Taylor Holmes, Oubah Dougsiyeh, Courtney Parks, Tiffany Pollock

How does Rushdee use of a unreliable narrator emphasize the postmodern narrative structure?

“The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi occurs, in these pages, on the wrong date. But I can-not say, now, what the actual sequence of events might have been; in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time. Does one error invalidate the entire fabric?”

• What is this actually about? Can we trust anything Saleem the narrator tells us?

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems… but as you approach the present… I become a sort of radio (189)”

“In accordance with my lotus’s wishes, I insert, forthwith, a brief paean to Dung.”

• Define postmodern themes and structures
• Identify how Midnight’s Children displays these traits
  • Saleem’s inability to remember details correctly
  • Saleem’s fragmented thoughts that are to be taken as fact
  • The clear bias that alters the reading of the novel