A little Rushdie for the Pages
It occurs to me, that whatever I write in German can’t be used as free writing. Oh well.
Und so, heute abend spreche ich nur auf Deutsch. Ich weiss nicht warum, aber ich denke, dass mein Vati und meine Mutti mich verrueckt finden. 😀 Natuerlich, sage ich. Ich fuehle mich auch verrueckt! Ich kichere… immer wieder. Es ist, muss ich eingestehen, ein bisschen komisch. Ich will auf Deutsch typen, aber ich will eigentlich dieses Aufsatz fuer Freischreiben benutzen! Auf Englisch…
Ich habe… err, I finished the Rushdie book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It took me a long time to get into it, but after 50 or so pages, I was hooked. It’s actually a children’s novel in all its attributes: fantasy, another world, imaginative. But it is so much more than that. The plays on words… the ideas… the symbolism. Its an allegory that explains to his son why they live with a death threat. I havent researched it enough to know a lot, but I do know that after publishing The Satanic Verses in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini attacked his work. Rushdie is/was Muslim I think? At any rate, he was forced to hide, thus bringing a death wish upon his family. This is the basis for the allegory written in 1990.
In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the earth has a second moon, Kahani, which means story which harbors the sea of stories. On this moon there is a City of Gup, which is in perpetual daylight, and a Land of the Chups, which is in perpetual darkness. The Guppees love words and love to talk. They live for stories, new and old, for the mixing of every type, and for saying things repeatedly, over and over, again and again. In the Land of Chup, there is no speaking. Khattam-shud (which, by the way, means over and done with) is also the name of the Cult-master of the Chupwalas. He has convinced them to not speak, to the point that many sew their lips together. He has also introduced a certain freedom in the Land of Perpetual Darkness. In such a land, shadows do not matter. Therefore they separate from their owners, thus becoming two entities of the same. Chups are known to have to fight with their own shadows. Every single concept in the book is so incredibly complex, ingenious, humorous, adventurous, and purely imaginative, that I must say I couldnt put it down.
Rushdie was sharing the importance of stories, of words, of non-reality. I fully intend to read Satanic Verses or at least research them thoroughly before coming to an exact conclusion, but not everything written is what you believe. Not all of it is meant to be taken literally in fact most of it isnt. But we shall see. The Land of Chup is the censoring that Rushdie battled. Khattam-shud is the man, the concept he runs from.
Lord its intriguing. It took me a long time to get into it I thought I didnt understand the entire allegory. Now I fully realize that Im only, to be cliché, at the tip of the iceberg, but Im understanding. Its fascinating. Anyone here would appreciate its value, because everyone here appreciates the value of words stories fiction imagination I think this is my research paper. Something between the allegory and the censoring this is my paper. This is my book this is my passion.