Being a literate person gives you reason to celebrate with this amazing tale of Salman Rushdie's outrageous imagination and use of fantasy to show the effectiveness of not only being able to tell a story but using the most important part of language- the ability to communicate it and communicate it well. The reader is faced with magnificent jumps of fantasy as well as humor, satire, and quick, amusing parallels in Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This tale is much like the Arabian nights with its suspenseful phrasing such as "then something went wrong","then all hell broke loose", and "on the day that everything went wrong" which are found in the beginning pages that lead us to the core of the story or rather the imagination within Rushdie to the imagination within Haroun and then to our very own imaginations to see and view the story. Without reading creative literature that uses much fantasy, how can we be creative in our own lives? Imagination and speech (language) are vital elements in our society. These two parts and the added parallels the reader comes to find between our "real" life and Haroun and the Sea of Stories make this tale so unique and so fascinating that you will want to recommend it to all who love a good book.
Imagination is something that we all possess and as a reader you can not help but be quite amazed with the vast one attached to that of Salman Rushdie. Haroun begins the story out asking why stories are so important and where they could possibly come from. His father answers with odd, unexplainable places and statements that are believed untrue by Haroun until he dreams and floats into his very own imagination to find his father is correct. Having a father as a story-teller not only adds more of a twist to the plot but illustrates only more the reason for Haroun's own fantasy to take place. And it is within his imagination that he finds that many things are possible that were once believed the opposite.
The little fellow drew himself up to his full height. 'I am the Water Genie, Iff,' he said crossly, 'from the Ocean of the Streams of Story.'
Haroun's heart thumped. 'Are you telling me you're really one of those Genies my father told me about' (Rushdie 56)?
The additional delight of this tale is its play with words and literature much less the relevance it makes toward wanting freedom of speech to become more recognized as Rushdie fights for in his own life. The content found here is enchanting because of the many uses including similes and metaphors, synonyms, and parallels between a character's name and their personality.
Rushdie enables the reader more visual insight to the description of what is happening through the similes he applies. From the beginning of the tale with the city sites of black smoke hanging over the town like "bad news" and "the ruined buildings that looked like broken hearts" to describing people like Mrs. Sengupta who was "wobbly-fat" and "when she hugged him (Haroun)the great cascades of her flesh seemed to surround him completely."
We have discovered that Khattam- Shud means the end of something or that something is over and throughout the book by close examination the reader comes across many gatherings of words that mean that very phrase. Haroun is told by Iff that his father's story telling waters are no longer because he has "thrown in the towel" or he has "buttoned his lip" and that Haroun is now "up a spout" or has the "wrong end of the stick." These twisted up words are only understandable if the audience can recognize their slang.
The name correlation either with the person's own identity or the parallels between separate characters accentuates Rushdie's ability to foreshadow and keep everything orderly within their correlations. The coachman Butt having a name similar to Buttso the politician and the same saying and verses as that of Butt the Hoopoe, Haroun's "driver" in his dream. The horrible voice of Batcheat compared with the beautiful one of Haroun's mother. The man who takes away Haroun's mother is reincarnated into Khattam- Shud, both having similar personalities. Haroun refers to his father as a juggler of stories and Blabbermouth, a person he later admires also juggles.
I prize this book as one of my favorites because of all of its elements that are crammed within its 211 pages. The mastery of Salman Rushdie to incorporate his immense inventiveness and fantasy into images almost copied from our society today is quite astounding. He gathers ones such as Star Wars, the Walrus song by the Beatles, and other fairy tales like using the army of cards that the Queen had in Alice and Wonderland for the pages and Library of the dream Haroun has. The traveling through spooky wilderness and going to meet great persons in an important "Gup City" reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. Astride these allusions, he accomplishes also some problems or rather concepts we in the real world face also. Love and romance is in there but even sex is touched on lightly, I think, between Haroun and Blabbermouth.
'You're a girl,' Haroun said, a little obviously.
'Shhh,' hissed Blabbermouth, stuffing her hair back under her cap. 'You want to get me the sack or what (Rushdie 107)?
Censorship, of course is obvious in dealing with Freedom of Speech, is talked of with the city of Chup. In the old days the Cultmaster, Khattam- Shud, preached hatred only towards stories and fancies and dreams; but now he has become more severe, and opposes Speech for any reason at all. In Chup City the schools and law-courts and theatres are all closed now, unable to operate because of the Silence Laws (Rushdie 101).
The last and most noticeable problem the reader encounters is the dealing with people in politics and those entities that are fought over the most. Those being the environment and poverty. Iff the Water Genie says it all with this quote and perhaps this is even Rushdie's opinion too of politicians.
'After all,' Iff the Water Genie whispered to Haroun as they stood together on the balcony, a little way from the happy couple, 'it's not as if we really let our crowned heads do anything very important around here' (Rushdie 193).
This scene reminds us to closely of some "sad" cities in America. The poor lived in tumbledown shacks made of old cardboard boxes and plastic sheeting, and these shacks were glued together be despair. And then there were the super- poor, who had no homes at all. They slept on pavements and in the doorways of shops, and had to pay rent to local gangsters for doing even that (Rushdie 18).
The reader has to admire this way of explaining why life happens the way it does and Salman Rushdie accomplishes this hurdle with relaxed ease and small giggles of humor found only in a creative work that Haroun and the Sea of Stories is. Rushdie's imagination isn't bizarre with its use of fantasy but rather plays with and exaggerates real life occurrences by his naming of places and other extremities. Not only does this fantasy story reinforce the mimicking of life and human nature, it accentuates the satirical comedy within the events.
The reason I adored it so greatly was the meaning behind the usage of fantasy. Rushdie is trying to tell us how very important language is within the freedom of speech. and how sometimes it is not necessarily speaking, like Mudra, but being able to tell a story somehow. Using outrageous events to prove his theory was, if not the best, then the most fun way to do so. As a reader you can take it as a great Disney movie or you can read into it more and it becomes the whole reason why language and stories, especially, are so critical to our lives. Haroun is like many people and I feel that he speaks for all readers and humankind when he thinks "that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real" and that is what is so fun and enjoyable about books (Rushdie 50). The stories that we have in our possession are woven like the stories in the sea and their connectiveness with each other and with ourselves is what makes imagination so necessary and why tales continue on.