Midnights Children: A National Allegory In Midnight's Children

The national allegory is a type of narrative in which the nation state becomes the essential subject of the narration. In few words, it represents the symbol of the nation: a story which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. In order to express the dimension of the state’s existence, which is greater than the lives of its individual characters, this kind of narrative focuses on the lives of ordinary people to illustrate the state of the nation. When it comes to view Midnight’s Children a straightforward national allegory, it becomes problematic considering it a national allegory because the novel reassures its fictional essence, its heteroglossia and its fragmentation.

If we took into consideration Jameson’s ideas, it seems that the novel can be read as a national allegory because it satisfies all the

By emphasizing the fictional construction rather than political essence of the nation, these metafictional elements of Rushdie’s novel critically interrogate the conceptual object of the nation itself. (Bennett, 188)

In the novel, the history of the nation goes hand in hand with the history of the main character, Saleem Sinai, because both of them were born the same day. However, throughout the narration, it gives the impression that the important fact was Saleem’s birth and, as a result, the nation also existed. Additionally, if the content of the novel is a fictional construction because the author himself produces the narrative of the characters, the society, the country… the narration is a national allegory, but from a particular point of view. Consequently, what is the importance of the nation?

Nevertheless, he goes a step beyond and he transforms the national allegory, the general discourse of the country, into multiple and fragmented stories. In Bennett’s