and myth criticism. Demythicizing the mythical thought in

one point and mystifying them in another adds to the way of understanding his

position as a postcolonial representative writer. In the two novels, under discussion,

he has strategically invested the myth of individual as a deconstructive intellectual

force to castigate the traditional idea of the myth of the nation. This reinforces the

celebrated idea of the myth of the individual as part of the new historical method

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which characterizes the treatment of myth and history throughout fiction. This chapter

looks at the characters of Haroun in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and the Moor in

The Moor’s Last Sigh as best exemplary archetypal figures and a testimony to the

fore-grounded proposition.

If The Moor’s Last Sigh celebrates multiplicity and polyphony of voices,

Haroun and the Sea of Stories advocates the freedom of speech as a key element to

the understanding of the myth of the individual. It is said that fiction is a world of

individuals rather than a map of nations. To what extent the individual myth is

introduced as an alternative vision to that of the nation, this chapter attempts to

answer this through an archetypal critical analysis in the light of the critical

approaches of Jung and Frye. The former focuses on the psyche as the working place

of the image; the latter underscores the concept of recreation as a literary mythical

thought. These approaches prove useful, especially in dealing with representations

and the explication of the relationship between recreation and the re-creator. They are

also helpful in shedding light on the functioning of the characters or even on their

sources in the re-creator‘s psyche.

In Jungian view, the archetype is merely a form into which the meaning is

poured by the individual. Jung makes this clear when he counters: ―It is necessary to

point out once more that archetypes are not determined as regards their content, but

only as regards their form and then only to a very limited degree‖. (qtd. in Hart 1)

The concept of the archetype then is one that expresses a relationship between a

universal form, the archetype, and the individual who fills the form with meaning.

This idea is highlighted by Laurence Coupe that, ―cultural and literary criticism may

involve ‗mythography‘, or the interpretation of myth, given that mythic is an

important dimension of cultural and literary experience‖ (4). In this light, the

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character of Haroun in Haroun and the Sea of Stories is not a given but rather

something into which the author projects a part of himself. This projection, or filling

of the pre-existing concept, is exactly what Jung describes as happening in relation to

the archetype. ―The skeletal structure of the archetype is fleshed out by the author‘s

imposition of meaning onto it.‖ (Hart 8) Rushdie thus has defined his characters in

relation to the myth of Haroun Al-Rashid.

According to Joseph Campbell, mythology and myths serve four purposes: ―to

render an interpretive total picture of the same, [universe] as known to contemporary

consciousness‖; enforcement of moral order; and orientation of the individual with

respect to culture, nature and the transcendent (Creative 4-6). Subsequently, the

multiple renditions of the myth suggest that the myth exists not as a purely literary

work of art but as one that has resonances in the popular imagination (qtd. in Hart 7).

Campbell argues that in creative mythology:

…the individual has had an experience of his own—of order, horror, beauty,

or even mere exhilaration—which he seeks to communicate through signs; and

if his realization has been of a certain depth and import, his communication

will have the value and force of living myth—for those, that is to say, who

receive and respond to it of themselves, with recognition, uncoerced. (Creative

4)

The point here is that the myth of the individual is a myth that we

unconsciously were spoon-fed since birth; a myth we struggle to define in the face of

orthodoxy of systems. The individual in this view is unique and has unique potentials

to exercise. Yet, this individualism is as innately built as it is socially constructed. It is

a doctrine forced upon and ingrained among us as it is a feeling grows and lives with

us. In line with this thought, what is termed as ―individual‖ is nothing but a high spirit

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of desiring a place in a repressive community such as that represented by the

Chapwalas, Sengupta and Khattam-Shud. Therefore, the reference to the mythical and

archetypal figures in Arabian Nights is a suggestive way of journeying into the

mythical representation of the individual, as a way of self-reflection and self-

assertion. Thomas Hart observes, ―In the classically psychoanalytic approach the

characters are seen as fragmented representations of the author‘s self‖. Hart also

argues that working with material ―emerges from the author‘s psyche and that in some

way is related to his unconscious needs, desires, wishes and instinct‖. (4)

Further, the contention is that putting the novels in this context expounds

much about the quest for the individual re-positioning. If only we go back to fatwa

and its consequences regarding Rushdie and his artistic production, however, we

could recognize that he has shown an advanced move toward creating the myth of the

individual as he chooses an epically fabulous world to his fiction. It is obvious about

the novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories that the romantic setting and projection have

overwhelmed the cultural discourse and recreated a similarly hyper-events that

overshadows the real. In short, the novel attempts to permeate the world of ideology

to that of the flamboyant reality. The individual myth is treated as a utopian free

space. To develop it further, reading this myth from the Jungian point of view reveals

the indictment of national dogmatism and socio-religious hierarchy. The

contextualization of Haroun and the Sea of Stories in the light of fatwa talks about

Rushdie‘s defense of art (the source of his individuality and at the same time the

cause of trouble for him). The invocation of the character of Haroun al-Rashid as well

as the recurring allusions to the Islamic legacy as doctrine of culture is a special act in

itself. Therefore, the feeling of a unique individual comes from the feeling of lacking

of it. So, these utopian representations of the individual character present a

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psychological rendering of the position of the individual. Haroun al-Rashid, the real

historical figure, becomes the primordial and archetypal image of Rushdie‘s

individual. The argument is that the myth of the individual indicates a desire and

suggests a space rather than informs presence of reality and place. As Aron R. Aji

argues Rushdie‘s Haroun and the Sea of Stories ―celebrates the triumph of

storytelling and imagination over raw power and dogmatism‖ (103)

The liberation from the effect of an ideology is as equally important for

Rushdie as the inhalation of freedom for the individual. The silencing repression of

Khattam-Shud is as dangerously a devastating feeling as a dogmatically

fundamentalist mentality. In this context, Robert Thomas in his article entitled,

―Myth, Legend and the Individual,‖ argues that: ―it may be seen that many of the

myths and legends of the world are a symbolic chronicle of the battle of the individual

to assert himself against taboo and religious restraint. The heroes of ancient myth can

be demonstrated to enact a series of individualist dramas.‖

Like most postcolonial writers such as Achebe, Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott,

Shashi Tharoor, Rohinton Mistry, Najeeb Mahfouz, to mention but afew, Rushdie

uses myth as a counter to the monologic forms of state hegemony which do not offer

the subject any space to articulate dissent in the form of dialogue. Eric Uskalis

remarks that ―the mythical form still manages to initiate an act of dissent precisely

through the way it cuts across and creates ruptures in surface of the text.‖ (2)

According to Uskalis, ―myths can be linked to some other elements, at the level of

plot, character or metaphor. They can be transformed into narratives of dissent‖ (3)

since the purpose is disruption. Myth, then, is regarded as a literary narrative which

can narrate events sequentially, as do realistic narratives, as it is the form and texture

of myth that give it a paradigmatic equality, one which disrupts and vibrates the pure

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logic of sequential narrative. It should also be kept in mind that myths circulate as a

discourse and that they are necessarily supra-individual and, therefore, do not easily

offer positions the subject can take up as individual.

In dealing with myth in his fiction, Rushdie differs from other postcolonial

writers in the way that he does not hold an imaginative idea in the collective meaning.

He rather imagines India differently. He imagines India from a position of an artist

who draws a mythical view of reality. A novelist dreams of an ideal reality, and

Rushdie here is a representative of immigrant writer who suffers the exile and

exclusion; an immigrant writer who seeks a new world as an alternate to the official

concrete and rational one. As can be seen in his The Moor’s Last Sigh, he seeks to

explore new mythical and idealistic worlds by suggesting new truths and new values

of life.

Significantly, fantasy as a genre is approached in the two novels of this

chapter with great success. The narrative that deals with uncanny representations of

reality entails various interpretations of it and its mythic and utopian counterpart. In

this respect, fantasy in Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The Moor’s Last Sigh

constructs a world, though that is at once alien, is completely recognizable. The

novels of discussion, attempts here to draw a marked approachability between myth,

symbol and contemporary reality, ultimately linking the three within the fantasy genre

to argue that ―myth [and by extension fantasy] implies a prelogical mentality that is

not bound by the law of contradiction but operates under the law of participation,

according to which ―objects and phenomena can be, though in a manner

incomprehensible to us, at once themselves and not themselves‖ (Douglas 123). In

this way, the two novels demonstrate fantasy‘s ability to engage critically with reality,

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and examine its ability to explore the integration of the self and its ability to de- and

re-mystify the human experience.

By engaging with myth criticism, the focus is also on improving a language

that might enable one to discuss the idea of ―universality‖ and facilitate a discussion

of myth that allows one to interrogate some of the deeply ingrained ―postmodern‖

suspicions concerning the transhistorical and transcultural scope of certain narrative

forms. This entails a distinction between ―universality‖ in the postmodern and

poststructuralist censure, and ―universality‖ as a general human concept. The term

―universal‖ is injudiciously condemned by postmodern thought as an ideologically

totalitarian hegemonic concept, or viewed as either a fairytale that is unattainable or

as essentially an ideological tool that can be used for coercive purposes. Myth

criticism offers a powerful theoretical tool that brings to the surface preoccupations

and insights regarding these notions that poststructuralist theories tend to bracket off

or avoid. By viewing mythic narrative as a mode of ―story-telling‖ that has multiple

resonances, myth criticism debunks the nihilistic view of the postmodern subject

afloat in a sea of disillusion and passivity.

Myth has always formed part of human interaction and relation to the universe

and our place within it. In essence, what one is dealing with, whenever one discusses

story in any form, is ―narrative‖ and its shifting relationship with the world. Narrative

encompasses the importance of myth and the story-making process, in the sense that

myth is a form of narrative, perhaps even the foundational form of narrative from

which stories spring. Roland Barthes‘ definition of narrative is interest ing when

discussing myths and narrative it is difficult to escape the logic of universality.

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Narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society, it begins

with the very history of mankind and there nowhere is nor ever been a people

without narrative. All classes, all human groups, have their narratives,

enjoyment of which is very often shared by men with different, even opposing,

cultural backgrounds. Caring nothing for the division between good and bad

literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply

there, like life itself. (Image-Music-Text 79)

The concern here is to advance a tentative working definition of myth as the

underlying components of which literature is made. What this definition puts forward

is the notion that the ―universality‖ in myth stems from symbols encoded into the

language that act as transcultural, transhistorical signifiers. In metaphorical terms,

myth is a single voice, made up of multiple harmonies that resonate differently with

different people, but is always imbued with the same message. It is a language that

speaks all languages, that crosses all boundaries and appeals first and foremost to our

status as human beings before ideology and can give us a kind of compass with which

we can navigate our current historical, cultural and subjective context – myth governs

our entry into and mediates our relationship with ideology. Within myth studies itself,

there are two vastly differing approaches to what has been widely referred to as

―myth‖.

Put simply, myths fall into two categories, the first classified as the cloaking

of ideological inexplicable absolutes (those which cover truth or lack supposedly for

the ―greater good‖ of society) as suggested by Barthes in his essay, ―Myth Today‖ in

his book Mythologies (109-156). The other approach is that of more essentialist

schools of thought, derived from the works of Jung and seen, among others, in the

work of Campbell. These critics argue that myth is an inherited fundamentally

spiritual narrative longing that resides in each of us, and that connects us in some way

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to a bigger picture. An example of this would be Jung‘s notion of a Collective

Unconscious, which refers to a set of universal symbols that we all access

involuntarily.

Just as the definition of myth is constantly evolving, the theoretical approaches

have evolved in their understanding of the term ―mythology‖. It is therefore

imperative to track the development of myth criticism to indicate exactly where

fantasy is located within this field of literary study. For most of the previous century,

myth criticism was dominated by the writings of Frazer, whose most notable work,

The Golden Bough, sparked off a new kind of engagement with mythology, namely

comparative anthropological analysis. The entire construction of his theory is founded

on assumption that is then substantiated through overlapping evidence of ―myth‖ that

he picks and chooses without regard to context. Instead of sitting out examples in

order to apply them to an already devised conclusion, a comparative study of

mythology should instead endeavor to uncover ―universal patterns‖ within the

narratives (Bidney 22). David Bidney sees the ―universal patterns‖ within myth as

those of ―motivation and conduct‖ that is not ―latent, esoteric wisdom‖: instead he

sees myth as ―a universal cultural phenomenon … [originating] wherever thought and

imagination are employed uncritically or deliberately used to promote social

delusion‖ (22). In an important sense, Bidney, heavily influenced by Ernst Cassirer,

boldly showcases the rationalist, historicist approach to myth criticism. In the

quotation above he makes it clear that he labels myth as either propaganda or fairy

tale – neither inspires any kind of connection to truth.

The fantasy genre connects myth to the here and now by positing the reader

within a recognizable paradigm and critiquing it from within what might be called

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―mythic space‖. The way that the paradigm is constructed within these texts forces

one to acknowledge that paradoxically, myth and fantasy derive their subjectivity

from their universality. Further, the idea of myth as ―transcendent‖ and trans-

historical is actually what gives it its power to criticize the specificities of our own

cultural and historical condition. What is intended here is that universality, far from

being the essentialist, totalizing ideological tool that postmodernity claims, is actually

a priori in terms of ideology – that it exists in a space beyond and before ideology, in

the sense that the term should actually mean ―accessible to all differences‖.

At this juncture, it becomes very important to distinguish between archetype

and stereotype. Where a stereotype is a product of culture, an archetype is, in theory,

pre-cultural: Where an archetype could be seen as universally historical, a stereotype

could be seen as culturally historical. A stereotype tends to support a culturally

determined role such as ―a woman‘s place is in the home‖. On contrary, an archetype

tends to exemplify a trend that transcends ideology to paint a picture of a mother or

martyr regardless of ideological or cultural context. It is human beings who tie

subjective experience to a model or symbol, imbuing it with meaning that is always

above all things deeply ideological. For example, let us argue that the universal

symbol for a mother is a woman with a child nestling in her arms. This symbol would

be as easily recognized by watching a woman from any culture with her baby, as by

watching a lioness with her cubs. The symbol would, however, at the same time be

filtered through that person‘s subjective filter: in other words, although the image of

the Mother-Goddess and son has been co-opted to serve ideological ends, it does not

mean that it is itself reducible to an effect of culture. The reader‘s experience of the

image is always mediated by culture and his or her own idiosyncrasies. However, at

the root of it, the symbol remains the same and recognizable, regardless of personal

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experience. What, in essence, can be contended here is that myth and fantasy are able

to grapple with this paradox in a way that opens the universal and specific up to new

readings.

Nonetheless, myths are, in effect, stories that are part of the collective

unconscious, the most famous of which have been assimilated into language and have

come to acquire certain values as signs. For example, someone who drags his mother

into everything is Oedipal; if a task looks daunting it is Herculean; an incredibly

attractive man is Adonis. What these characters, or mythic figures have become, are

archetypes of specific predominant personality traits; and yet, within their stories each

teaches a specific moral lesson and each of them presents some form of heroic

allegory or moral theme, whether it be redemption, a fall from grace, or even the

dangers of perceiving yourself as too much of a hero – too beautiful, too important.

However, each of them also contains definite significant allegories for life and how

we try to derive meaning from the world; and interestingly each of these ―heroes‖, as

they are now known to us, had certain hands dealt to them in life that they had to

accept. These mythical heroes, placed in narrative, have come to signify an

understanding of self and the integration of that self into society, to that self‘s best

ability.

Fantasy as a genre has often been dismissed by academics as a dangerous

utopian form of narrative that encourages escapism and avoids any real critical

engagement with social realities. On the surface, this seems a sound argument, but

conversely, the hunger for mythic and epic narrative can be construed as an outcry, or

a call, back to community in a time where individualism and isolation are

championed. This is a possibility because the very nature of mythical and epic

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narratives is communal: they emphasize not only the qualities of individuals, but also

the individual‘s place within a greater community. In his book Tracking the Gods: the

Place of Myth in Modern Life, James Hollis explores ―the great paradigm shift that

lies at the very core of modernism…the loss of mythic connection to the cosmos‖

(53). Hollis‘s conclusion is the Jungian idea that life is in essence paradoxical; that

while human beings must maintain an idea of their role in the greater picture, they

must also feed the compulsion to develop as an individual apart from that picture.

Hollis argues that all subjects necessitate a link back to mythic narrative, and says:

Myth takes us deep into ourselves and into the psychic reservoirs of humanity.

Whatever our cultural and religious background or personal psychology, a

greater intimacy with myth provides vital linkage with meaning, the absence

of which is so often behind the private and collective neuroses of our time. (7-

8)

Based on Hollis‘ appropriation of this Jungian idea, we can argue that a

mythic narrative is not merely a vacuous genre that promotes the rejection of reality,

but a tool with which we can interrogate our surroundings. This seems particularly

significant given the rise of cultural phenomena. Thus, Rushdie‘s mythic narratives

serve as a forum for moral debates that explore universal trends and psychological

coping mechanisms within contemporary society. Hence, it can be argued that there is

a strong link between the mythic Hero‘s Journey and identity formation and

consolidation on an a priori universal scale. The hero‘s journey can be read as a map

of development towards an integrated self; the trials that the hero undergoes can be

equated to the psychological development of any subject within any given context.

Moreover, it advocates that positive agency is possible within a recognizable tide of

destiny. Starting from myth criticism and embarking from a Jungian perspective, the

aim here is to argue the importance of what has been called the Hero‘s Journey

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(Campbell, Myths to Live By 36) as a reflection of everyday identity integration that

provides an interesting insight in terms of the postmodern notion of the split subject.

Joseph Campbell‘s reading of the Hero‘s Journey, while being comprehensive

in terms of connecting myth and the initiation stages of development, ultimately

conforms to a utopian rendering of both the hero as a reconciled, whole and free

subject and society as a brave new world. So, a reading of such mythical approach

would allow the reader to connect with the hero on a level where the hero does not

embody wish-fulfillment, in the terms of a completely sanctioned ego, but allows the

reader to envisage the triumph that the hero achieves as attainable. Further, the crux of

this argument lies in the exploration of language as a dual signifier within mythic

narratives. Essentially, this means that while fantasy provides the reader with a

recognizable landscape and seems to be delivering a commentary on a world that can

only be accessed by the imagination, it is, in actual fact, simultaneously expressing

something else. This ―something else‖, for the purposes of this study, is defined as the

unending struggle to assimilate and express meaning as an individual that is always

already a member of a pan-cultural, indefinable collective, namely, the community of

humanity.

Subsequently, it can easily be argued that fantasy allows us to explore a space

that can be dubbed ―mythic space‖ within a text. The function of this space is to allow

for an informed confrontation with questions that reappear consistently throughout the

history of literature. It is the space that taps into the symbol archive of the collective

unconscious and gives voice to concepts that cannot be represented through the

inadequate system of language. Both novels that have been chosen for this chapter

illustrate these points and highlight the fact that there are several different ways to

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approach, not only a text, but the subject matter that inspires the text. Choosing these

novels comes from a specific context that resides within the narrative itself in the

form of metaphor and allegory.

Since myth and fantasy are simultaneously ambiguous and particular, we

begin to engage in an interesting investigation into the way that allegory is employed.

For example, if one were to take a dogmatic repressive ruler like Khattam-Shud in

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, we see not only a tyrannical ruler who commands

allegiance and sovereignty by fear, bloodshed and imagined esteem (Khattam-Shud

means literally ―finish‖ within the novel, which further demonstrates his pathological

need to be in control), but depending on our subjective interpretation, cultural

background and willingness to tie this allegory to reality. The mythic-symbolic

configuration serves to enlarge and enrich the understanding of reality. In order to

receive what it is that myth and symbols give, they have to be interpreted, and acts of

interpretation are informed and performed by the presuppositions, intentions, and

values of the interpreter. In other words, the meaning of myth is not immediate but

mediated, and it behooves the interpreter to be familiar with the various operations

present in the meditational process called interpretation.

Therefore, symbolism is a major technique in the two novels. Aurora Zogoiby

in The Moor’s Last Sigh, for instance, stands for ―Mother India‖ because she reflects

in her paintings the glory of the nation. She begins to formulate her pluralistic dream,

a dream of a world where religious identity could submit to multiculturalism and

mutual respect. The mediation of metaphor and allegory plays a crucial part as tools

of myth. The Moor’s Last Sigh ―revives‖ and ―activates‖ the myth of Alhambra and

Cordoba, the shining and flourishing age of tolerance and human civilization for a

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certain purpose; to refer to the recent historical context of India. The novel

contextualizes the myth of Alhambra to criticize the present historical reality. Also, by

the concept of nostalgia and longing for the golden rule in Arab Spain, the novel

creates another myth which functions in the real context of India as a counter-

discourse against the nationalist and religious intolerance.

The employment of the politics of hybridity in The Moor’s Last Sigh envisions

the enthusiastic anticipation of cultural eclecticism. Using palimpsest as a metaphor,

the novel inscribes intersecting trajectories of variegated cultural legacies and their

imbrications in the course of cultural formation and historical mutation. This politics

of hybridity is manifested in three dimensions: first, the metaphor of the palimpsest

visualizes the nature of hybridity and dominates the book‘s cultural vision, featuring

the germ of the novel; second, hybrid characters in the novel interrogate and

destabilize the fixity of ―the Other‖ and decouple the homogeneous definition of ―the

Other‖ in the logic of Manichean division of ―Self and Other‖; third, cultural legacies

left by the British Empire are inevitably intertwined with local cultures, which

illustrate that cultural hybridity is the predictable product of cultural formation. The

closing lament for a commodified Alhambra, likewise, implies a false

multiculturalism. In parodying Martin Luther‘s persistence in his religious ideal in

exile, the novel indicates that exile can never shatter a writer‘s literary conviction,

which rescues the novel from turning into a melodrama, thereby allowing it to emit

the positive glow of exile (Su 199-226). The novels are historical as they parody

national myths, and magic realism, the fundamental basis on which they are built. It

entails all sorts of binary oppositions like national unification and fragmentation. The

novels move around centre and periphery, artist/entertainer, author/reader,

history/myth, history/elevated are other binaries that are extensively found in them.

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Both of Haroun and Moor travel across times and ages, searching for the truth

(the human truth). Also, they search freedom of the individual away from a chaotic

and confusing world. They want to escape the disorder, chaos and confusion of the

world into the world of perfectness and idealism. There is a contrast between the

―real‖ and the ―ideal‖. Haroun travels to the times and golden ages of the great

Caliph, Haroun al-Rashid, and who encourages creation and freedom of speech.

Similarly, Moor travels across the ages and times to the days and nights of Granada,

Castile, Cordoba and al-hambra in Andalusia. It is a longing for the times of freedom

and grace.

According to Rushdie‘s own explanation, ―[the gravity of plot] moves from

the marginal [Cabral Island] to the metropolis [Malabar Hill and then Bombay], from

high society into the depths and then steps out of the frame, goes abroad [―Little

Alhambra‖ in Benengeli, Spain]‖ (Rushdie, ―The Book of Exile‖ 8). This intentional

transgression of textual frame, topographical boundaries, and cultural frontiers not

only continues and deepens the interrogation of the myth of cultural authenticity and

cultural chauvinism but also reveals that the novel‘s recurrent employment of

palimpsest narration owes a lot to its exilic nature.

In the deployment of myth and archetype in a postcolonial context, the novels

shrewdly draws on the Biblical allusions to ―Paradise Lost‖ and ―Paradise Regain‖, as

portrayed by Milton, as an underlying thematic reflection and narrative strategy in the

two novels. Even more, his secular myth creates an advanced analogy to the Biblical

Story of Man‘s plight after his fall to earth, meted with the Fall of Satan from Heaven

to Hell. The myth of Fall reverberates the prototypical image of Adam‘s expulsion

from the Garden of Eden, and the Fall of Satan from Heaven to Hell. Boabdil‘s

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departure from Granada is paralleled with Adam‘s ceremonially separation from

Eden. The Biblical story in is countered by an artificial and secular myth of man‘s

surrendering to power of nation, resulting in his torture of exile and suffering of loss.

In this regard, it is easy to examine the portrayal of Boabdil‘s loss of authority and

power and his suffering due to the loss of his kingdom in Andalusia. Likewise, Rashid

Khalifa‘s loss of the power of telling stories resonates the exilic condition of Adam

until his recovery in earth wherein he built his first kingdom and restored his power of

living. In case of Rashid Khailfa and his son, the mythical story in Haroun and the

Sea of Stories is woven in parallel to, but not the same of, Dr. Faustus‘s quest for

power of knowledge. Yet, Rashid Khalifa searches for a lost power of human

communication and salvation while Dr. Faustus‘ looks for human control and

individuation. In case of the Moor in The Moor’s Last Sigh, the story returns us back

to the Ulysses‘ plight as he travels from his kingdom with his fellow companions,

leaving behind a people who knows everyone but ―knows not me‖. The technique of

amalgamatic and intertextual reverences is used as an effective way of blurring the

image of the sacred and the profane. The purpose is to secularize myth and to subject

it to the scrutiny of human experience and interpretation.

Located within Jungian framework of archetypal critical view, Rushdie has

deployed the Biblical story of Adam in The Moor’s Last Sigh, in which the central

character, Moor, falls from the grace as though he was cursed by God. The fall from

Eden means that man has been, forever, separated from the life of innocence and

divinity. Moor feels that he lost Paradise [life of peace and innocence], he is,

therefore, yearning for new multiple and alternative worlds. The same thing, we have

the fall of Sultan Boabdil from grace (he lost Granada and Andalusia). The two (Moor

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and his archetypal prototype suffer fall from grace and loss and suffer a human defeat

and failure and both fail to regain the paradise, lost of them).

If the The Moor’s Last Sigh parodically imitates the Paradise Lost of Man,

Haroun and the Sea of Stories re-acts his Paradise Regain. The two novels act as a

sequel to each other utilizing the idea of mythical past as a roaming area for

commenting on the debilitated present. Both novels can easily be classified as an

archetypal and mythical discourse of history. They provide a fertile soil for analyzing

historical figures and cultural events in light of mythical and archetypal criticism.

Furthermore, the two novels discuss the man‘s plight in a reality in different to his

fate, and makes him face his destiny. The Moor, Haroun and his father Rashid Khalifa

are archetypes of their proptotype, Adam. The main concern of the novels is to enrich

and involve his audience with a parallel mythical thought to the present day situation.

This actually forms the foregrounding index of secular contextualization of myth

against the singular authority of national myth of the postcolonial state.

In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the hero -- the storyteller -- Rashid Khalifa,

lost his talent of storytelling, yet he regains it in the end. Significantly, the crisis of the

two heroes of novels can be viewed as a reflection or projection of Rushdie and his

predicament as well as the crisis of many modern immigrant writers. He stands for a

writer who was cursed by some circles of religious authorities due to his provocative

ideas and political stands against stat‘s repression. Regardless, whether Rushdie

regains his Paradise or not, he has new experiences with suffering as a cost he pays

for his attitudes. The two novels can thus be read as a parallelism of loss and fall of

the three (Rushdie and his two heroes) with the ―fall of man‖ as narrated in the Holy

Book. However, he can regain his paradise in his fictional universe and achieve some

victory over the repressive circles. Nonetheless, these texts examine the Biblical myth

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in a secular vein here to elaborate ideas of power and its extinction, the fall of empires

and the emergence of new states. Thus king Boabdil‘s tears were exotically popular

also because they were removed from their original meaning and import, and

refashioned into vehicles for ideological concerns proper to British romantic – period

culture. Granada, the ―charmed name‖ of which, ―as if by fairy power, consumes up

splendid scenes and pageants of the past‖ (qtd. in Saglia 55)

In his essay, ―The Moor‘s Last Sigh: Spanish -- Moorish Exoticism and the

Gender of History in British romantic poetry,‖ Diego Saglia seeks to chart the

importance of the ―matter of Granada‖ in romantic period literature by following the

(narrative and ideological) mutations of one central icon this fictional repertoire -- the

tears shed by Boabdil, the cast ruler of an Islamic kingdom in Spain, on leaving his

capital and land forever. Romantic views of Granada are indeed legible. ―The

kingdom of Granada was the last strong hold of Moorish power, and the favorite

abode of Moorish luxury‖ (55), thus combining intimations of the opulent vistas

frequently suggested by the Arabian Nights with the epic subtext of the wars between

Christians and Muslims in medieval Spain. Hence, the mythical and archetypal

criticism of the novel reveals that exoticism inhabits the magic between two zones, a

dialectic such as the one between East and West, or past and present, recurrent in

cultural constructions of Granada and re-elaborated by romantic-period writers,

however, the divide between fact and fiction, between the dreamy and romance.

Spain‘s exoticism in romantic period culture owes much to its inclusion of a cultural

boundary within its own geographical boundary.

Moreover, the novel attempts a secular re-examination of a mythical past. It is

also true that the mythical values of tolerance, brotherhood and co-existence, which

were embodied in the reality of Andalusian empire, are used as political archetypes of

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its history. The purpose of this ―mythical‖ representation is to convey several

messages to the present political nation-state forms which failed to present any ideal

patterns, like that in Andalusia. The novel mythicizes the major centers of Andalusia

as capitals of human civilization; they are Alhambra, Granada and Cordoba. The aim

is to criticize the totalitarian policy in the name of nationalism. The criticism is

directed to the modern ―chauvinistic‖ patterns and ―nationalist‖ models which could

not ingrained tolerance and the acceptance of the ―others‖.

History in this vision is a dim picture of enclosure and dictatorship. The

mythic capitals of Andalusia are archetypes of ideal empire of cultural freedom. In the

mythical representation of Granada, Cordoba and Alhambra the intention is to express

his disappointment of the current nation-state forms of collectivity and totality. The

postcolonial thought which the novel attempts to convey is the liberation of the

individual from the political forces that forced their views on him. The aim is to

dissent, deconstruct and liberate human history from the domination of hegemonic

cultural and historical forces that restrain its truth. Therefore, the novel uses the

remote past of Arab Spain to criticize the failure of co-existence in modern

postcolonial nations. Above all, in dealing with history in this novel, the aim is to

convey a valuable historical message. That is, the collapse of civilizations is a product

of the mentality of ―erosion‖, which refuses to recognize the other views, and that the

building of powerful nations should be based on complementary interaction between

singularity and plurality. The concept of myth in the novel is expressed through the

mediation of allegory and metaphor. In the novel, we have two contrasted schools of

painting -- one represents the singularity of nation and the other the secular freedom.

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In his essay, ―Andalusian Poetics: Rushdie‘s The Moor’s Last Sigh and the

Limits of Hybridity,‖ Atef Laouyene observes that Rushdie‘s evocation of Andalusia,

as an ideal multicultural model for strife-ridden India, is ―coterminous with his

scruples about the ironic possibility that some forms of Indian fundamentalism

(political, religious, ethnic, and/or artistic) may appropriate such a model for their

own purposes‖ (145). According to Laouyene, the ―apparent nostalgia for an ideal

multicultural hybridity built on the model of Arab Spain is parodically undercut in the

novel by Rushdie‘s post exotic tropes‖. He argues that such tropes ―articulate his

misgivings about the potential failures of certain forms of hybridity art‖. He believes

that ―in the face of intractable religious fanaticism and political extremism, Rushdie

intimates, such abstract notions as hybridity, plurality, multiculturalism, and liminal

subjectivity may potentially be vacated of their historical significance and resistive

value‖ (145). On his part, David Quint has observed that the distinctive coupling of

history and allegory is characteristic of early modern textual practice. Scholarship that

sought to recover the ―original‖ texts from classical antiquity implicitly evoked the

idea that culture was a human creation whose meaning was determined by historical

circumstances and the individual dispositions of its authors. However, the

impossibility of an absolute or fixed meaning in the face of history and historical

change was the consequence of this insight. (20–24).

Indeed, the very turn from history to myth serves as a sharp example.

Nevertheless, there remains nostalgia for the authentic and an effort to transform the

―actuality‖ of history. Rushdie urgently attempts to use the early modern to displace a

singular modernity and transform it into a multiple and hybrid postcoloniality.

According to Dipesh Chakrabarty, in The Moor’s Last Sigh, certainly at one level,

―Europe‖ and ―India‖ are treated as hyperreal terms in that they refer to certain figures

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of imagination whose geographical referents remain indeterminate. By mythologizing

and allegorizing histories, Rushdie posits ―Europe‖ and ―India‖ as imaginary figures

and therefore subject to contestation and rewriting. However, a certain silent ―reified‖

version of Europe, even if it is early modern Moorish Spain, continues to dominate

the phenomenal world of everyday relationships of power and continues to surface in

the rendering of history. Given India‘s history of colonization by Muslims and

Europeans, as well as the fact that ―al-Andalus‖ was a colony of the Moors and then

taken over by the Spanish, this reification is problematic. (1) Yet, due to the mythic

nature of this past in the novel, India and Iberia can only serve as indistinct mirrors of

each other as the story unfolds.

The novel also reinforces the themes of exile and alienation, connecting the

secular world with the sacred and the profane with the divine. The Biblical story of

Adam‘s exile to Earth and the expulsion of Satan to Hell overshadow the scene here.

Likewise, the shadow of Moorish Spain is bequeathed to modern India by virtue of

the ancient exile on the order of the Catholic couple, Ferdinand and Isabella. The da

Gama family is believed to be of a Portuguese lineage. Not only is the Zogoiby family

descended from the Moorish sultan, Boabdil, but they also have a Jewish ancestress

who accompanies the Sultan. The exile of Boabdil from Granada (original exile), and

the exile of Moor from the collective nationalist society is narrativized as a counter-

narrative mode to the postcolonial situation. There is a likeness in exile between the

ideal character, Boabdil in Arab Spain, and Moor in the contemporary nation-state.

Mythically, the concept of exile itself resembles the exile of Adam from Heaven. In

this, the novel juxtaposes the mythical with the real, and the mythical account with the

realist history. It deploys the concept of Biblical reference in a political context. On

the other hand, the novel explains that The Moor’s Last Sigh is ―a metaphor of the

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conflict between the one and the many, between the pure and the impure, the sacred

and the profane‖ (Reder, Conversations 156). Rushdie emphasizes that the story is

grounded in his experience of the past years, and ―what makes it particularly

interesting for me is that this is true, not fiction; that this obscene thing could happen

to me and my book and could go on and cease to seem scandalous‖ (Conversations

156). Moor himself tells us about his alienation, ―After my thirty-fifth or seventieth

birthday, however, the truth of my life‘s great Fact became impossible for me to shrug

off with a few nostrums about kismet, karma, of fate‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 340). He

further says:

I am going through time faster than I should. Do you understand me?

Somebody somewhere has been holding down the button marked ‗FF‘ … I,

Moraes Zogoiby, known as Moor, am – for my sins, for my many and many

sins, for my fault, for my grievous fault – a man living double- quick‖. (The

Moor’s Last Sigh 143)

The Moor attempts to cling to the past. ―I tried to cling to the past. In my bitter

turmoil I sought to apportion blame; and mostly I blamed my mother, to whom my

father never could say no‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 288). The Moor also compares

himself to Adam who committed the original sin. I am going through time faster them

I should (The Moor’s Last Sigh 143) Moraes Zogoiby, known as Moor, am-for my

sins, for my many and many sins, for my most grievous fault – a man living double–

quick. (The Moor’s Last Sigh 143)

Moreover, the idea of the fall of Granada is used throughout the novel as a

metaphor for various kinds of rupture. One can see Moorish Spain as a fusion of

cultures – Spanish, Moorish, Jewish, the ―Peoples of the Book‖ – which came apart at

the fall of Granada. Nevertheless, the Biblical exile as a myth is used in the political

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context to criticize the policy of exclusion and omission, and to highlight the suffering

of the individual in the realist and modern history. The myth of ―exile‖ in the Bible is

deployed in the ―realist‖ context of history. The blurring borders between the

―mythical‖ and the ―real‖ is strategic narrative method of Rushdie‘s search for the

ideal. Thus, the mythical idea of exile is mystified for a certain political implication.

This treatment of myth of ―Fall‖ and ―Exile‖ is directed to condemn the policy of

exclusion and expulsion. After the downfall of Andalusia at the hand of the Catholic

invaders Muslims and Jews are forced to depart their home. The forced exile tells that

the ―new invaders‖ do not accept the ―differences‖ and that they deal with the

―invaded‖ from a position of the ―victorious‖.

The Moor’s Last Sigh, commemorates the archetypal humanity in the Eden

before man‘s fall to the Earth according to the Biblical and Qur‘anic commentaries.

Man falls to Earth from Heaven and then, he suffers loss. Though man on the earth is

making his own kingdom of reality, the yearning for perfect heavenly life was still an

original feeling. His ―heaven‖ on the earth is a re-creation of reality just as a version

of ―earthly human paradise‖ is a symbolic image of the mythical life in Heaven. This

―analogy‖ which is contained in man‘s struggle on the earth is to ―re-create‖ a

possible version of ―Pradisal‖ life. The myth of ―Paradise Lost‖ is utilized in the

novel as a technique of comparison between the real and the ideal with a purpose to

criticize the failure of India‘s pluralism. Moreover, the novel can be read as an

adverting disruption and anarchic portrayal of the postcolonial state -- India in

particular. It pushes the reader to acknowledge the effects of history and intercultural

relations on Moor‘s story, even if his lineage is partly fictional. It reflects Rushdie‘s

postcolonial attitudes toward national identity, national sentimentalism,

multiculturalism, pluralism and religious identity. Aurora Zogoiby, Moor‘s mother,

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represents the concept of a metropolitan India. She grew into the giant public figure

we all know, the great beauty at the heart of the nationalist movement. In the same

direction, individual myth as a counterpart to national myth is a major theme in both

Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The Moor’s Last Sigh. The archetypal analysis of

the latter reveals the conflictual shifting between the Jungian unconscious collective

image (the modern myth of nation) and the conscious personal idea of the individual

(myth of the individual). Therefore, it becomes relevant here to note that Rushdie has

so often resorted to this method in his earlier novels, linking the personal life of his

protagonist with the historically famous event.

The narrative in the novel advances the idea of the postcolonial Indian nation.

It builds answers the hybridity and cultural, religious tolerance. It is also one which

reacts and responds to both of colonialism and nationalism. What kind of identity

does the hero have? He has an elastic identity, flexible and fluid identity, which

crosses the traditional colonial/postcolonial boundary. The narrative aims to remove

the cultural and religious boundaries in order to have a hybrid identity of the

character. A character‘s identity is made by many cultural sources and origins. His

identity crosses the boundaries of religion and culture. The novel‘s commitment to

opposing and delegitimizing colonialist discourse by offering new versions of India

and the West still focuses on the present and future and consists in replacing the lost

familiar habitants by creating alternative worlds.

Significantly, the notion of utopian homecoming is particularly relevant to

this novel, which turns around the difficult task of redefining home for one‘s modified

self, torn between the emotional poles of indigenousness and cultural acceptance,

cultural banishment and the longing for total assimilation. The commitment to the

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secular values is ―to be an Indian of my generation was also to be convinced of the

vital importance of Jawaharlal Nehru‘s vision of secular India. Secularism, for India,

is not simply a point of view; it is a question of survival‖ (Rushdie, Imaginary

Homelands 404).

As Aurora blossoms into an artist, she becomes involved with the nationlist

movement and begins to move in elite political circles. It is even suggested that the

renowned Indian leader who practices a secular politics, Nehru, is one of her many.

She believes fully in him as an iconic figure and a builder of the modern nation. She

also believes in his philosophy and thought of nationalism. Connected with this, The

Moor’s Last Sigh is regarded an anti-colonialist vision of India. It may be viewed as a

perfect justification of why it is worth devising and living in the new realm of one‘s

hopes and dreams, in that offers another anti-colonialist vision of the country.

However, the novel articulates its disenchament with secularism in the excessive

idealism with which Camoens, a major character in the novel, describes his vision of a

secular and united Indian nation that is “above religion because secular, above class

because socialist, above caste because enlightened, above hatred because loving […]

above stupidity because brilliant.” (The Moor’s Last Sigh 51). Secularism entails

anti-colonialist nationalism and it mobilizes notions of unity and common interest out

of a heterogeneous mix of people in the immediate post- independence Indian period.

But it is also true that the novel is an interrogation of the liberal multiculturalist terms

with which secular nationalism constructs a unifying narrative for the modern nation.

Crucially in this respect, the text suggests that the secular nation‘s constant harking

back to the past for a common history is unable to confront the reality of the social

relations presented by the contentious to confront the reality of the social relations

presented by the contentious plural politics of the contemporary nation. Thus, the

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unitary trajectory of secular nationalism, as propounded by the Camoens in the quote

above, can only offer little more than impossibly romantic or idealized vision of

community in the face of the challenge of difference posited by the composition of the

nation. The fact that Camoens in the quote above, a ―passive positive‖ who is

constantly criticized for his political inaction, is the text‘s exemplar of Nehruvian

secularism, can be read as another sign of loss of faith in the ability of secular

nationalism to confront and address the task of unifying India‘s heterogeneous

realities. Moreover, it is a novel of loss, loss of self and identity, and loss of the world.

Like Adam who lost his seat in Heaven to his life on Earth, Moor, a reflection of

historical figure, Boabdil, has lost his palace as well. In the end of the novel, Moor

has lost his family and his treacherous beloved. Most of Aurora‘s paintings have been

destroyed, and Moor himself has narrowly escaped from the murderous Vasco

Miranda. He leaves Benengeli and travels to the Alhambra, monument to Boabdil, last

Moorish ruler of Spain.

The novel dramatizes the destruction of art, but seems to show art triumphing

in the end, transforming the real. In the novel, we read the individual‘s loss: of

parents, country, self, things which to a greater or lesser degree Rushdie himself has

lost. According to him, The Moor’s Last Sigh is a novel about ―someone who is

thrown out of his family and goes on to recount how he is force to, remake his life

from scratch‖ and then is drawn back to ―the feeling of homelessness that weighs so

heavily upon him‖. He further explains:

In my book, about a very different mother and a very different son, there is a

similarly lost portrait, and one of the strands of the story is his finding this

picture, and in this way the struggle there and been in life between mother and

son continues beyond death. (Banville 155-56)

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In his article entitled ―Tales of the Alhambra: Rushdie‘s Use of Spanish

History in The Moor’s Last Sigh,‖ Paul A. Cantor examines the ways in which

Rushdie incorporates the history of medieval Spain into his text as a way of

‗‗rethinking‘‘ the cultural multiplicity of contemporary India. The strong female

character and paintist, Aurora, depicts the story of alienation and disillusionment of

the projected hero, her son (Moor), who resembles in frustration the last Moorish

Sultan of Granada in Andalusia:

The so-called ‗Moor paintings‘ of Aurora Zogoiby can be divided into three

distinct periods: the ‗early‘ pictures, made between 1957 and 1977, that is to

say between the year of my birth and that of the election that swept Mrs. G.

from power… Depiction of the moment of Boabdil‘s explusion from Granada,

to her own treatment of her only son. (The Moor’s Last Sigh 218)

Aurora translates the dream of multiple identities and reflects the theme of the

ideal mythical past. She ―was seeking to paint a golden age, Jews, Christians,

Muslims, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains crowded into her paint – Boabdil‘s fancy-

dress balls, and the Sultan himself was represented less and less naturalistically‖ (The

Moor’s Last Sigh 227). Also, she depicts the dilemma of Moor, the central character:

Moor in his hybrid fortress she wove her vision, which in fact was a vision of

weaving, or more accurately interweaving . . . to create a romantic myth of the

plural, hybrid nation; she was using Arab Spain to re-imagine India, and this

land – sea-- escape in which the land could be fluid and the sea stone – dry

was her metaphor – idealised? (The Moor’s Last Sigh 227)

In fact, she translates in her paintings the major theme of the novel and part of

the debate in the novel between the characters about issue of multiple identities. Her

portrait, ―Mooristan‖ reflects a sense of hope for a secular, multicultural India, in the

second half of the millennium. The portrait symbolizes a multicultural India, a paintly

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amalgam of ―Mughal splendours‖ and ―Spanish building‘s Moorish grace‖ where

Alhambra palace is mapped over Malabar Hill, Granada over Bombay (The Moor’s

Last Sigh 225-26). Her ―Mooristan‖ is not an Andalusian sanctuary for Jews,

Muslims and Christians only, but a ―landseascape‖ (227) inhabited by humans,

ghosts, folktale heroes and Sea creatures (226). The vision of a secular of

―Indialusian‖ is prompted by a desire to paint Andalusia‘s convention into India‘s

pluralism, ―to create a romantic myth of the plural, hybrid nation‖ indeed ―she was

using Arab Spain to re-imagine India‖ (227).

Like the ocean in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh

comprises ―an ocean of stories‖ where everybody talked at once. In telling the Moor‘s

family story and invoking the multiple other stories as always-already implicated in

the story, the text suggests that there is no single or ordinary story; there are only

stories ―polished and fantasticated by many re-tellings‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 11).

The novel foregrounds the idea that the construction of a national identity is closely

implicated with the fictional process. Crucially, the narrative ends with Moraes

speaking to us from Granada, within a sight of Alhambra, Boabdil‘s lost capital, and

like Bombay before its binary split into Hindu-Muslim divisions, a city of teeming

multiplicity before its conquest Catholics. Alhambra was also the scene, five

centuries before, of the exclusion of the narrator‘s Jewish and Muslim ancestors at the

onset of the Spanish Inquisition.

Ideal world is that which celebrates justice and freedom. Thus, Haroun and

the Sea of Stories, projects on the present day situation by invoking the image of

Haroun al-Rashid and his era. Haroun al-Rashid‘s rein was characterized by tolerance,

cultural multiplicity, advocacy of art and artists. The novel is invoking the ideal past.

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The palimpsest style was used to comment on the present day situation. As Rushdie

seems to suggest, the present postcolonial society has been handicapped by narrow

nationalist and religious orthodoxies and dogmatism which pose devastating a result

to the individual imaginary and existence. Art as well as land should be an individual

imagining and free space of human values not systems. Therefore, if The Moor’s

Last Sigh parodies the fall of man, Haroun and and the Sea of Stories portrays his

effort to regain a lost Paradise. After his exile to Earth, Adam started to build his

kingdom and effortlessly struggled to regain it. His struggle to overcome the satanic

whims had gained him the ―divine salvation‖. On the other side, Satan lost his battles

and his conspiracies failed him to abyss. Built on this basis, the struggle of Rashid-

Khalifa to regain his power of storytelling is seen as a salvation journey to deliver

human communication against the tyranny of Khattam-Shud. Based on the mythic

mode as a fictive strategy, the novel succeeds to offer an alternative historical view to

his audience. It brilliantly invested the mythical mode of narration to comment on the

postcolonial situation without prescribing a certain path to it.

The postcolonial subject is squeezed between so many ideological agendas

and lost his freedom and position as a history-maker, and turned into a packed object

to superimposed realities. As R.S. Krishnan argues, ―Haroun and the Sea of Stories,

coming within a year of Rushdie‘s personal and artistic travails, seemed to many to

indicate a signal triumph of his unfettered imagination over his fettered freedom.‖

(67) Krishnan further argues that by incorporating a variety of genres, particularly

myth and magical realism to deal with the recurring themes of ideology and identity,

―Rushdie again in Haroun and the Sea of Stories relies on the mythic mode as a

fictive strategy to shape his ideological intentions‖ (67). As Frederic Jameson notes in

The Political Unconscious, ―The aesthetic act is itself ideological, and the production

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of aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideological act in its own right, with

the function of inventing imaginary or formal ‗solutions‘ to unresolvable social

contradictions‖ (79). Timothy Brennen noticed, Rushdie‘s fiction often represents

―imaginative expression of ‗freedom‘‖. (qtd. in Krishnan 71) Aron R. Aji argues that

Rushdie‘s Haroun and the Sea of Stories ―celebrates the triumph of storytelling and

imagination over raw power and dogmatism‖. (103-104) Furthermore, Aji opines that

the narrative details in Haroun and the Sea of Stories ―are particularly evocative when

approached from the perspective of the legacy of Islam.‖ Aji concludes ―Haroun has

plenty to say about cultural continuity, freedom of creative expression, and the

destructive effects of zealotry on imagination.‖ (107). In fact, the novel, is a

commentary on the battle between the proponents of freedom of speech and its

enemies. Thus ―the ultimate appeal of stories lies not in what they actually say but in

what sentiments they evoke. Rushdie is currently suffering from a similar kind of

disability, imposed by real-life followers of Khattam-Shud, the archenemy of stories

in the land of Kahani‖. (Sen 654)

On the other hand, the treatment of the past in The Moor’s Last Sigh takes a

kaleidoscopic view, the purpose is to castigate the political present of modern myth.

Therefore, Granada is mentioned several times in the novel for its historical

significance. It is the key to Arab Spain history and the mythical past at the time of

Arab rulers. Its significance lies in the fact that it was the capital of Andalusia till the

time of the last Sultan of ―Al-Andalus‖. Granada is an archetypal place of human

hybridity and communication. However, the name of city is connected with the ―bitter

defeat ―and ―the last sigh‖ of Sultan Boabdil, who was forced to leave the city under

the forces of his enemies.

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Memory plays a big role in remembering, recalling and restoring the major

events that took place in the past. It is a tool which functions in regaining the past

history. The narrator here remembers Nadia Wadia, Miss Bombay and an icon of

beauty. She represents the idealism or the myth of beauty. She is the ideal example of

beauty: ―In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the

black water to flow into our veins . . . It was an ocean of stories, we were all its

narrators, and everybody talked at once‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 350). It is Bombay,

the center of national heart; bridging the different groups of the nation and containing

the diverse and multiple contributions of many nations and human cultures. It is an

iconic (or romantic place) which has an ocean of stories of the different cultures

within the nation (India); it speaks many languages and expresses many cultural

differences. It is a center of diversity and a source of human tolerance. It is just like a

river of humanity. ―Bombay was central. In Bombay, as the old, founding myth of the

nation faded, the new god-and-mammon India was being born‖ (351). Bombay is

central and at the heart of myth and history by its centrality of cultural values. Like

Granada, Bombay is central to hybridity and multiculturalism. In Bombay there are

many histories and myths as a product of human interaction.

Cochin, south of India is like Bombay in the north, a centre of human

interaction, which bridges the relationship with Indian and England, with Indians and

the British. Cochin is a bridge between civilizations and nations; India, Portuguese

and England. The novel celebrates the dialogue – not the clash – between

civilizations:

By the end of 1945, Aurora and Abraham had left Cochin and bought a

sprawling bungalow set amid tamarind, plane and jack fruit trees on the slopes

of Malabar Hill, Bombay, with a steeply terraced garden looking down on

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Chowpatty Beach, the Back Bay and Marine Drive. ‗Cochin is finished,

anyway,‘ Abraham reasoned. ‗From a strictly business point of view the move

makes complete sense‘. (The Moor’s Last Sigh 119).

The ideal past of these cities, including Cochin, can be understood as part of

yearning for luxurious and prosperous life. They are to bridge the nations and

civilizations. Mosques, churches and temples are built near each other, and this is a

translation of religious tolerance as a project of secular nationalism. For this, Cochin

is introduced as a mythical center of peaceful co-existence. The significance of the

city is rooted into history. It connects the human interaction and bridges variety of

cultures. ―We will never gain our humanity until we lose our skins‖ (The Moor’s Last

Sigh 95). Further, Cabral Island is mentioned many times in the novel. The island has

a mythical connotation as a bridge of civilization and human communication. The two

metropolitans of Cochin and Bombay are represented as a place of human culture in

its variety, where different groups register their sweet memories. Also, Malabar Hill

and Malabar Gold are used and mentioned in the novel as two mythical places.

Romance and myth work together in the mythical representation of history in the

novel. Malabar Hill is a source of inspiration of telling of stories. The place is a

source of romance and a meeting place of humanity.

The argument here is that the frequent and reminiscent reference to Bombay,

Cochin, and Granada has been incorporated within a mythical and archetypal vein,

that is, search for a lost history, lost place and lost paradise. The cyclical vision of

history dominates the narrative of the story. The exilic nature of man on Earth takes

us back to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve‘s expulsion from Heaven. The sense of

loss is reverberated theme that runs throughout the two novels. Both Moor and

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Haroun embark on the journey to the remote past, space and place, in search for a lost

history, identity and place.

The archetypal analysis of the two novels takes us to the concepts of Good and

Evil represented by the archetypal figures of God and Satan, Christ and Judah,

Rashid-Khailfa and Khatum-Shud. Put within the postcolonial terminologies, the

battle between good and evil is revealed in the form of colonial and repressive powers

and systems and the indigenous peoples and cultures that suffer loss and alienation.

Yet, Rushdie chooses to examine this tense relationship in a larger frame of mythical

mode. Thus, he universalizes the particular and particularizes the universal, adding an

extra significance to his heroes. However, The Moor’s Last Sigh is about the history

of common man. He is the central interest and core subject of history. What is history

without the common man‘s problems and ambitions? In the modernist approach in

general, man occupies an important place in history and realistic life. The primary

concern of this modernist thought is to trace the common man‘s plights and

difficulties in life. This approach also traces his own misery, destructions, loss,

frustration and of course dissociation with the world. The text, for instance, can be

read from this angle of view. It can be read from the modernist approach in historical

treatment whose subject is loss, dissociation, disappointment, resentment, regret,

isolation and alienation -- all are the features of the modernist approach. The common

man‘s loss and feeling of disassociation is the major theme in this text in particular.

To sum up, history is about the dilemma of the individual or the common man.

However, Sabrina Hassumani studies the novel from a postmodern perspective

as a novel about is secularism (115-134). Moor, begins his life with Aurora‘s eclectic

personality and art. She uses him as a model for her Boabdil who is meant to

represent an ultimate form of hybridity. But Moor himself never develops into a

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hybrid character. Characters such as Uma Saravati and Mainduck are portrayed as

ani-hybridity characters. They establish their view of singularity. They are

fundamentalist nationalists. The novel is about the concepts of multiplicity by

singularity: These concepts are represented through the paintings of three female

paints, Aurora (hybridity), Uma, and Miranda (singularity). On the other hand,

Hassumani also observes that ―overarching theme in the text is actually ‗secularism,‘

rather than hybridity.‖ It is about Nehru‘s message of secularism (lost secularism).

Aurora, who is meant to represent inclusiveness and crossing – of – boundaries, is

secular and the one thing missing in her art is God, Christian or otherwise. Every year

she dances against the Ganesh processions and takes pride in her secular views.

The purpose of the text is to re-imagine a new imaginary world without

cultural pains. It offers a new multicultural history which includes the family saga, the

individuality, and the multiplicity of views. The cultural identity is a major theme in

the novel. Moraes understands that, ―In the end, stories are what‘s left of us; we are

not more than the few tales that persist‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 110). In harmony with

this value of narration which persists on identity, Rashid Khalifa in Haroun and the

Sea of Stories is also haunted by narration as a storyteller, and that his ―stolen gift‖ of

storytelling has been restored at the end of the tale. The struggle of both characters

(Moor and Rashid) was to defend identity narration as identity against oblivion.

Further, the two characters resist ―the cultural impact and the cultural homogony‖

under the names of hegemony or nationalism.

The individual identity is a product of multicultural co-existence and human

interaction. And it is basically linked to the individual‘s space that enables him to

express himself. One of the modes of expression is storytelling as in Haroun and the

Sea of Stories and narrating the saga of the family as in The Moor’s Last Sigh. A

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power to narrate gives you a power to name things and identify yourself and others.

Moor identifies himself and narrates the history of his family, ―Mine is the story of

the fall from grace of a high-born cross-breed: me, Moraes Zogoiby, called ‗Moor‘‖.

(The Moor’s Last Sigh 5). In the postcolonial fiction, the theme of identity occupies

an undisputable place. Along with the concept of hybridity, identity becomes a focus

of experimentation and exploration. Moor is a product of hybrid culture; influenced

by history and its elements. Moor says, ―What was true of history in general was true

of our family‘s fortunes in particular‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 6). This tells that the

individual affects and is affected by history. He/she is embedded with the universal

associations (transnational horizons). The historical truth is then a product of process

(a constructing process) and interaction between him/her and the forces and

influences of history.

In the same direction, we are exposed to Rashid Khalifa in Haroun and the

Sea of Stories ―who was so busy making up and telling stories … he was the Ocean of

Nations, the famous Shah of Blah‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories 16). The passage

tells that Rashid Khalifa is a storyteller and that his identity is, from the beginning,

identified by his power to narrate. It is also connected with his freedom of expression.

He is also introduced as ―a magician‖ and as an artist who seeks a complete freedom

so that his voice can reach everywhere. The opening pages of the two novels, The

Moor’s Last Sigh and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, introduce the two heroes (Moor

and Rashid) as two extraordinary characters of magic (magicians). Also, they are

destined to the linked to the general associations of history.

Thematically, both novels revolve around two stands or visions of human

space: the political and the human. Whereas the former refers to the political ideology

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and human collectivity, the latter deals with the humanistic urgency and human

individual. In the politically-charged space, the individual, and human history along

with it, is subjected to the force of the dominant structures. Its movements are

determined by the desire and ideology of those structural forces. Hence, the human

subject is never free from the impositions of the socio- political codes. He acts as an

agent rather than a free individual subject. The conceptualization of space is through

the interventions of historical and cultural tropes such as national and social norms.

To break with the traditional concepts of national identity to that of cultural identity

needs to break away with the determining factors of religion, convention, and nation.

History is seen as a dynamic process of social and political realities. The author

himself is an epitome of this cultural product. To be an Indian in the strict sense of

conventionality is to emphasize the prochality of one‘s identity, and then the

fossilization of one‘s space.

In the situation of the novel, Rashid (the teller who lost his gift of telling) is

always denied and ignored by the forces and agents of ―tradition‖ and ―puritanism‖.

The patriarch, Khattam-Shud and the other villain Mr. Sengupta are enemies of stories

and hate storytellers: ―What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?‖ but, ―Haroun

couldn‘t get the terrible question out of his head. However, there were people who

thought Rashid‘s stories were useful‖. Eventually, the story of man weather be it

Moor‘s, Rashid‘s, Rushdie‘s or Adam‘s is a never ending story of loss and gain,

alienation and nostalgia, rise and fall, victory and retreat, and death and resurrection.

What joins the type and its archetype together is above all the art of telling and

retelling that keep them lively attached and unforgettable. It is obvious that the main

concern of the texts discussed is the individual as the core of human communication.

Therefore, The Moor’s and Haroun, attempts to discuss this idea within an archetypal

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and mythical terrain. Postcoloniality and its incessant relatedness to the concept of

identity and nation underline the thematic posture of the novels. The individual in the

postcolonial situation swings between two conflictual cultures – the colonial and the

indigenous. Besides, the search of the individual for a position in a world of

homogenous cultural set up is as urgent for the two novels as it is in a world of

monolithic totalitarianism.

Accordingly, Haroun and the Sea of Stories celebrates the myth of the

individual as a central theme by projecting the marvelous and adventurous journey of

the co-protagonist, Haroun. He went through a long journey to restore the lost

memory of his father, Rashid Khalifa. This loss is reflected through the sadness of the

city from which he has been deserted. This idea has been reinforced when Rashid has

restored his power of storytelling in the end of the story. The subtlety of the text lies

in its artistic presentation of the individual as a mythical concept when it correlatively

combines the historical archetype, Haroun Rashid, the Caliph, and his hero, Haroun,

the projected self. Artistically, what is significant here is the correlation between the

mythical thought deployed in Haroun‘s act to save his father‘s power of storytelling

and the novel‘s call for freeing oneself from the dominant powers of national and

religious hierarchies. Rushdie argues that art is a celebratory feature of the writer

against the oppression of the sate-politicians. In this way, writers and politicians

become natural rivals. Both groups make the world in their own images, fighting for

the same territory. In general, ―the novel is one way of denying the official,

politicians‘ version of truth‖ (Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands 14). In an interview

with J. F. Galvan Reula Rushdie rejects the idea of politicizing fiction and denounces

the aim of the writer to essentially change the political situations in a political way.

Rathere, he describes himself as a ―Socialist‖ especially in his first three novels, and

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he admits that he writes ―polemic work which is fictional‖. He also stresses that a

novel brings forth the ―fasification of reality‖ maintained by the State, and that the

purpose of the novels is to ―analyze them, not for polemic purposes, but for reasons of

the truth, to write against that view of the world‖ (94).

Therefore, he creates his fictional world out of the fictive necessity of the real

world which hovers pending on the author‘s desire for wider space of freedom. In the

view of Jung‘s theory, then, Haroun al-Rashid, the historical figure, appears in the

text as an original or primordial image of the freedom of speech, art and individual

assertion against the oppressive hierarchical orthodoxies, whether religious, political

or social. Rushdie in Haroun and the Sea of Stories makes a heavy reference to the

Islamic culture and legacy in order to answer repressive thoughts. Archetypal reading

of the text reveals about the indebtedness to the religious mythology, such as

―Hoopoe‖ which stands in the Arab-Islamic culture for messenger of important news.

In fact, the text celebrates the power of art as an affirming quality of the individual.

Rashid, the storyteller, cannot be an active individual until he regains his freedom of

telling stories. His impotency is reinforced by his wife‘s escape with Mr. Sengupta.

The loss of freedom to tell, and the silencing system of power explains the sadness of

the city and, indirectly, the status of storyteller. The author tries to release his

unconsciousness in an artistic form. In the light of Freud‘s psychoanalytic approach,

storytellers use dreams and realize their significance and that the psychoanalytic

approach may tell us something of the creative process itself (Delusion 25). Thus,

Haroun offers two contexts -- autobiographical and cultural. It tells the predicament

of the writer himself as well as the cultural legacy of Islamic civilization and Haroun

Rashid, the Caliph.

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Moreover, literature in the view of Frye is a kind of recreation or myth as

opposed to reality. According to this archetypal theory, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

provides a rich analysis of the history of myth-making. The urge for success and

uniqueness is a universal individual feature. It is when these urges get repressed and

confronted by a socially, religiously, or politically constructed codes that these

powers seek explanation. The individual starts blaming others for his failure. Also, it

is when these urges have not been satisfied that the individual turns to the ―example‖

or his archetypal corresponding image to affirm his individuality. According to Frye,

all works of literature are a created myth which is as false as it is true. What a literary

work seeks to do is to find an interpretation of a human experience. Therefore, the

power of the literary work lies in its hermeneutic capability to interpret the symbolic

act. Taken from this strand of analysis, the novel, cited above is allegorically mythical

discourse of his situation after fatwa.

Basically, Rushdie makes use of this history-myth to celebrate the individual

as a productively and brightly liberating force. Therefore, the unique search for

individual is a mythical concept and an overstated idea that reinforces an unconscious

desire to live free and unbounded. As a result, whereas Haroun al-Rashid stands in the

text as an archetype of cultural tolerance, individual freedom and learning, Kahani

represents the land of freedom of speech, human communication and co-existence.

The individual myth has been connected not only to Haroun, the son but also to

Rashid Khalifa, the father. He regains his fame and reputation from being a thinking

figure and storyteller. He has been always a man of thought, ―he was the Ocean of

Notions‖ (16). The power of Rashid, the fictional character, lies in his storytelling; he

is a thinking man and a man of imagination and literary productivity; he is a man of

creation. The power of the real Caliph in Baghdad lies in his greatness as a leader of

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renaissance. Rashid is introduced as a man of creative power and profuse production.

Rashid, the father, is also described as a ―magician‖ (16). His magic comes from his

ability to create stories. He is a magician because he affects the audience and the

people around him by his telling of fairy tales. He has the ability to narrate and draw

fantastic images and pictures that attract the listeners.

The novel, through the character of Rashid Khalifa, celebrates the power of

imagination by which the artist shapes the mode of thinking and influences the

readers or listeners. The artist as a myth and as an archetype of creativity is exposed

as a man of imaginative power and a centre of attention. He becomes a man who has a

talent to imagine, re-describe and recreate the world. ―What‘s the use of stories that

aren‘t even true?‖ (20), is the critical question of the novel. The novel is a defense of

art against the suppression cauased by the hegemonic authority of religious, political

or social institutions. This line suggests that the fantastic stories, though they are not

true, they convey some truths and some values. Rashid Khalifa is then a source of

truth and human values. The significance of stories does not lie in their seriousness,

but in the fictional truths they contain (literary values and fictional truths). The act of

storytelling is a matter of creation which cannot be measured by rational or

geometrical scales. The enemies of storytelling, Mr. Sengupta, Khattam-Shud, and

Rashdi‘s wife, Soraya, look at Rashid‘s talent from the view of geometry

measurements. But he wants to break the boundaries of the world, and open spaces in

the world, whereas his enemies want to control the world. Rashid, the storyteller, is a

literary myth created by the author‘s unconscious effort to liberate the individual from

the forces of suppression. He is the writer‘s reflexive image and projected self that

weaved into the text. Rushdie‘s mythically imposed an artistic aura to his hero

through a fantastical splash of supernationality. The novel does not tell us directly that

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repressive systems are behind the loss of his hero‘s memory. But it covertly insinuates

to the suppressive atmosphere that prevails in the city of art and learning which is

eclipsed by the tyranny of the dogmatic rule: ―There was once, in the country of

Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its

name‖ (Haroun and the Sea of stories 15). This situation is described as ―an affair of

the heart‘ (43). This deadening scene is reversed at the end when Rashid regains his

power of storytelling due to the changing of the historical reality that enables the

freedom of speech. Connected with the classical mythical stories, Rushdie invests the

Greek mythical mode and applies it on a modern postcolonial context in order to

address a new and different concept of the individual. He never forgets to splash on

his characters certain ideological configurations to meet the present day situation.

Making of myth is a feature of the novel. The writer invents some myths to

reinforce the major theme of his novel; the conflict between the forces of

illuminations and those of darkness. Khattam-Shud is the representative of ―darkness‖

in the novel in his ―the Union of the Zipped Lips‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories

152,153). On the other hand, we have General Kitab who stands for the idea of

science and illumination. It is a comparison between a good argument and a bad one.

Khattam-Shud is the symbol of darkness and narrow-mindedness. He is introduced as

a person of ―black magic‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories 133). He is also introduced

to us as an anti-logic person. ―The Cultmaster Khattam-Shud can be in two places at

once … Furthermore, this new, doubled Khattam-Shud, this man-shadow and

shadow-man, has had a very harmful effect on the friendships between Chupwalas

and their Shadows‖ (133). The alternative realities of art and myth-making are used as

a reaction against the political narrative. Rushdie points out that ―religions or political

leaders who present it as a system of binaries are actively creating a myth and then

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selling it as ―reality‖. The novel treats the reign of Haroun al-Rashid as an ideal

version of political freedom, especially the freedom of speech. This archetypal

version of ideal democracy in the era of the great Caliph, Haroun al-Rashid in

Baghdad is visualized as a political myth projected in the novel for a political purpose

of criticism. That is, to attack the political as well as religious forms of censorship.

The novel projects Khattam-Shud as a mythical shadow of freedom‘s enemy and

arch-villain of intellectuals. The novel praises the intellectual history in Baghdad, the

capital of al-Rashid, and concurrently despises the repressive rulers of the present

times who regard themselves as guards and incarnation of truth.

The parallelism between the foe of stories (the realist context) and Khattam-

Shud (the mythical project) seems to be a successful treatment of myth and history for

political indications. From the parallelism of the two arch-villain characters and the

two novels under discussion in this chapter, Rushdie comes to tell us that the hostility

towards the intellectuals, thinkers or artists arise from the assumption that truth can be

monopolized as an absolute discourse or a divine truth which never allows any kinds

of discussion. Such a ―totalizing discourse‖ is under criticism in both novels

mentioned, because this discourse represents nothing but a singular, dominant view

and interpretation of history. Accordingly, any historical truth given to us is, no doubt,

incomplete and thus remains subject for discussion. Therefore, the ―war between

speech and silence is fought at many fronts. It is a war between light and darkness,

between good and evil, between freedom and repression, between democracy and

dictatorship.‖ (Taneja 201)

The importance that Rushdie attaches to Haroun and the Sea of stories as a

vehicle for the theme of dictatorial repression is not merely the result of personal

predicament that he found himself in after the publication of The Satanic Verses in

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1989. He had referred to dictatorial regime and repressions all over the world with a

sense of involvement and passion. His horrific description of the Cultmaster, the

leader of Chupwalas as having ―astonished eyes‖ with ―one hundred and one feet tall,

with one hundred and one heads, each of which had three eyes and a protruding

tongue of flame … holding enormous black swords‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories

156) etc., is purposefully aimed at presenting the enemy of speech both as a horrifying

monster as well as a creature contemptible, vile, and base. ―While the horrors

dictatorial suppression are visualized and communicated through the imagery of

demons and monsters, in actual fact, Rushdie would have us believe, they are

monsters of our own mind: in reality they are nothing but bullies‖ (Taneja 202).

In the main, the novels of this chapter rely on archetypes of individual such as

those of Boabdil in The Moor’s Last Sigh and Haroun al-Rashid in Haroun and the

Sea of Stories as a form of artistic triumph over homogenous authority. In

Mukherjee‘s view, ―the name of the Caliph of Baghdad Haroun-al-Rashid gets split in

the name of the father and son invoking the cycle of tales that for Rushdie has long

been a synecdoche for an inexhaustible storehouse of stories‖ (―Haroun and the Sea of

Stories: Fantasy or Fable? 30‖). The individual myth can also be achieved through the

individual‘s joys of life and birthday celebrations. The closing lines of the novel

support this idea. The hero ends his journey with his mother‘s singing in his birthday

celebration. ―Then he remembered: it was his birthday … his mother had begun to

sing‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories 211). Consequently, ―the country of Alifbay,

[the] sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its

name‖ (Haroun and the Sea of stories 15), regains its name and happiness.

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On the other hand, the threat of singular and monolithic authority gets

resonance in ―this new doubled Khattam-Shud, this man-shadow and shadow-man,

has had a very harmful effect on the friendships between Chupwalas and their

Shadows‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories 133). As Mukherjee notes, Rushdie‘s story

inspires the people to rise against the oppressive ruler, ―demonstrating in a tangible

way an abstract thesis that stories can be a cohesive force in constructing a

community. So far the synthesis for the fabular and the political is seamlessly done‖

(37).

The individual myth is also embodied through the character of Haroun, who

stands in the face of the Cultmaster. He is the protagonist who defeats the project of

the dictatorship and repression. Haroun is the one who refutes the claims of Khattam-

Shud. ―So Iff the Water Genie told Haroun about the ocean of the streams of story,

and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the

ocean began to have an effect on Haroun‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories 71-2).

Haroun becomes an iconic all-knowing figure of knowledge and history. His journey

to the Moody Land helps him to discover so many things and wonders in his

adventurous journey. He discovers that the ocean is full of nations of various streams.

He knows the secrets of ocean and the various worlds in the sea. His quest makes him

as a real explorer of things. He also understands the languages of the living beings in

the sea and how to respond to them. He is also introduced as one who realizes many

things and who can ―decide‖ and ―respond‖ to the activities of the living beings and

unusual creatures in the sea. He gives the names of different kinds of fish and knows

their types, shapes and movements in the sea. Haroun is one who narrates stories and

names things. He is a master of knowledge ―inside‖ and ―outside‖ the sea. He also

knows the positive points of Gups and the weakness of Chups, and also of Khattam-

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Shud, the villain. He controls by his knowledge the war conflict between and

Chupwalas and Gupees.

Haroun has the ability to communicate with all and indulge in all. For

example, he has been enlightened by the Hoopoe that ―these are Plentimaw Fishes‖

that ―have plenty of maws, i.e., mouths‖ and ―they speak, only and always, in rhyme‖.

He is also told that these are called ‗―hunger artists‘ – Because when they are hungry

they swallow stories‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories 85-6). Further, by ―insist[ing]

on knowing,‖ Haroun reflects, ―This new world, these new friends; I‘ve just arrived,

and already none of it seems very strange at all‖ (86, 87). He often thought of his

father as a Juggler, because his stories were really lots of different tales juggled

together, and Rashid kept them going in a sort of dizzy whirl, and never made a

mistake. In response to such narrative layering of story-juggling, on one narrative

plane Haroun and Rashid embark on their trip to the Valley of K in order to recover

their respective losses (of a mother and stories) before they end up in the palimpsest

story-world of Kahani.

The Ocean of the Streams of Story, where Haroun is first taken by his

fabulous (mechanical, vegetal, or simply magical) companions in the palimpsest

Kahani, is a truly fantastic place, as it combines all of the stories in the world, those

already told, those in the telling, as well as those yet untold, grows in the course of the

story, producing in the end an exemplary picture of a polyphonic postmodern text.

From the initially simple-looking story, one could find profound statements on the

significance of stories, and it can aptly, if rhetorically, be noted that what the story is

really about is the story. In its fabulous, allegorical richness, Haroun and the Sea of

Stories testifies to the basic principle that stories matter and nothing matters like

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stories. It is the mechanical bird Hoopoe who carries Haroun to and in the story-

world. It is the Hoopoe, too, which in another tale leads ―all other birds through many

dangerous places to their ultimate goal‖ (Haroun and the Sea of Stories 64).

At different stake in the two novels, Rushdie makes a strong analogous and

archetypal link between the present postcolonial feminist trend and the mythical and

Biblical story line. As a result, the figure of Eve as a myth of Motherhood and Mother

has its presence. But, it is presented differently so as to achieve certain ideological

stands in the writer‘s schema. It would be useful here to make a comparison between

Haroun‘s mother, Soraya and Moor‘s mother, Aurora. Both of them are controlling

women who use their power and authority over their sons. Part of the suffering of the

two heroes is scribed to their mothers‘ harsh treatment. The two heroes are destined to

having ―cruel‖ mothers. Haroun‘s mother contempt his journey and search for new

worlds, and to restore his father‘s gift of telling. At the same time, Moor‘s mother

controls his emotional life and causes many problems to him in the sense that she

spoils his life and who seems to have been confined to the shackles of motherhood.

She is acting as a mother goddess.

―Mother-Goddess‖ is part of the novel‘s feminizing strategies that underlie his

fictional work. He subtly treats the mythical thought within a secular context. Mother

India is an image fostered by the Indian actress, Nargis in the 1950s. The novel

provides blaring reference to his reader as a technique of comparison between the

traditional typical image and a real-life character. Moor comments, ―O Nargis with

your shovel over your shoulder and your strand of black hair tumbling forward over

your brow‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 137). By employing a technique of comparison

and historical parallelism, the novel uses the idea of ―Mother India‖ in a different

way. This image is represented the female character, Aurora Zogoiby as a project of

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secular meanings of democracy and political plurality. In this, the text liberates the

typical image from its religious connotations to establish, instead, a secular meaning.

So, the myth of Mother India shifts from a ―religious‖ referential symbol into a

secular national archetype. The idealized girl in the religious typical image takes a

realist character in the secular, political context. Also, the girl, Aurora in the text is

represented not only as a mother who produces children (Moor and Innah), but as a

leading woman in the socio-political arena. The concept of mother (ness) is given a

supra-significant role in the novel. ―Mother India‖ presented in the Indian Movie, is

idealized as bride, mother, and producer of sons. But, Rushdie treats a received idea

of ―motherness‖ like ―Mother England‖ for the British nation. Put at the centre of

narrative, women are much abler than men in some cases. It is Isabella who helps to

demarcate the family property and to save the family business. Her daughter, Aurora,

is also famous for her artistic talent and notorious for a few alleged love affairs.

The term ―Mother India‖ has been defined as a common icon for the emergent

Indian nation in the early 20th century in both colonialist and nationalist discourse‖

(Siddiqi, Anxieties of Empire 177). ―Mother India‖ as an archetypal nationalistic

picture, was symbolic in that it demonstrated the euphoria of ―Mother India‖ and had

a long-lasting cultural impact upon the Indian people (Grewal and Kaplan 84–6).

Mother India can also be seen as a metaphor of the trinity of mother, God, and a

dynamic nation. In the wider context, it is allegorical of what it means to be a mother

in general. Mother India figure is an icon in several respects, being associated with a

goddess, her function as a wife, as a lover, and even a compromise of her femininity.

However, while aspiring to traditional Hindu values; it is important to note that

Mother India also represents the changing role of the mother in Indian society in that

the mother is not always subservient or dependent on her husband, refining the

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relationship to the male gender or patriarchal social structures. In line with this

thought, Aurora Zogoiby, a prominent pianist is described as ―a cry girl, perhaps the

city girl, as much the incarnation of the metropolis as Mother India was village earth

made flesh.‖ (The Moor’s Last Sigh 139). She depicts in her canvas the hybrid world

of Arab-Spain. She names the portrait as ―Mooristan‖. She depicts Alhambra in her

portrait and placed it ―on Malabar Hill‖ (225). Interestingly, Mother India in the novel

combines between the motherly love woman and also, as portrayed by Vasco

Miranda, a woman of sexual attractiveness.

The feminist stake seems to color Rushdie‘s mythical and archetypal depiction

of the past in the two novels. The image of Eve and Mother-goddess spell their

shadows on the general meaning of the story. The Biblical reference to Mother Eve

and the politico-religious allusion to Mother-India provide the feminizing frame of

Rushdie‘s postcolonial reading of myth. This feminizing strategy is a core element of

deconstructive and new historical method of myth and history that give significance to

the individual, particularly women. His invocation of Biblical and archetypal symbols

can easily be bracketed within this rewriting process.

245

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