碩士 / 靜宜大學 / 英國語文學系 / 99 / Thesis Title: Dharma/Adharma in the Satire of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Graduate Program of the Department of English Language, Literature and Linguistics,
Providence University
99th School Year
An Abstract of a Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts
Graduate: Ally Shu-Ying Hung
Advisor: Prof. Patricia Haseltine, Ph. D.
Key words: Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, satire, Hinduism, dharma, adharma
Abstract
This thesis reads the problem of Hindu dharma/adharma in twentieth-century India as addressed in the satire of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Rushdie’s juxtaposition of the past and the present embodies a multiplicity of social-political phenomena that bring up the conflict between modernity and the traditional mores associated with Hindu dharma. In Hindu tradition, dharma means the omnipresent law that sustains the order and welfare of God’s creation; however, in post-independent India the traditional Brahman concepts of self-identity are threatened by the effects of modernity. The incongruity of self-identity echoes in adharma through people’s non-performance or deviations from their caste obligations. The situations of adharma in this novel undermine the desirability of dharma and even criticize the continuation of Hindu traditions in twentieth-century India. Thereby, the satire of Midnight’s Children leads readers into a perception of social transitions and a struggle for self-identity, and present Rushdie’s gloomy outlook on the future of the traditional Hindu values in the modern India.
Chapter One discusses the autobiographic narration of Saleem Sinai in which the unreliability and fragmentation not only construct a hybridization of Indian history, Hindu mythology, and Rushdie’s memory of homeland, but also make the novel a twentieth-century fictional satire revealing the problem of maintaining Hindu dharmic principles and values in post-independent India. Chapter Two focuses on the analysis of satirical conventions in terms of Saleem’s distortion of history and his disposal of reality. It explores the relationship between caste dharma and the conception of self-identity in contrast to the instances of adharma in the novel. Chapter Three investigates the female struggles with the rules of dharma and proper womanhood in domesticity, marriage, and motherhood; the presentation of adharma thereby highlights women’s importance and value for preserving Indian traditions in twentieth-century India. Chapter Four analyzes the situations of adharma in male characters’ divergence from the traditional Hindu conception of family relationship; in particular, how Rushdie deals with the mother-son relationships and satirizes the political scheme of the State of the Emergency carried out by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son. In conclusion, through the approach of satire the Hindu dharma is questioned by its desirability of maintaining the order in the post-independent Indian society on the issues of overpopulation, property, religious conflicts and language differences.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/099PU000238017 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Hung, Shu-Ying, 洪書瑛 |
| Contributors | Haseltine, Patricia, 海柏 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 89 |
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