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“Reflective Essay: ERH 422WX”

Killian Buckley

ERH 422WX

LTC Ticen

14 December 14

Help Received: See Works Cited and class discussion

In Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, there are a great deal of Eastern references.  Rushdie refers to the famous Eastern tales of “One-Thousand and One Nights” and the history of tension between the West and the East.  Many of these references were unknown to me prior to reading the novel.  I utilized Paul Brian’s notes; a source that helps Western readers recognize and understand unfamiliar references within the novel; to help me make it through the book.  It was a common occurrence, during my time reading this novel, to be completely ignorant of all of the references in several pages.  I found this novel to be challenging, but worthwhile, to read.  But, I wondered, as a I read this novel, who is the true audience of this novel?  Since, most of Rushdie’s previous novels were written and published for a Western audience, why was this novel so intentionally filled with unknown references to the East?  Who did he intend for this novel to be for?

Rushdie, an Indian born who wrote mostly to a Western audience, he may have found himself an outsider on many occasions.  In “Cultures Bought for a Price”, I wrote,

“Often writers project parts of his or her own personality or life into characters within his or her novels” (Buckley, Cultures).

For example, in the Satanic Verses, Rushdie re-tells an event from his schoolboy days in British boarding school about the struggle he had eating a traditional British dish as a metaphor for the struggle  he had as an “outsider” adjusting to life in the West.  Rushdie wrote,

“cut into it, and got a mouthful of tiny bones.  And after extracting them all, another mouthful, more bones.  It took him ninety minutes to eat the fish…England was a peculiar tasting smoked fish full of spikes and bones, and nobody would ever tell him how to eat it” (Rushdie).

In that same essay, I wrote about how Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, openly discusses “the fear that people and societies have of those who are outsiders (Buckley, Cultures).  I also added that ,along with this fear, there is the “simultaneous obsession that societies have with cultures so vastly different than their own” (Buckley, Cultures).  I wrote this because in the novel there are several characters who are demonized due to their foreignness while simultaneously receiving attention due to their uniqueness.  For example, Saladin, a main character in The Satanic Verses, was once famous for his unique ability to do different voices but, after the fall,  he was turned into a demon-like figure due to his foreignness (Rushdie).

   Eastern sources and references within the novel may be hard to grasp for the Western reader.   This was evident in the reading of Paul Brian’s notes, a source which I utilized to help me understand and relate the various references within the novel to the themes and plot.  This source helps a Western reader learn how to read a book “full of spikes and bones”; foreign references (Rushdie).

While there was no direct reference to “Thousand and One Nights” in the novel nor is it listed in “Paul Brian’s Notes”, there are many indirect references that can be seen throughout the novel.  I was familiar to this source due to the fact that I was simultaneously reading these tales in my Arabic Capstone course.  I wrote, in an essay about “Thousand and One Nights”, how the storyline of The Satanic Verses “is “similar to that of the famous Eastern tales (Satanic Verses)” (Buckley, 1001 nights).  I wrote about how, like “Thousand and One Nights”, Rushdie’s novel seems to be like a novel within a novel.  In “Thousand and One Nights”, a young bride by the name of Scheherazade tells the King Shahryar, her new husband, stories for one-thousand and one nights in order to entertain him.  King Shahryar is known for killing all of his wives after a day of marriage due to his bitterness from the disloyalty of his first wife.  Her stories save her life because King Shahryar is fascinated by her stories and does not want to kill her so that he can continue listening her stores.  The novel switches from the story of King Shahryar and Scheherazade to Scheherazade’s fantastical tales that are “magical, humorous, and sometimes obscene” (Buckley, 1001 nights).

While in The Satanic Verses, Rushdie switches from the tales of Gibreel and Saladin in modern Britain and the dream sequence telling the tale of a developing religion of a “Mahound”.  (Rushdie, 93).  In both The Satanic Verses and “Thousand and One Nights”, there are two stories that overlap at points but, in general, are two separate storylines within the same novel.  This manner of writing may be unfamiliar to the Western reader but it is more common in the Eastern style of writing.  Western writing tends to be more ordered and structured while Eastern writing, like “Thousand and One Nights”, can be scattered and contain a more free flowing plot.

Who was Rushdie’s intended audience for the Satanic Verses?  The novel seems to be an expression of Rushdie’s ideas about the suffering of immigrants and the struggle between East and West.  It appears to be a platform in which he could artistically express his conflicted ideas of identity, culture, history, and religion.  It appears that his novel, when completely read, could appeal to anyone that feels foreign or different.  His novel may be an voice of understanding for those who feel persecuted for their differences by the culture around them.  His novel may also serve a valuable lesson for those who do not understand outsiders or who persecute foreigners for their misunderstanding of the culture that they have moved to.

Through my work in my reflective essays, I gained both a greater understanding of the importance of addressing taboo topics in literature and the reasons why there was a controversial aspect to the novel.  While Rushdie’s intent was to showcase the issue of race in 1980’s British culture and the fear that people have of what is foreign or unknown to them, he may have mistaken the full cultural significance of the material that he was discussing.  Through working on my reflective essays, it can be determined that Rushdie may have missed his audience due to either an insensitivity or ill-acknowledgement of the importance these topics play in the cultures lives of certain groups. This was particularly evident in the chapters about “Mahound”.  Rushdie may have failed to see how offensive this literary transformation of religious history may have appeared to a group that was already facing so much racism and prejudice in the real world in which they lived.

Rushdie’s novel was for an audience.  It was for an audience that felt misunderstood and persecuted.  His novel may have been his attempt to explain how he felt about the world around him, particularly regarding the mixing of cultures.  Instead, his novels were burned and banned.  Rushdie’s attempts to express his views and reach an audience of like minded people left him with a “mouthful of bones” (Rushdie).

Works Cited

Brian, Paul. “Notes on Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses (1988).” Notes on Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verse. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 November 2014.

Buckley, Killian. “One Thousand and One Nights”; a discussion of references within Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verse”.  ERH-422WX.  20 October 2014.

Buckley, Killian. “Cultures Bought for a Price”;a discussion of references within Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verse”.  ERH-422WX.  15 October 2014

Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. Israel: Keter, 1992. Print.

Taifi, Mohamed.  “Thousand and One Nights.” Arabic Capstone at Virginia Military Institute.  VA, Lexington.  Lecture.