In Midnight’s Children the protagonist, Salem, is born with special powers that allow him to hear the thoughts and look into the minds of others. He is not the only child who can do this, being one of many “Midnight’s Children,” each with their own unique ability. Among these special children, Saleem has a foil in the form of his twin switches at birth, Shiva the Destroyer. Whereas Saleem’s powers help him bring the Midnight’s Children together in a psychic conference, Saleem’s powers allow him to create war and chaos. As the children grow older, they begin to lose confidence and go their separate ways. This is symbolic of how the idealism of childhoood, here represented by Saleem’s idealism, fades with time and gives way to more jaded thinking. Shiva, who calls Saleem out for his idealism, represents chaos and how all things eventually give way to entropy and disarray. Not only do the children abandon their idealism but, over time, their existence’s dissolve into chaos as they are hunted down and persecuted by The Widow, their powers removed via castration.

The dynamic relationship between Saleem and Shiva, with one acting as a foil for the other, represents the dynamic between the idealism of youth and the indifferent nature of the universe. Saleem wants to maintain the conference and keep the children together, fighting against the nature of people to drift apart and the nature of relationships as meaningless. Shiva sees no point in this as the universe is indifferent and all things must give way to entropy, or ordered chaos. These two ideas eventually intersect in the novel when the children are once again brought together through persecution.