Identity and its Representation in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

Abstract

Salman Rushdie is a cosmopolitan writer at home in the East and the West, and it is impossible to deny the influence of these two very divergent civilizations on his personality and work. But the matter remains that he is an outsider, which is more clearly understood by Rushdie’s background. This problematic question of identity has come up in many places in his novel, Midnight’s Children. Rushdie has invariably stressed the positive and optimistic aspects of his cosmopolitan footing, enabling him to broaden and differentiate his worldview, intensify his awareness of Indian reality and how, from this stand, unfold and depict the social, historical, and political problems of his countries- India and Pakistan. Through this paper, I shall try to explore the human and the existential dilemmas of the individual from these two lands. Imbibing literary traditions from both Western and Eastern cultures should not be seen as an act of defiance of one’s own cultural history but rather as a method of widening one’s perspective or, as Rushdie puts it, “bridging gaps.”