The rhythms and eccentricities of the language represent that particular character and illuminates their particular traits. Characters in the novel embody literary devices such as alliteration, rhyme, and orality. As a young adult novel, Rushdie creates the strange alternate world of Kahani through a strange and playful use of language. Rushdie originally wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories for his children. Though Rushdie clearly opposes censorship, his novel deftly explores the balance needed in a society between the control and expression of speech. Likewise, the Guppees risk defeat and incompetence from their inability to censor their criticisms and gossip.

This suggests that all societies have some propensity to censor others.

This is evident in the Guppees’ own contradictory behavior though they favor complete freedom, their own Eggheads at P2C2E House create an imbalance in light that leaves the Chupwalas in perpetual darkness against their will. Each must exist in balance with the other to create a median existence. However, Rushdie indicates that both Gup and Chup are two sides of a whole. The Balance between Silence and SpeechĪ cursory reading would seem to suggest that Rushdie favors the Land of Gup and the light that creates its ever present stories and freedom of speech.

On the surface, Rushdie would seem to favor the Guppees’ freedom over the strict authoritarian censorship of the Chupwala’s, though later passages in the novel blur these lines of distinction. The Land of Gup, on the other hand, is a land of complete Freedom of Speech, even to those that would criticize the land’s leaders in what might be considered anarchy. Chup, therefore, is not only a land of darkness, but also a land of complete silence and censorship. Khattam-Shud wishes not only to poison the Sea of Stories, but he also wishes to silence the stories completely. Chupwala and its dictator Khattam-Shud represent this censorship. This is largely a reflection on Rushdie’s own experience of censorship when the Ayatollah placed a fatwa upon him for his depiction of Islam in The Satanic Verses. The idea of censorship is a sustained motif in the novel. In this way, Rushdie suggests that a person’s stories compose their identity and dignity. Haroun’s quest is not just an adventure to return Rashid’s stories to him, but it is also a son’s journey to give meaning to his father’s life. Without his stories, Rashid finds that he has no way to support himself or to justify his life. Both of the people that Rashid Khalifa loves, his son and his wife, both turn on him and tell him that his stories are not real and do not matter. The conflict that begins the action of the novel revolves around the importance of stories in a person’s life.

Haroun sea of stories