Term Paper

Whoops, forgot you wanted this up here as well.




Anthony Parker
EN 303
Term Paper
December 3, 2008

For this assignment I choose Salman Rushdie’s novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. When I read this book I really enjoyed it; the style is kind of childish and the content overly fictional. However, I did find it to be an enjoyable book. I say that the style was a little childish because for some reason it just felt like a fairy tale as opposed to a science fiction or fantasy novel. In a fantasy novel you are drawn into the world as if it is real, but in this book the characters were drawn into that world and didn’t believe it anymore than I might in their situation. Given all of that I perceived it as more of a fairy tale.
Even though I perceived it as a standard fairy tale a lot of the content surprised me. For instance there are several references to pop culture and that is not something that I normally find in the books that I read. To go back a bit it also lent to the feeling of surrealism. It is rather odd to find a reference to popular music or star wars while reading a book that is supposed to be, more or less, a fantasy novel. One of the references that comes to mind is when the day/night cycle is broken by Haroun’s wish and the “eggheads” were baffled. When I read egghead I immediately was thinking of the movie coneheads and how similar they must look (Rushdie, 172). It is a refreshing change of pace and adds an interesting, though unexpected, element to the novel.
I’ve had a hard time thinking of ways that I can relate the text to my life experiences. You see I don’t often have fairy tale fantasies floating around in my head. I was able to relate with a lot of the stuff that was happening in the “real world,” for instance the politician Mr. Buttoo is very much like a lot of politicians in real life. All they want to do is manipulate people into accepting them as the power of that city or that land, and then they do what they want to and abuse their power. Politicians are always saying nice things and promising nice things, but when asked more about it they sidestep the question and refuse to give a straight answer. They promise this and promise that but fail to spell out how they are going to do that. Most people it seems are naïve and/or stupid and believe these politicians even though they should know better from past experience.
The part in the book where Haroun’s mother leaves his father for another man is also very interesting. Rashid was heartbroken as is often the case. Why did she leave? For the very common reason of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. She wasn’t happy and content with what she had when she should have been. This resonates with me because that attitude is very often the attitude that people take, both in the USA and outside of it. Everyone seems to think that if I can just get that boat, or that car or that woman or that man, it will make me happy and complete. But what happens when they get that? They screw up their life and others and they come away with nothing. Haroun is essentially a happy go lucky book so in the end everything works out and the family gets back together and they live happily ever after, just like a fairy tale.
Overall I think that this is a rather good text. It deals with a lot of common issues in a rather comic way, and I find myself coming away from the book feeling encouraged that things do work out sometimes. Rushdie is a master at weaving a intricate tale with plenty of comic relief and a serious message that the reader can choose to either think about and contemplate more in depth or ignore and enjoy the book as just being a book and not anything else. This probably wouldn’t be a novel I would just pick up at the book
store, since I generally like to stick with more established fantasy writers. Because I can really get into good books, and when I do I like to keep reading and I can’t do that when they only write one novel.


Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a perfect example of hybridity; a mishmash of cultures coming together in a strange way. Bhabha states that post-colonial writers generally write in a hybrid way, not as a result of it being a weakness, but to try and show the world that the mix of the dominant and subaltern cultures is not a one way street. Hybridity does not destroy the original culture but rather creates a new culture that includes bits and pieces from both of the parts (Hybridity). This is evident in Rushdie’s novel by all of the pop culture mentions mixed with the, obviously, Indian setting. Rushdie was a product of the marriage between the western nations’ ideas and style and the Indian way of life.
Bhabha seems to think that people view the hybridity of post-colonial writers’ work as being a weakness. There are likely people who view it that way, but I believe many think of that hybridity, not as hybridity, but as a whole new culture. India is not who they once were; they have been changed, for better or for worse, by the effects of post-colonialism. But is what they changed into necessarily a bad thing, especially when there are authors like Rushdie that produce excellent hybrid work such as Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Is the lost culture a sad thing, yes it is but why mourn what cannot be undone? Move on with life and accept it how it is. Hybridity is a strength and may become recognized in the post-colonial literature, according to Bhabha.
Rushdie appears to embrace hybridity as is indicated through his book’s hybrid nature. He expertly mixes his experiences in a post-colonial country with the “fairy” tales of the native culture in his country. He also puts a subtle political spin on it with the story of the Gups vs. the Chups and how they fight each other without knowing why.


Recently I finished reading the book Ðragons of the Summer Flame. It is a true fantasy novel and provides all of the fantasy parts that one would expect when reading a fantasy book. It is also a novel written by westerners with western ideas and philosophies. But given that it is a fantasy style novel it is a good book to analyze Haroun and the Sea of Stories with.
Dragons of a Summer Flame takes place in a fictional world with characters that are obviously fictional. This setting works very well for the book because the reader knows what to expect, and even though the things that happen in the book are very magical and mythical that is what the reader is looking for. There are no surprises as far as style of writing goes. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is also a fantasy novel set in a fictional world. However, when the reader first picks it up and starts reading it, it is not obviously a fantasy book. In fact until the reader gets to the part in the book where Haroun and his father travel to Kahani, it could be any book with a bit of magical realism thrown in. To further confuse things, the world that Haroun lives in is a fictional world, but it is based on the real world; then they travel to Kahani, which is a fictional world. So the reader has to disseminate information given for two entirely different locations and make sense of it all. Whereas in the other novel there is just one world and it is obviously a fictional world, with obviously fictional characters.
Throughout the whole Dragons of a Summer Flame book there was never any indication, within the actual text, that the book was fiction. It is essentially a very straightforward and normal book. Rushdie’s book however, hints in the book that the book is in fact a fictional novel. It has metafictional elements interspaced throughout the book.
There is so much big events going on that it is difficult to pick just one news event. Because Rushdie is of Indian birth I decided to pick a article that deals with things going on in his home country. Over this last thanksgiving there was a serious terrorist attack, with a hostage situation, in India where 179 people lost their lives in a senseless gesture by radical, militant Muslims who originated from Pakistan (U.S. warned India about possible Mumbai attack). I highlight this story because there is a slightly similar situation in Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
In the novel the Gups and the Chups are essentially mortal enemies, even though they are cut of the same cloth and very similar in nature. Gups live in perpetual daylight where as Chups live in perpetual night both of which were artificially manufactured by the Gup’s P2C2E (Rushdie, 172). The Gups and Chups had not seen each other for such a long period of time that all they knew about each other was that they didn’t like each other. Because they hated each other the Chups decided to kidnap the Gups’ princess and hold her hostage so that their evil plan of polluting the ocean of dreams would be able to continue unhindered. The Chups were basically good people; there were just some radical elements among the populace that would do horrible things. Since this novel is a basically happy novel, the princess was saved, the ocean restored, the Gups and Chups reached a new understanding, and the normal day/night cycle was restored.
As you can see there are similarities between the two stories. The radical Muslim terrorists are a minority of the Pakistani people, but they have the power to give the Muslim population a bad reputation and a bad name. They are the ones that do the horrible things, like murdering 179 innocent men, women and children, just to get a point across. Just like between the Gups and Chups there has been a lot of animosity between the people of India and the people of Pakistan for quite some time. This event only served to increase this animosity, just like the Chups’ kidnapping of the Gups’ princess did.
In Rushdie’s story the Gups get complacent in the maintenance of their protective wall, and in some places it is falling apart. It has been forgotten because they chose to forget. They didn’t want to have to think about the threat that the Chups posed to them and because of that they were not keeping an eye on the ocean of stories’ source. The only thing that could spring them into action was the kidnapping of the Gups’s princess. Why didn’t they heed to warning signs as the ocean began to get polluted? They should have immediately gone out and investigated, they should have taken the initiative.
That part of the story is a lot like this event in India; the U.S. warned them that there could be an attack and the Indian government largely did nothing and as a result 179 people lost their lives. Maybe there was even more warning signs that they received and didn’t act on.

Works Cited

Hickman, Tracy, and Margaret Weis. Dragons of Summer Flame. city: Wizards Of The Coast, 2002.

Robertson, Nic. "U.S. warned India about possible Mumbai attack." CNN.com. 2 Dec. 2008. 4 Dec. 2008 .

Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Boston: Penguin (Non-Classics), 1991.

Bhabha, Homi K., “Hybridity.” Handout from class.

Veiled Injustice

I love graphic novels because it is a nice break from the normal type of book. Its like the difference between watching a TV show (on dvd of course) and watching a movie. Well, maybe that analogue doesn't work as well on paper as it does in my head... But my point is that it is a change, not for better, not for worse. But a change in the telling of a story. In a graphic novel the author is using pictures to convey some things that may be difficult to convey in a plain novel (plain isn't bad). How often have you seen a movie that is based on a book and been pissed off because the movie didn't fit with you idea for the book? I know that I have for almost every book turned movie. In fact I have taken the stance that they are different and thus should be viewed differently and not in light of each other.
Before Persepolis I had never heard of a autobiography graphic novel (tongue twister eh?). That is a type of book I would never expect to see in a graphical form. But it works very well, but also detracts. It works because it gives the reader a better mental pictures of what is going on. But it detracts because I think the reader will take it less seriously. And now I have run out of ideas so I'll leave it on that note.

Macondo - Game over

It is rather sad that the book is over now because it was such an interesting read. It kind of reminded me of the moving "The Neverending Story" because of the metafiction aspects of both the book and the movie. In the movie the events happening in the fantasy world almost mimic what is going on in the real world. But the characters in the book are aware of the "outside" world and the person who is reading the book. In 100 Years of Solitude you have the metafictional aspects in the end of the book where it makes you pause, look back over the whole book, and ask yourself: Was any of this real or was it all just a dream or a work of fiction?
I like metafictional elements in books so long as it is not overdone; it adds a very interesting and different aspect to the normal kind of book.

Elves... Real or not.

Since I love fantasy/sci-fi novels I naturally relate those books to other books I read. So as we've been discussing and I've been reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, I can't help but relate it to fantasy novels I've read. Gabo's book is filled with magical realism which makes the comparisons really easy.
In class on Tuesday another student mentioned how time almost stops in Macondo and we made comparisons to the Garden of Eden. Thats when I started thinking that the people of Macondo are like the elves in Dragonlance Chronicles. In those books the elves have cut themselves off from the world and are resistant to change. They are self-sufficient, long living and time almost stops for them, since they have such long lifespans. The elves take a lot of convincing to do anything with or for the outside world and just want to be left in peace and alone; this is almost exactly how the people of Macondo are. Very interesting correlations to be sure.

Banana

Before we discussed it in class I hadn’t really thought of the economic or political aspect of Columbia in relation to the book and the characters therein. Now that I think about it, there hasn’t been any real government in the town and Jose Arcadio is the “unofficial” mayor of the town. It is just so foreign from what I am used to. In the United States there is significant infrastructure so when a town is started it isn’t “lost” for years like Macondo is. How long did it take for the Columbian government to stumble across the town? And I can’t help but wonder how much longer it would have taken if the town hadn’t started to do well economically. Speaking of economics, it is interesting that the town never seems to be in need, they are self sufficient and don’t seem to need to trade with other towns. At least not at first, but then even when they do trade it is for luxuries not for subsistence.

Reflections from an Ansalon Dweller

http://zhaman.blogspot.com/
Anthony Parker
English 303
October 9th, 2008


Reading is something that I rather enjoy, whether it is a fictional book, an article about computers, a book on history, or WWII or even, occasionally, a non-fiction biography or some such thing. When I found I was required to take some literature classes I was actually rather excited about that since I love reading. Little did I know at that time that I would be taking a “non-western” literature class which has introduced me to a rather different type of writing. Being an avid reader I consider myself to be pretty good at relating texts I read to other fiction or history books. I’ve also read a lot in my various college classes though most everything I’ve read is of western origin. Given all that I believe I was at the text-other texts stage before I start this class.

This class has been a lot of fun and a good experience and I feel it has moved me closer to the text-world stage. Like I said I haven’t read a whole lot of non-western literature, though since my wife is an art/film major I have seen a good amount of non-western art and movies. Interestingly my wife loves the movie Bride and Prejudice and had already seen it so it was rather ironic that that film was assigned. That being said the literature selection has been a bit of a stretch for me. I don’t believe I have ever read an Indian or Japanese novel, though I have read a bit about both of their histories and I’ve met and talked extensively to two native Indian ladies that were visiting to try and raise support for their orphanage. I also feel that I have had a bit more first hand experience of non-western cultures than many people since I have been to several other non-western countries and not just on a vacation, they were work/missions trips where we went to slums and squatter villages. The places I traveled were the Philippines in 1999, Panama in 2000 and Peru in 2002, 2003 and 2004. My sister is also married to a Peruvian and is fluent in Spanish. How does that relate to my interpretation of the literature I read? Well I think it has helped me to think of the World outside of the USA. I really wanted to answer that I was in-between stage two and three before this class started, but when I thought about it, although I’ve had all these experiences and I’ve read all these books I can still do what many people do. And that is just being so focused on their own life and where they live that they forget not everyone gets the opportunities that they get. In Peru I met people that would repair sections of the road in the hopes that a driver would tip them for their work. Many people don’t know the extent of other social systems either. People here think there is a big disconnect between rich and poor, but it is nothing compared to third-world countries. I think that they Indian caste system is also worth mentioning; it is so foreign to us in our free make your dreams come true society. There are so many rags to riches stories in the USA, but if you are an untouchable in India forget it. I just think that people need to remember that there are bigger problems out there and that there are other cultures and other ways to look at things.

This class has really helped broaden my literature and vocabulary horizons; I can actually use words like Intertextuality and hybridity in conversations or sentences now. For instance in my September 11th post I mention Intertextuality in relation to the book “A Wild Sheep Chase.” I also used Epistemic Violence and Subaltern in the October 3rd blog post. Contrasting that to my very first post, the most complex word is “sophisticated,” no pun intended. In the text to world reading development I feel that I have improved as well. My post on September 19th, Sheepish, brings in elements from South America by mentioning how time is perceived differently there; I also wrote about how the book “A Wild Sheep Chase” was really a mirror of our country and the cold, desensitized path that we are taking. Contrast that with my first post where I mention the clash between Darcy and the Indian culture. Sure it was good insight, but I probably could have gone more in-depth.

So how can I continue to improve and move closer to text-world? Well I want to say one thing first. In most books I read as I read them I am thinking about the content in relation to my life, but more than that too. I’m not consciously thinking but more subconsciously. For instance my favorite types of books are science/fantasy fiction; I recently finished a book by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In that book they have many moral, ethical, honorable, political and religious issues. When I read it I was constantly relating it to my life and my decisions, but also to the United States and World as a whole. I wasn’t writing a paper, or constantly making connection, but throughout the book I was connecting it to this World even though, being a fantasy novel, it wasn’t based here. The interesting thing is I like to read that type of book to get away from serious and sometimes frustrating life, but while reading it I am making connections to my life and where I live.

Back to the question of how I can move closer to text-world; I really think I am on the right track but there is definitely room for improvement. Maybe I should start looking for some fiction not written by a western author. It seems that a lot of the fiction that I would be interested in is written by western authors, but as I saw with Hauron and the Sea of Stories there is some interesting fiction books out there. Another option is going out on a limb and reading some non-western literature and actively “comparing” it to the literature that I am used to.

Epistemic Violence and Subalterns

The God of Small things is rife with examples of terms from our Spivak reading. Like Epistemic Violence and how it is in a way applied to the untouchables and how the society treats them. The perfect example of this is Velutha, at every turn he is treated like crap, just like all the untouchables are. Another Spivak term that is shown throughout the book is “subaltern.” The whole Indian culture is a subaltern to the British because they were once a British colony and it will probably take decades more before they recover or find their identity again. Even more than that you have examples of subaltern in the characters too; Velutha for instance is a subaltern to the whims of society, he has no rights it would seem.

So far this has been a rather sad book, but it does make one think about the caste system and India in general, or even post-colonialism. Often people don’t think of these things because we don’t deal with them in our everyday life.