“Pickling” History with Words: A Post-colonial Interpretation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Abstract

Midnight’s Children, by British-Indian author Salman Rushdie, takes the birth of its protagonist Saleem Sinai at the exact moment of India’s independence in 1947 as its narrative starting point. Through Saleem’s psychic connection with a thousand other “midnight’s children,” the novel recounts the turbulent history of post-independence India. The mystery surrounding Saleem’s origins serves as a metaphor for the identity crisis inherent in the postcolonial condition, revealing the complex relationship between cultural hybridity and national identity. In Rushdie’s hands, history is “pickled” like pickles, where fact and myth intermingle and coexist. He uses magical elements as a flavoring agent, skillfully deconstructing the Western rationalist view of history and transforming India from a described object into a self-interpreting subject. The numerous metaphors in the text reflect the malformation of individuals and society by colonial power, with themes of language, culture, and national resistance interwoven, constituting the core concerns of postcolonial literature. Therefore, employing post-colonialism as the theoretical framework, this paper begins with the social alienation precipitated by colonial rule to analyze the interaction between individual destiny and national history in Midnight’s Children, and to explore the cultural and political implications behind the birth, development, and tragic end of the “midnight’s children” collective. Furthermore, the author hopes this study will enrich current literary scholarship on post-colonialism and provide a valuable reference.