History Literature / MidnightsChildren

* StealthPun: When Ahmed becomes TheAlcoholic, Saleem refers to his behavior as "warring with djinns". "[[{{Genie}} Djinn]]" is a homophone for "gin", the kind of alcohol he would be drinking at that point; and of course, both are found in bottles.

* OnlyChildSyndrome: Very few people outside of the Aziz family have any relatives to speak of. This was likely a necessity to keep the LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters under control; if Saleem's father's family was as complex as his mother's, the book would probably have to be twice as long.

** Nadir Khan may be an inversion. He has a fairly important role as Amina's first husband before disappearing from the story. He shows up a fair bit later as Qasim the Red, whom Amina is [[YourCheatingHeart seeing secretly]]. However, his only contribution is as a living plot device, by motivating Saleem to get them to break up.

** Homi Catrack is shot in the groin, likely due to [[YourCheatingHeart his killer's motive]].

* YourCheatingHeart: Saleem's mother can't let go of her first husband, and sneaks away to a cafe every so often to meet him. Saleem is so disturbed by this that he exposes a cheating scandal between Homi Catrack and Lila Sabarmati to discourage her. He succeeds, but Homi Catrack is killed by Lila's vengeful husband. [[ChildrenAreInnocent He didn't intend that outcome, and is shocked when it occurs]].

-->-- ''Jawaharlal Nehru to Saleem Sinai''

''Midnight's Children'' is a 1981 novel by Creator/SalmanRushdie, and is one of the two works for which he is best known (the other being ''Literature/TheSatanicVerses'', which is largely well-known for being the one that got him some very serious death threats). As well as winning the Booker Prize in the year it was released, it has twice won the Booker of Bookers, meaning that it was voted the best novel ever to have won. It is considered a major work in the MagicalRealism genre, as well as of postcolonial literature and, of course, of Indian literature; Rushdie's prose style is quite a departure from previous Indian twentieth-century literature, often becoming very vernacular and creating a very vivid sense of the culture and atmosphere of India.

The novel is structured as the hastily-written and occasionally verging-on-incoherent autobiography of Saleem Sinai, born [[note]]sort of[[/note]] into a wealthy Indian Muslim family at precisely midnight on 15th August 1947[[note]]the exact point in time at which India became independent from the British Empire[[/note]]. This results in Saleem and 1,000 other children born between midnight and one a.m. developing odd supernatural powers, with those born closest to midnight being the most powerful. The two children born at midnight exactly have the strongest powers of all: Saleem, whose telepathy manifests at the age of nine and allows him initially to read everyone's thoughts and later to telepathically connect the five hundred and eighty-one surviving midnight's children; and Shiva, whose powers are never described in great detail but whose name - the destroyer - he lives up to.

* AGodAmI: Though we never hear the Widow's own stance on it, the Widow's Hand claims this of her. Saleem believes this delusion to be the reason why she goes to such lengths to neutralize her political rivals [[spoiler:and the midnight's children]] -- she refuses to tolerate any other potential "gods" that could undermine her superiority.

* BittersweetEnding: WordOfGod argues that the ending is this. Readers usually see it as a DownerEnding. [[spoiler:The children are all castrated during the Emergency, which also removes their powers. Saleem becomes a vagabond after that. He finds a new girlfriend in Padma and work at her Chutney factory and seems to have settled in despite his bitterness. On the other hand, all the Midnight's Children are either dead, or in hiding. Saleem's EvilTwin Shiva has become a KarmaHoudini and 80s India and Bombay generally seems pretty hollow. Saleem's only hope is in his son Aadam, who he believes is part of another generation of magical children who can accomplish what he could not.]]
--> ''"Yes they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one, two, three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as all in goodtime, they will trample my son who is not my son and his son will not be his and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thoursand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it's the privilege and the curse of midnights children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked in the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live and die in peace."''

* TheBlank: One of the titular children has this power, though they do have eyes of a sort and a mouth-like hole.

* ArcNumber: 1001. Most obviously, it's the number of the midnight's children, but it occurs in other contexts as well, mostly in Saleem's musings.

** Mustapha's children are so abused into silence and irrelevance that Saleem can't remember any of their features. It's implied that ChainOfHarm might be at play here, as Mustapha is enraged at constantly being passed over for promotion.

* AlwaysSecondBest: Saleem's uncle Mustapha becomes a civil servant, but is constantly passed over for promotion, getting stuck in second-rate positions for his entire life. This infuriates him, causing him to [[AbsuiveParents take it out on his children]]. Even in the scope of his genealogy hobby, he discovers that [[AlwaysSomeoneBetter someone's better at it than him]].

** "Commander Sabarmati's Baton". Saleem sets off a chain of events that results in all his neighbors either dying or moving out; effectively, it is the end of the world of his childhood.

** "How Saleem Achieved Purity", the finale of book two. [[spoiler:Saleem's entire family (excluding his sister and one distant uncle) is killed in a single night.]]

* BiggerBad: The Widow. Saleem never confronts her directly, but does run afoul of her subordinates.

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler:After the midnight's children are gathered in the Widows' Hostel, Saleem believes that they can fight back now that they're finally all together. He encourages them to endure the torture and strike back once the Widow thinks they're finished... but then that torture turns out to remove their powers.]] Lampshaded by Saleem, who says that [[spoiler:in addition to vasectomies and hysterectomies, the sterilization crew performed "sperectomies" -- the removal of hope]].

* ItsAllMyFault: Due to his belief that his life is metaphorically linked to the nation's Saleem, blames himself for just about everything.

** Gender-flipped with Commander Sabarmati. When he learns his wife is cheating on him, he tries to kill them both. His wife survives, but her lover does not.

* NightmareSequence: Midway through the book, Saleem has a nightmare of his time in the Widows' Hostel, with the Widow depicted as a grotesque, green-and-black monster who tears children in half. The narration for the scene is suitably confusing and chaotic, just like a real dream.

* FridgeLogic: [[DiscussedTrope Saleem briefly muses on this as applied to his own story]] when he's collating everything at the very end, wondering if people will pick apart inconsistencies such as Saleem having to awaken his midnight power when none of the other children did.

** Saleem's self-described "modes of connection" with history, after the midpoint chapter where he introduces them.

* BittersweetEnding: WordOfGod argues that the ending is this. Readers usually see it as a DownerEnding. [[spoiler:Saleem ends up being castrated during the Emergency and becomes a vagabond after that. He finds a new girlfriend in Padma and work at her Chutney factory and seems to have settled in despite his bitterness. On the other hand, all the Midnight's Children are either dead, or in hiding. Saleem's EvilTwin Shiv has become a KarmaHoudini and 80s India and Bombay generally seems pretty hollow]].

* ContrivedCoincidence: A few. Saleem often becomes introspective when they occur, examining all the events that led up to them and wondering if there might be greater purpose to it after all.

* {{Doorstopper}}: 650 pages. It is a slow read.

* DrivenToSuicide: Saleem's uncle Hanif jumps off a building after Homi Catrack -- his sole source of income -- is murdered. Saleem blames himself, as he initiated the chain of events that led to Homi's murder.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Taken UpToEleven, possibly even to the point of parody. Though the narrative is mostly linear, Saleem acts like a literature student performing a deep reading of a work, and excitedly references future events whenever he notices something significant. It may even overlap with DoomedByCanon, as Saleem will sometimes spoil future events outright (particularly the deaths of certain characters).

* GenderBender: One of the titular children can do this by immersing themselves in water.

* UnreliableNarrator: Saleem, on occasion, although he's quite upfront about his own fallibility.

* WomanScorned: Saleem's father Ahmed was initially engaged to his aunt Alia. He ended up marrying her sister instead, and Saleem claims that Alia was consumed by bitterness as a result. When they move to Pakistan, she gets her revenge by [[MagicalRealism infusing their food with her jealousy and bitterness]], causing the cheerful family to rot from within. Interestingly, however, Saleem's only evidence for this is his [[TheNoseKnows supernatural ability to smell emotions]], raising the possibility that UnreliableNarrator is in effect.

** "How Saleem Achieved Purity", the finale of book two. [[spoiler:Saleem's entire family (excluding his sister and one uncle) is killed in a single night.]]

* TheCanKickedHim: Homi Catrack is killed on a toilet.

* MeaningfulEcho: The beginning of the WhamEpisode chapter "Drainage and the Desert" echoes the rambling, evasive description of the time and date of Saleem's birth at the start of the story. This is likely because Saleem considers the events to be of equal importance: [[spoiler:while his birth gave him his power, the telegram eventually took it away]].

* WhamEpisode: "Drainage and the Desert", positioned near the end of book two. [[spoiler:The Midnight's Children Conference falls apart completely, Saleem loses his power of {{Telepathy}}, and the family departs for Pakistan once more.]]

* SameCharacterButDifferent: Saleem's sister the Brass Monkey's transformation into Pakistan's national darling Jamila Singer entails such a sudden and total change of personality that they are effectively different characters (highlighted, of course, by the use of different names).

* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: Throughout the novel Saleem makes references to Indira Gandhi and her Emergency, and to the Black Widow, one of the women who seriously affected his life, but it isn't revealed until near the end that they are the same person, and 'seriously affected his life' is something of an understatement.

* ArcWords: "History", "time", and "inheritance".

* AlliterativeName: Aadam Aziz, Saleem Sinai, and Ismail Ibrahim.

-->Inevitably, a number of these children failed to survive. Malnutrition, disease and the misfortunes of everyday life had accounted for no less than four hundred and twenty of them by the time I became conscious of their existence; although it is possible to hypothesize that these deaths, too, had their purpose, since 420 has been, since time immemorial, the number associated with fraud, deception, and trickery. Can it be, then, that the missing infants were eliminated because they had turned out to be somehow inadequate, and were not the true children of that midnight hour? [...] It is [...] an unanswerable question; any further examination of it is therefore pointless.

* EyeScream: One of Saleem's neighbors decides to [[BullyingADragon bully Shiva]], who responds by hurling a sharp stone that blinds him in one eye. [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname He is forever after known as "Eyeslice".]]

The novel is structured as the hastily-written and occasionally verging-on-incoherent autobiography of Saleem Sinai, born [[note]]sort of[[/note]] into a wealthy Indian Muslim family at precisely midnight on 15th August 1947[[note]]the exact point in time at which India became independent from the British Empire[[/note]]. This results in Saleem and 1,000 other children born between midnight and one a.m. developing odd supernatural powers, with those born closest to midnight being the most powerful. The three children born at midnight exactly have the strongest powers of all: Saleem, whose telepathy manifests at the age of nine and allows him initially to read everyone's thoughts and later to telepathically connect the five hundred and eighty-one surviving midnight's children; the self-explanatory Parvati-the-witch; and Shiva, whose powers are never described in great detail but whose name - the destroyer - he lives up to.

* ContrivedCoincidence: Exactly 420 midnight children die before Saleem can contact them, which seems like an oddly significant number for seemingly random deaths. Saleem himself briefly wonders if there was some higher purpose to it.

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Saleem's sister, the Brass Monkey (so called for being a FieryRedhead).

* ShaggyDogStory: How Saleem feels about his life, and since he's a metaphor for post-Indepent India, it might be how the book and author feels about India or at least the generation of that era.

* {{Backstory}}: ''Lots'' of backstory. Before it even begins chronicling the entirety of Saleem's thirty-one years in incredible detail the novel spends about 150 pages describing the lives of the two preceding generations of the Aziz-Sinai family.

* UnreliableNarrator: Saleem, on occasion, although he's quite upfront about his own fallibility.

The novel is structured as the hastily-written and occasionally verging-on-incoherent autobiography of Saleem Sinai, born [[hottip:*:sort of]] into a wealthy Indian Muslim family at precisely midnight on 15th August 1947[[hottip:*:the exact point in time at which India became independent from the British Empire]]. This results in Saleem and 1,000 other children born between midnight and one a.m. developing odd supernatural powers, with those born closest to midnight being the most powerful. The three children born at midnight exactly have the strongest powers of all: Saleem, whose telepathy manifests at the age of nine and allows him initially to read everyone's thoughts and later to telepathically connect the five hundred and eighty-one surviving midnight's children; the self-explanatory Parvati-the-witch; and Shiva, whose powers are never described in great detail but whose name - the destroyer - he lives up to.

''Midnight's Children'' is a 1981 novel by SalmanRushdie, and is one of the two works for which he is best known (the other being ''Literature/TheSatanicVerses'', which is largely well-known for being the one that got him some very serious death threats). As well as winning the Booker Prize in the year it was released, it has twice won the Booker of Bookers, meaning that it was voted the best novel ever to have won. It is considered a major work in the MagicalRealism genre, as well as of postcolonial literature and, of course, of Indian literature; Rushdie's prose style is quite a departure from previous Indian twentieth-century literature, often becoming very vernacular and creating a very vivid sense of the culture and atmosphere of India.

''Midnight's Children'' is a 1981 novel by SalmanRushdie, and is one of the two works for which he is best known (the other being ''TheSatanicVerses'', which is largely well-known for being the one that got him some very serious death threats). As well as winning the Booker Prize in the year it was released, it has twice won the Booker of Bookers, meaning that it was voted the best novel ever to have won. It is considered a major work in the MagicalRealism genre, as well as of postcolonial literature and, of course, of Indian literature; Rushdie's prose style is quite a departure from previous Indian twentieth-century literature, often becoming very vernacular and creating a very vivid sense of the culture and atmosphere of India.

-->-- ''Jawaharlal Nehru to Saleem Sinai

''Midnight's Children'' is a 1981 novel by SalmanRushdie, and is one of the two works for which he is best known (the other being ''TheSatanicVerses'', which is largely well-known for being the one that got him some very serious death threats). As well as winning the Booker Prize in the year it was released, it has twice won the Booker of Bookers, meaning that it was voted the best novel ever to have won. It is considered a major work in the MagicalRealism genre, as well as of postcolonial literature.