Questions for theis week: 1. How/why does Boonyi's relationship with Max change? Why do you think this is? 2. What do the snakes in Pachigam symbolize? 3. Does it seem like any actions by the iron commandos are justified? 4. What does Rushdie's opinion about Islam seem to be? Does he differentiate between Islam and radical, funamentalist Islam? 5. What seems to be the difference between love and hate in this book? Is there a difference?
5. When talking about Muslim's Rushdie's line between love and hate become quite blurred and I think the quality bridging the two along that blurry line is violence. Rushie's representation of Islam as a sinister religion is shown through these as love is an idea that the West holds dear. For the purpose of this book there is no difference between love and hate. The way they are presented in the novel makes Islam seem like a loveless religion.
3. It seems to me that the iron commandos are driven to their actions through desperation and although many of their acts of violence are inexcusable, we should not presume to judge how people react to dire circumstances. The people of Kashmir were caught between two warring nations, and their rights and very lives were being threatened through no fault of their own. Many rebel groups throughout history have stood up against injustice and tyranny, and been labeled traitors and criminals. Our own American Patriots during the Revolutionary war were labeled traitors and either hanged, drawn, and quartered by the British or sent to brutal prison ships where many starved to death. So, while the actions of the iron commandos were not an honorable form of warfare, we must recognize that they were desperate and did not have the resources to protect their rights through conventional means.
1. Boonyi and Max seem to have built their relationship solely off an interest in the other, there attraction to something different, a symbol of the Eastern and Western world. Boonyi also keeps quite true to the promise they created when the relationship started – she made sure not to fall in love with Max and instead attempted to remove all aspects of love from her life. Boonyi seems horrified that she was willing to leave her husband behind and follow her lustful desires. Thus, she attempts to cut out any sense of love in her life and this is why she eventually becomes reliant upon the drugs and food. Max doesn’t seem to understand how he impacted the rest of Boonyi’s life and her connection to tradition.
5. It feels like in this book, which must stem from Rushdie's perception, love and hate are easily distinguishable when you're western but lead to the same outcome when you're eastern. When expressing his love for Boonyi, Shalimar references how willing he is to kill for her. That he cannot manifest his love without comparing it to hatred and violence seems like Rushdie trying to emphasize the backwardness of this culture. On the other hand, characters like India and Max can distinguish love over hate even though they're both pretty bad at being loving. Yes, there is a difference between love and hate in this book but the characters seen too caught up to display them the way the reader might expect.
4. Rushdie has a visible animosity towards Islam. not only through this book, but through various statements in the media and other writings, He has expressed a need for Islam to change. This seems so futile when you get down to it. There are millions of Muslims in the world and Rushdie again and again writes it off, stating it needs "to be brought to the twenty first century." Its demonstrated through this work and others of his that he does not seem to recognize an Islam that doesn't result in radicalism. He fears it, probably due to his Fatwa-induced fugitive status, and therefore slanders it to an audience of misinformed westerners.
4.) Rushdie does not differentiate between Muslims and radical fundamentalist Muslims. Rushdie seems to be unable to even properly separate Hinduism from Islam. Repeatedly throughout the novel he lumps multiple cultures together into one massive ideology and this is completely untrue. There are some major differences between Hinduism and Islam (for starters, Hinduism is polytheistic and Islam is monothestic). Rushdie is either incredibly ignorant and unlearned (in which case - how did this book get published?), being sarcastic by trying to mimic how the 'average' westerner does not differentiate (yet there is little room for humor in this novel... it's not a funny portrayal as much as it is a mean one), or he is simply vindictive.
3. I believe that their actions are in fact justified. Simply because the nature of their behavior and the driving forces behind their actions are often destructive or negative, does not mean they are any less necessary or justified than more conventional and praised forms of rebellion. Though tactics and end results may differ, the root of any form of action, be it harmful or otherwise, stems from an infuriation with injustice and an outrage to the extent to cause action. The Iron Commandos actions, therefore, must be justified.
5. It seems like the emotions of love and hate are the same. "Love" in this novel, is not the gooshy, romantic type we are used to; I think it is written more realistically. Although Shalimar loved Boonyi, the feeling immediately changed when she slept with Max. And on her side, she never actually loved Max. Even love between parents and their children is not what we are used to. India and Max were not affectionate, and when he kissed her, she found it to be odd. Boonyi and her father were desperate and were forced to hide their relationship. Overall, I don't think the two emotions can stand alone; they came together.
4. Rushdie's portrayal of Muslims is a very Orientalist one; not only does he fail to make any distinctions between different groups and levels of devoutness, he also tends to lump Muslims and Hindus together just because they occupy the same space. The novel seems to push a negative view of the religion as a whole, leaving the reader feeling completely out-of-place anywhere but in the company of the Americans.
2. I believe that the snakes in Pachigam are a literal form of India's karmic "magic." Snakes, in mythology, tend to represent a combination of sensuality and evil (being dangerous). This sensuality and evil are combined with their connection to India to operate as an Indian "weapon" of vengeance against the invaders.
4. It seems that Rushdie has some kind of self loathing as India in the book has, he wants to create a division between the east and himself. This is why we see him speaking out against Islam, which could be associated with terrorism. He is from the East and he does not want to be directly related to Islam or terrorism. His assumptions of Islam are wrong which is surprising due to his background. I do not think Rushdie's hatred for Islam is logical or justified more based off his own internal struggles.
1. At first, before they even begin their relationship, Boonyi is infatuated with Max, and waits for the day that he will come and take her away. She prepares for his return and is all too willing to leave Shalimar for him. Once she is set up in her apartment though, she begins to change; she wishes she was with Shalimar and views Max as the enemy. I don't think that she ever really loved him, and she starts to turn against him when she finally realizes this.
1. Although we discussed that Shalimar is, in some ways, a stereotypical "terrorist", he is also a sympathetic character, given his past. How do we justify these two seemingly contradictory descriptions from Rushdie? 2. What does India's actions at the very end of the book say about her character? 3. Rushdie, in the passages on the massacre at Pachigam, creates three different "versions" of the village. What does he mean by this? What might it symbolize? 4. Why is Shalimar a "Clown"? What's the significance of that title, and why would Rushdie make him the titular character if he is just a stereotypical "terrorist"? 5. Which characters, if any, do we sympathize with in this book? Where do Rushdie's sympathies lay?
1. I think the way Rushdie presented Shalimar's past puts more blame on Boonyi, Shalimar and the community more than Max the great. Boonyi is the slut who slept around, Shalimar is the over controlling man who threatens his wife if he ever leaves him, and the community forced them to get married at a young age. Max is no longer an American ambassador, however, I don't think any blame is truly laid on him. I think in this way Rushdie can represent Shalimar as a murderer with a past that is all his fault and while we might feel bad for him, he is and his own caused his own misfortune.
4. I think the title is significant in that it makes the Muslim extremist seem more sinister. Clowns are often presented in the Western society as scary and dark. As such naming the Jihadist Muslim a foreign name connected to something sinister in our society effectively causes the reader to associate scary imagery with the Muslim.
1. I feel that Rushdie in a sense depicts Shalimar as somewhat of a sympathetic character in that he is a result of his community. Although Shalimar was not forced to ultimately murder the man who slept with his wife, he was publicly embarrassed and was hungry for revenge. In a sense, Shalimar is an extremely realistic human character through his strong emotions of shame, and anger towards Max Olphus, so in this way Rushdie possibly creates sympathy towards him, however nothing in my opinion justifies murder.
2. The only character within the novel I truly sympathize with is India. She is the only character throughout the novel who does not cause shame upon her family, but instead is the result of the immoral acts of the various characters involved in her life. Her disposition and choices I feel are all a result of her upbringing, and I feel that Rushdie did sympathies with her as she finally is able to understand her past and visit Kashmir within the final chapters.
1. Rushdie creates a seemingly complex character of a terrorist as we are first introduced to Shalimar when he gruesomely murders Max Ophuls by slitting his throat. Yet, readers are soon after forced to gain an insight into Shalimar’s past and his love for his wife Boonyi. Boonyi left her husband to be with Max Ophuls resulting in a deep-rooted anger Shalimar had towards Max. While I can understand that Shalimar would hate the man that took his wife from him I believe that Rushdie uses this situation for readers to somewhat still dislike Shalimar and see him as simply a terrorist. Max did nothing else to ruin Shalimar’s life. Instead it is all about the concept of honor and tradition; a Westerner should not be coming to the Eastern world and stealing the women. Thus, Rushdie looks to kind of show the sense of extreme emotion and traditional beliefs that he feels defines the Eastern/ “third world” nations and forces Shalimar to be seen as an overemotional terrorist.
I sympathize greatly with Shalimar. I can practically feel his sorrow, anguish and heartache, the pain and emptiness he feels upon losing his love and the hope and life that accompanied it. I am able to understand and follow his thought process, I can see his reasoning and feel myself thinking the same way. His actions, their causes, and the morals he stands by are ones that I also respect and would follow.
1.Shalimar is a skilled terrorist and assassin, which is what he was transformed into based on what happened in his life. While we are given images of his youth and how he once was, early in the novel we are given evidence that makes it not surprising that he turns out violent. On p.61 he tells Boonyi that he will kill her and her children if she ever sleeps with another man, which seems pretty extreme for a 14 year old.
4. Shalimar is a "clown" because like other characters in the novel, there is no completely "true" identity for any character. Max is a spy, India and Boonyi changed their names, and Shalimar is a clown. They are all performers and their primary function is to assume the role of an entertainer or performer and hide the truth. Shalimar is the titular character because his performance is masked by "terrorism" and fueled truly by scorn. I imagine Rushdie chose Shalimar to represent the "dangers of the East" in order to paint them in a bad light.
5. I found myself sympathizing with different characters in different parts of the novel. At first, I thought India was going to be the weak character because she did not have a close relationship with her father and could not have a normal relationshiup with a man. I felt bad for Shalimar when his lover betrayed him and he had to pronounce her "dead" in order to live.I couldn't help but feel sorry for Boonyi when she returned to her home in a blizzard and no one would accept her. I think the author wanted us to sympathize with different characters in order to understand their connections to each other.
4. Naming Shalimar a clown serves to belittle his actions. He becomes a terrorist because his girl was taken from him, basically. Rushdie seems to be drawing us what he believes to be a stereotypical terrorist in many ways, leading the reader to see terrorist as extreme actors without any real motives behind their actions. While obviously one cannot condone terrorism, Rushdie presents a terrorist acting over a broken heart rather than any higher drive; he paints terrorists as clowns, not letting us believe that there are any 'justified' causes for their actions.
1. Shalimar is the typical terrorist because of things that have happened in the past. Although we sympathize with what has happened to him we cannot understand the decisions he makes in response to all the bad that has happened to him. Rushdie is making a clear connection with the east and irrational behavior. Bad things happen to people in the East they will just act radically and thats why they are dangerous, this is what Rushdie is saying in this novel.
2. In the beginning of the novel, India is portrayed as a somewhat glamorous socialite, living in Los Angeles. She rails against anything and any part of her that could be construed as "Eastern"; this includes even her name. At the end of the book, she breaks the stereotype she set up for herself, and lies in wait with an arrow in her hand, like a predator. She is even referred to at the very end as "Kashmira." This shows her coming into and embracing not only her native roots, but more important her mother's legacy, because that is what her mother wanted of her; to be known by Kashmira and to know her heritage.
Gender and Cultural Binaries in Shalimar the Clown
It seems that Salman Rushdie created Boonyi, one of the novel’s main female characters, according to an orientalist view of the role of women in Central Asia. Boonyi is at once an exotic temptress and a powerless ghost. In fact, she is anything but human. At the beginning of the novel, Boonyi is the beautiful young woman who convinces Shalimar to sleep with her. It is her idea, and she is portrayed as the one responsible for luring him into the act. However, after her infidelity, she is pronounced dead by her community and shunned to a secluded hut outside of the village. There, she lives as a ghost completely dependent on the alms of her father. Granted, her family and friends agreed to let her “die” in order to protect her, but in the end Shalimar comes for her anyway. So, Boonyi is a contradiction that reflects stereotypical notions of “Eastern” women. She is portrayed as exotic and lustful, which gives her a certain power over the men around her. However, because of her sexuality, she is considered dangerous and is granted no legitimacy as a human being.
Rushdie also suggests that Kashmiri culture is unfairly unforgiving towards women through the character of Zoon. It is implied that she has been sexually assaulted by the Gegroo brothers, after which she is socially ostracized in a fashion similar to Boonyi. “A lot of people around these parts…think that when a thing happens to a woman like the thing that happened to me, the woman should go quietly into the trees and hang herself,” she explains to Boonyi upon her return to Kashmir (Rushdie 223). So, even though what happened was not actually Zoon’s fault, she is presumed to be guilty by default and is consequently persecuted. Rushdie’s characterization of women in Kashmir seems to purposely play into the Western expectation of what it means to be a woman in a non-Western country. It is also interesting that, although rape culture and the act of blaming the victim is a problem nearly everywhere, Zoon limits the matter to “people around these parts.”
Another problematic aspect of gender relations in this novel is the suggestion that peace between two seemingly oppositional spheres may be impossible. The marriage of Boonyi and Shalimar was not just the union of a man and a woman, but of a Hindu and a Muslim. While initially both sides of the split Kashmiri community come together to support the marriage, when the relationship falls apart so does the camaraderie between the Hindu and Muslim populations. It is no coincidence that as Shalimar leaves the hut after finally killing Boonyi, he hears a bomb go off in the distance. Pyarelal is one of the characters through which Rushdie expresses this idea of essential incompatablility. Rushdie writes, “The love of Boonyi and Shalmiar the clown had been defended by the whole of Pachigam…as a symbol of the victory of the human over the inhuman, and the dreadful ending of that love made Pyarelal question…and [begin] to wonder if discord were not a more powerful principle than harmony” (238-39). Although the masculine and the feminine, like the East and the West, are false notions socially construed through a destructive system of binary opposition, Rushdie manipulates both systems in his story to highlight the differences, rather than the common humanity, between cultures.
1. How does Boonyi's pregnancy alter the way readers interpret the relationship held between her and Max? How does the pregnancy also force readers to question the way they had previously characterized both Max and Boonyi? 2. Why do you think Rushdie has Boonyi's family "kill her"? How does this fit within ideas of Orientalism? 3. Describe Talib the Afghan. Why does Rushdie include such a character? 4. How is Kashmir described when Boonyi returns home? How does the setting and the description of the village contribute to Orientalism? 5. Why do you believe the novel opens with India and ends with Kashmira? What do you think Rushdie is trying to say?
1. I think that Boonyi's pregnancy characterizes her as manipulative and takes away any of the sympathy that the reader might have felt for her and her desperate situation. This only serves to further exonerate Max from any and all blame. 2. The idea that you can die without being dead is unsettling, scary, and foreign to the average reader. I think that Rushdie uses this account of Boonyi's family "killing" her to make the town of Pachigam feel even more Oriental and exotic. 5. I think that the novel begins and opens with the two different names used for one single character to show the fractured nature of identity. India/Kashmira is one character, but her identity is so contingent on so many external forces that she can barely be considered as such
2. I feel that Rushdie forces Boonyi's family to "kill" her in order to prove to their community that relationships outside of marriage are ultimately forbidden. This in turn plays into the stereotypes of an orientalist text, in that women were expected to remain faithful to their husbands, which does not necessarily hold true for men. This complicated issue comes about throughout the novel, as we witness Max Olphus take on multiple partners, and yet Boonyi is the one who is cast as "dead". It is interesting that Shalimar the Clown takes it upon himself to punish Olphus, in a sense going against the classic orientalist binary.
4. Kashmir is described as extremely exotic, as Kashmira describes it as almost entering through a "magic portal". It is particularly interesting that India refuses to use the name "India" in India, preferring the identity as her mother's daughter. The entire description given about Kashmir is essentially that of a garden, full of flowers and bees, extremely innocent and foreign full of beautiful scents. I feel that this description undeniably contributes to the Orientalist perspective.
5. I believe that the novel opens with India and ends with Kashmira because she is the result of every major character throughout the novel. She represents all of the problems they face, as well as being forced to deal with these problems despite the fact that she did not cause them. In addition to this, the change of her name is extremely significant in that the issue of identity through names troubled many of the other characters, and in ending with "Kashmira", it alludes to the fact that she has finally come to terms with and accepted her past.
1. Booyni’s pregnancy alters the way we as readers interpret the relationship between her and Max because it shows us that the relationship is more than what we originally thought it might have been. Even though she made sure not to fall in love with him it seems that her lust for him got the better of her.
5. I believe that this novel opens with India because it gives us the first of many problems we are going to fact in this book. This issue being the problem she has with her name, which some might call an identity issue. In a way the novel follows this issue and then finally seems to be resolved at the end, with her accepting who she is.
2) Boonyi's "death" reminded a bit of an honor killing. From what I know, honor killings are usually enacted by a victim's family (like Boonyi's father, husband, and father-in-law) and perpetrated because someone (usually a female) disgraced the family be having an extramarital affair, sex outside of marriage, etc. In the novel, Boonyi was "killed" because of her relationship with Max. While Boonyi's punishment was not as extreme as an actual honor killing, it did Rusdhie's purpose in reminding readers how foreign and removed the East is from the West. Rushdie seems to present Kashmir and its inhabitants through an Orientalist lens at every chance he gets, and symbolically killing Boonyi in an act similar to an honor killing just acts as another link between what the East is presented as in the novel and the Orientalist perspective of the East in real-life.
2. I think the Noman's and Boonyi's father were forced to "kill" her because she scorned not only her reputation, but their's as well. As far as an Orientalist point of view, after the affair and pregnancy, she no longer withheld the standard of an Eastern Woman. I think they felt ashamed and had to disassociate themselves with her in order to clear their own names and move on with their own lives.
5. I think the novel started with India because it was supposed to be a surprise that her mother was in fact Boonyi and she had been adopted. Also, the progress that is made to her as Kashmira portrays the cultural journey that she embraced. It's also symbolic of her father's affair and her inability until that time to actually understand her heritage. The ending allows the story to come full circle and for the character to fully develop.
2. Rushdie implies that Boonyi's family is traditional and fundamentalist by how he describes their hostility towards Boonyi after her act of infidelity. By putting her in a position of public ignominy to the point of extreme hatred and disgust, the reader is forced to sympathize for Boonyi, making this situation a social commentary on how fundamentalist or even cruel life is in the East. This furthers the connection Rushdie is trying to make between the East and irrationality and extremism.
5. At the outset of the novel, when India talks in her sleep and makes sounds that seem like Arabic, Rushdie implies that she is unconsciously linked to her nationality and past. India however does not consciously feel that her name is at all representative of who she is, especially by how the East is considered primitive, exotic, and colonial. However, Rushdie wants the readership to make a connection between her old name in the second half and her new identity in the first half. He describes Kashmiri women as being lustful and sexual, which is also a characteristic he attributes to India in the first section of the novel. We learn in the “India” section very quickly that she is very comfortable with her sexuality and has many sexual thoughts and encounters. I believe Rushdie might also be trying to say that regardless of whether or not you choose to change your name, the foreign and exotic past will always follow you, making it hard for anyone from the East to break from western orientalist stereotypes.
2. The "killing" of Boonyi was interesting because it was cruel and manipulative on the part of the woman who came up with the idea, but it was also agreed to as a way to protect Boonyi from Shalimar. I think the community's treatment of her in this situation is definitely influenced by some level of Orientalism on Rushdie's part, because the act of physically and emotionally ostracizing someone from a community seems rather primitive, even evoking a sense of "tribalism" that is an orientalist concept in itself. Additionally, the fact that the person being metaphorically killed is a woman is clearly a statement about the position of women in Central Asian society.
5. I think that by beginning with India and ending with Kashmira, Rushdie is trying to make a statement about the complexity of the young woman's identity, given the diversity of her background. However, it is interesting that she requires different names for the "Western" and "Eastern" parts of herself. It is almost suggestive of Rushdie's Orientalism, because he implies that the two spheres are so radically different that they cannot even coexist within the same person. She must have two separate identities and two separate names.
2. What we are seeing here is Rushdie saying that the East is irrational with no values. They will turn their back on each other immediately, and will go there own family. They have no sense of family which makes them terrible people. Here we have again Rushdie telling his readers that the east is irrational.
5. When Rushdie focuses on India, she is seemingly completely Westernized, living in America, speaking English, and ignoring her heritage; just as her adoptive mother, Peggy, wanted from her. At the end of the novel, she becomes Kashmira; she becomes the woman that her birth mother, Boonyi, wanted her to become, and she even stands up to her mother's ex-husband. She only becomes Kashmira after the reader is made aware of the circumstances around and following her birth, which I think also plays a part.
1. What do the similarities between Max Olphus and Salman Rushdie suggest about the character and the author? 2. How does Rushdie equate the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir to the conflict between the East and the West? 3. What does the outcome of the novel suggest about human nature and our ability to respect and transcend differences? 4. What role does Shalmimar's brother Anees play in the novel? What does his character suggest about the nature of terrorism? 5. What roles do women generally play in the novel? How is India similar to and different from the women of Kashmir, and what does this suggest about the East and the West?
1. I think after close inspection, Max Olphus and Salman Rushdie really aren't all that similar. Max is a larger-than-life character and a womanizer. He is the epitome of western glory. On the other hand, Rushdie holds on to some literary celebrity status and harbors western and eastern influence. Rushdie's fame is western in nature and although he hails from the east he behaves western. Certainly, it can be said that both try to distance themselves from the east to a point. Also, both spent time as fugitives. But, where it counts, I don't see them as all that similar. I think Max's character, the globe-trotting, righteous, wealthy, intelligent mega-man - is the kind of idol that a person in Rushdie's case might aspire to be. The character of Max is beyond reality, and perhaps Rushdie knows this. But, by creating him, Rushdie can aspire towards that end.
3. The outcome of the novel suggests that human nature is inherently corruptible. India assumes the identity of "Kashmira" and vows revenge on Shalimar in the same vein that Shalimar the clown pledged to kill Boonyi and Max. Rushdie posits that there can be no way to overcome these differences because the East is corrupt and bloodthirsty, and the only way to truly stamp out these differences is through violence or condemnation. There's no evidence of respect of other cultures of all.
India is portrayed as an independent, nearly idealized American woman, living a life of pseduo-struggle at the beginning of the novel. She comes off as artificial, but strong nonetheless. The Kashmiri women, like Boonyi and Shalimar's mothers, are also strong, but they, and Boonyi as well, are overly-sexualized beings who have some mystical powers, especially over men, and are largely to blame for bad things that happen.
1. The similarities between Max Ophuls and Salman Rushdie seem to be less indicative of anything about Ophuls's character and more an example of Rushdie's opinion of his own significance in the West-East divide. He is Rushdie's literary self, a philosophical man of the world who is a (mostly) innocent victim of an extremist.
1. I think it is evident that Salman Rushdie wants to two things, distance himself from his Eastern Background and act like some sort of celebrity. He does the first by criticizing the east constantly through his books, and commentary in the media. He does the second by created some persona in his book that he strives to be, some secret agent kind of cool guy who is also a diplomat in the West.
1. I think that Max Ophuls is the man that Salman Rushdie wants to be. He is successful, rich, and powerful; he comes from another country, and he is able to overcome a scandal to live a happy life in America. Rushdie writes from an Orientalist perspective, unusual for an Indian author, and is very against Islam as a religion, especially after 9/11. I feel like he does this to try and escape his background, something he finds to be scandalous as well.
Jeanne Magnetti Shalimar the Clown and Islam In the novel, Salman Rushdie makes a number of observations about Islam that are orientalist in nature. For instance, Boonyi tells her father that “the question of religion can only be answered by looking at the condition of the world. When the world is in disarray then God does not send a religion of love. At such times he sends a martial religion…” (262). This passage suggests that Islam is a religion of violence, and that subsequently it is the theology that is to blame for the violence in the Middle East. We know this to be erroneous because no religion can be classified as ‘violent’ or ‘peaceful.’ Only people can be classified as such, and religion can be interpreted by people to be violent, peaceful, and otherwise. Moreover, Rushdie associates Islam with violence when he portrays camp FC-22 as a combination of Bible camp and military training. “There was a bomb factory and a course in fifth column infiltration technique, and above all there was prayer…the only book permitted at the site – training manuals excepted – was the Holy Qur’an…Ideology was primary” (265). By drawing a direct line between faith and armament, Rushdie portrays Islam as the threat, rather than a few violent dissidents who abuse it. In addition, Rushdie suggests that the religion of Islam oppresses woman when Firdaus Noman asks angrily, “How can a woman’s face be the enemy of Islam?” and her son tells her it is because men believe that women will “inflame them in an unholy way” (301). This is another theological and cultural error. As we learned in “Who Speaks for Islam?” women are respected in the Qur’an and believe that if the legal law was tied more closely to theological law, they will have more rights. It is clear in the text that Salman Rushdie has a limited understanding of the religion of Islam and that he views from a negative and orientalist perspective.
Shalimar The Clown Part II Questions 1.Consider some of the instances in the novel in which magic is used. What is the significance of magic in the novel? 2.Shalimar the clown is referred to in the novel by his performing title, “Shalimar the Clown,” and the name “Noman sher Noman.” How do these names shape Shalimar’s identity or lack thereof? 3.On page 211, Peggy Ophuls explains the nature of women to Boonyi using both a Western fairy tale and an Eastern tale. Discuss the portrayal of women in both stories and how it relates to Peggy’s argument. 4.What is the significance of India’s change in name? 5.Consider the final page of the novel. What do you think happened? Did India/Kashmira kill Shalimar the Clown?
5. I do indeed believe that Kashmira killed Shalimar the Clown. The main reason I feel so strongly about this is mainly due to the last two sentences. These read, "There was no India. There was only Kashmira, and Shalimar the clown." It's deliberately chosen to have the final standoff between two characters be between Kashmira and Shalimar, two characters with Eastern names using violence to settle the score they hold with one another. Even though India was never a big fan of her name because of its reference to the Eastern world, the significance of Kashmira is even more so in this favor. Kashmira is seemingly gaining revenge for her mother and her father and looks to use violence and killing to get rid of the terrorist that destroyed the figures in her life. The scene almost looks to comment upon the reliance towards killing that Rushdie believes that the Eastern world holds in favor.
2.) This book has a lot of weight on the importance of names. Whether it be India's musings over her own personal identity, or the "coolness" of Max Ophuls' name, it is described as an ultimate defining factor in whom the person is. By referring to Noman sher Noman as "Shalimar the Clown" it creates a very demeaning attitude towards him. A clown is someone who makes jokes, who isn't taken seriously, who people like to laugh at. Applying this further, one could even say that by referring to him as Shalimar the Clown is Rushdie's way of demeaning him; his actions aren't to be taken seriously, his motivations are a joke. It demeans not only Noman sher Noman as a character but also as a 'Muslim terrorist,' which in turn trivializes the issue, making it seem okay to label Muslim's as clowns, as not to take them or their ideas seriously.
3.) First, touching back on the idea of names - you couldn't have a more iconic name for a westernized woman. It is reminiscent of the ideal 1950's housewife, that is, 'Peggy.' This part of the novel was one of the most irritating for me. Peggy's extreme condescension towards Boonyi, paired with Boonyi’s sniveling stupidity, is the epitome of Orientalism. “Boonyi’s tears had dried. ‘Please, I do not understand,’ she said at last” (211). This sentence alone makes the dynamic clear; Peggy is smart, intelligent, in power, and Boonyi is an uneducated woman who has no power, but it’s ‘okay’ because Peggy implies that Boonyi is used to being bossed around by “killer princes” (211). The dynamic of the two fairy tales adds another layer to this. For the first time in this situation we see Peggy relating to Boonyi; “Take me, for example. I married my whimsical prince as well, the murderer of my love” (211). But instead of a genuine empathy, it’s more of a ‘take my advice, I know more than you, been there, done that’ type of attitude. She also fails to explain the fairy tale in its entirety; the eastern fairy tale she just uses to outline the utter stupidity of women.
1.Magic in the novel seems to be a tie to tradition for the people using it. Perhaps characters are alienated by modernization; for whatever reason the people using magic (typically elderly women) seem to be superstitious but not disregarded by others in their community. People seem to respect them but they don’t exactly have a place, it could tie into the theme of identity crisis. 4.India’s change in name can symbolize her crisis of identity, or be an example of orientalism. Either way India does not like the associations made with her name, not believing herself to be exotic or embodying much of India.
1. The magic in the novel, the seer in Kashmir in particular, serve to mystify the East. They have a culture with a base in the illogical and inexplicable. This is a typical Orientalist motif and only serves to make the East exotic and reinforce all of the logic and science in the West.
1. I found it interesting that the use of magic in the novel seemed to be associated not just with the East, but with women. It certainly plays on the West's Orientalist expectations that characters from the East should be mystical and exotic. However, there also seems to be a subtle sexism in the novel as well. For example, it is Shalimar's mother who believes in the luck of snakes and other such tales, while is father is characterized as being the stable and rational half of the relationship. And who can forget Olga Volga the potato witch.
I am confident Kashmira killed Shalimar the Clown. Terrorism won't be tolerated with the new generation of Americans. Kashmira was an American girl, despite her sudden "connection" with the east. Psycho Shalimar needed to be defeated at some point, and this was in.
Something I have noticed reading through Shalimar the Clown is how Rushdie barely veils the fact that he is using really trite narrative structures. I understand it is impossible for an author to completely get away from any type of pre-made structure without the story sounding like garbage, but in Shalimar it seems that he deliberately inflates certain elements in the story to make the characters and their cultural contexts ridiculous. For instance, he goes great lengths to bring traditional stories into the book. The story of Sita and Ram come up a lot, but they are always, awkwardly, tied to the story in Shalimar the Clown:
"This was not how things were supposed to go, according to the old story. In the old story, Sita the pure was kidnapped and Ram fought a war to win her back. In the modern world everything had been turned upside down and inside out. Sita, or rather Boonyi in the Sita role, had freely chosen to run off with her American Ravan and willingly became his mistress and bore him a child; and Ram -- the Muslim clown, Shalimar, misplaying the part of Ram -- fought no war to rescue her. In the old story..." (263)
As it was mentioned last time in class, this looking back to and literalizing of the Hindu and Islamic mythos makes these people look unbelievably antiquated and naive. It's not necessarily that the beliefs themselves are laughable but that they are used to rationalize a complicated, modern story. Rushdie makes this convention even worse because he really has to stretch these old stories in order to fit the new content.
He takes this to a whole other extreme when he brings the Quran into the mix:
"The five daily prayers at the camp maiden were compulsory for all the fighters and the only book permitted at the site -- training manuals excepted -- was the Quran... Ideology was primary. The infidel, obsessed with possessions and wealth did not grasp this, and believed that men were primarily motivated by social and material self-interest." (265)
Rushdie knows what kind of language a Westerner freaks out about and he quite freely uses this orientalist rhetoric to describe the ideology of an entire people. He makes it sound like extremism is the only path for Islam but really who is Shalimar as a character. He barely represents a human being let alone a Muslim. There is no attempt to describe him or give any nuance to his character. The political situation, as interpreted by the book, is a symptom of Islam rather than a cause for the extremism Shalimar would be forced into. So we get this dynamic between language and culture that presupposes language creates culture. Obviously, Rushdie is doing this to make his Eastern characters look hopelessly stupid.
What's worse is that he gets trapped in this language game as well. He has a clear repulsion for Islam, but instead of being directly critical of this language he finds fault with, he uses it to describe the modern problems of terrorism. So this supposedly Western commentary on Shalimar's actions at the beginning and end of the novel sounds just like Boonyi's commentary on the Ramayana. Of course, this is most likely by design. When we see Shalimar in Los Angeles, he does not fit in at all with the style in which those chapters are written. His chapter as well as Boonyi's are styled very differently. Nevertheless, I found this scenario to be equally unsatisfying since Rushdie still is not saying anything interesting about Eastern and Western relations. All he is doing is using old structures to explain new situations. The effect is really underwhelming and uncritical.
Subtextual Condemnation of the East through Shalimar the Clown
While the story itself presents no explicit arguments regarding the Orientalist perspective, evident throughout the novel is an obvious undertone of apparent hatred for the "east." The novel, written by what the west stereotypically perceives as "eastern," is unfortunately taken to be verifiable just because an exotic name is the author of the novel. These sentiments are expressed in the opening section, India, "...she didn't want to be vast or subcontinental or excessive or vulgar or explosive or crowded or ancient or noisy or mystical or in any way Third World" which unfairly assesses the qualities of the Orient (pg 5-6). The aforementioned phrase sets the tone of the novel and ultimately regresses it into a rehashing of Orientalist views.
In Boonyi and Shalimar the Clown, the narrative of these sections are dominated by mysticism. Some examples of the primitive nature of the text referring to concepts in the western world, specifically the "id" and "superego" are referred to something as "shadow-planets" that are capable of mediating the extreme emotions Shalimar feels. Furthermore, the conceptual "other" as being "east" occurs in Boonyi: "There was the earth and there were the planets...There were nine grabbers in the cosmos...They were also the dragon planets: two halves of a single bisected dragon..." (pg 45). The names of the planets indigenous to the people of Kashmir are passed off as Islamic titles but they are actually the names of Hindu deities. The lack of research or neglect to even do any research just amalgamates vastly different religions into one, regardless of Islam's more intimate connection with either Christianity or Judaism than Hinduism.
While the writing of Boonyi and Shalimar the Clown is effectively condescendingly referring to an entire region of the world, the section surrounding Max Olphus is written in pretentious prose, often sprucing up the language by gratuitously inserting French words in the narrative. The character Max himself is raised to a significantly higher standard than any other character, so devoid of flaw that he is referred to as an "American comic-book superhero, like the Flash, like a Jewish Superman..." (page 146). In contrast, while Max perceived as wholly virtuous, Shalimar the Clown is the manifestation of all that is negative, vowing to murder Boonyi once had had heard of her infidelity. Also, sentiments the "eastern" people have are often disagreeable when referring to, specifically, America and its citizens, even going so far as to say that Boonyi with Max is proof enough to condemn her to a metaphorical death. All the people of Boonyi's home village are somehow corrupt in some sinful way, with the Sharga sisters embodying the seven deadly sins in their quest to woo Shalimar and curse Boonyi.
Questions - Corey Scibilia 1.) Why do the main characters get their own chapters, styles, and narratives? How does 'Kashmira' differ from the other chapters in this respect? 2.) How does sex play a role in the politics of the novel? 3.) How does the novel deal with the Holocaust in comparison to the political situation in the East? 4.) Why does Boonyi seem to attract way more sympathy than Shalimar even though she causes Shalimar to go insane 5.) Is Rushdie's outlook on Hinduism/India any better than Islam/Pakistan?
4. I think that Boonyi is portrayed as a more sympathetic character because, as an "eastern" woman, she is given absolutely no chance to find a satisfying life. She is forced by the villager's sexual prudism into marrying Shalimar, then leaves him in an attempt to sell herself in exchange for the chance at an education, and a chance to better herself at her craft. Instead, what appeared to be her only way to better herself lead to her complete destruction. Her "trump card" was her hidden pregnancy- at which point even her child was taken from her in exchange for a trip home. Overall, her powerlessness plays into the Western fantasy of the oppressed eastern woman, preyed on by men at every turn and denied opportunity.
3. I think that Rushdie is much more sympathetic to the Holocaust than to the situation in Kashmir. Both situations he certainly describes being tragic and horrible, but he doesn't treat the victims of both situations the same. He treats the victims in Kashmir as being somehow culpable for their own situation, while the victims in France are not at all. 4. I think that Rushdie has an equally negative view on both Hinduism and Islam. He treats them both as being foreign or Other, and somehow inherently incompatible with Western standards. This goes back to his support for Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis.
3. In the novel, the issue of the Holocaust is cut and dry. The Nazis are the cruel and inhumane villains while the Jews and the people of the French resistance are depicted as great heroes and wronged victims. Meanwhile, in the East, the people of Pachigm are given some sympathy, but their roles as victims are less respectable. Anees, Shalimar, and several other village boys are portrayed as terrorists, while the tortoise colonel mocks the idea of “Secular Nationalism.” Also, the victims in Pachigm and the rest of Kashmir are shown as more helpless than the victims of the Holocaust and the French resistance. The woman are brutalized, the men are maimed, and there are very few stories of heroic resistance; those stories that are mentioned are underemphasized in comparison to the descriptions of victimization in the novel. While victims in the West are dignified and have the strength to resist, the victims in the East are portrayed either as terrorists or as weaklings who are incapable of saving themselves.
1. The main characters get their own chapters in this book and narratives to be because Salman Rushdie is trying in any way possible to make us see that this are the most important parts of this book. It is like we are seeing that section of the story through their eyes which is important because everyone sees things in a different way. Kashmir differs from the other chapters in this respect because it is India's point of view just with a different name seeming as she changed her name.
4. I think in the west we are all hard-wired to feel more sympathy towards women. Boonyi, although not a saint, will still garner sympathies over Shalimar because Shalimar fulfills the stereotype of a terrorist: an eastern, religiously motivated man driven to emotional extremes.
3.It seems that the situation in the East is downplayed in terms of importance. While much of the section ‘Boonyi’ is influenced by what is happening, it doesn’t seem like the townsfolk have much say over the fighting as that is the Indian armies responsibility. In the conflict in Europe, Max’s actions are completely changed by what is happening. Either the culture present or his personality seem to allow Max to help narrate his own fate.
4. I think that he stating some kind of social commentary of the east in relation to women. They are trapped, treated like second class citizens and other western ideas of eastern women so he creates this character in a more sympathetic light to make the reader think that Islam and Eastern ideas are suppression filled.
I think that Boonyi elicits pity because she is a woman in the east. She, according to stereotypes, is suppose to be helpless, dependent on men. To further this stereotype, she becomes the mystical woman in the village upon her return.
1) Compare and contrast both Max Olphus and Shalimar the Clown's fall from grace and explain how it follows Orientalist thought. 2) How does the treatment of Boonyi after he affair parallel India's separation from her family? 3) What does it say about the East if Shalimar is unable to forgive Boonyi for her infidelity but India can forgive Max? What is the significance that India turns to more barbaric measures in retaliation to Shalimar both murdering her mother and father? 4) In the interviews with Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie, how are his criticism of the East in those clips similar to criticisms of the "exotic" in Shalimar the Clown? 5) Describe how the associations with the East (Max's affair with Boonyi, India changing her name to Kashmira) yield negative results.
In conversation and in his writing, Rushdie uses his influence to criticize the east. In Shalimar the Clown, the character India hates and rejects her name. She doesnt want to be sprawling or exotic or foreign, and does what she can to combat it. Similarly, Rushdie hails from India and a Muslim upbringing but distances himself from it by criticizing it and calling for that culture to change. Rushdie, for whatever reason, carries animosity towards the east and uses his influential voice and the west's preexisting anxiety over the east to further demonize the east and the exotic.
4. In the clips featuring Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie, we see them portray Islam as an inherently violent religion unlike any other. Salman Rushdie supports this notion that Islam is dangerous and that the East is extremist and hostile by how he transforms a seemingly innocent character, a clown, into a vengeful assassin. The way Boonyi’s family and community shames her and treats her as ‘The Living Dead One’ because of her infidelity negatively portrays the East as an archaic, fundamentalist, and cruel place.
4. The fact the Boonyi named her daughter Kashmira is so significant because she came from the village of Kashmir. It shows the pride and respresentation of the people from where she was born not just her mothers own pride.
4. Kashmira is a very significant name is Shalimar the Clown. Boonyi names her illegitimate daughter this based off of the village she left behind to have an affair with Max. Kashmir is a place where Boonyi stuck by tradition and had a family and a husband. Her intrigue by the Western world and her lust for Max Ophuls caused her to leave this town and her people behind to experience a world of difference. Boonyi was quickly unhappy with her deicision and recognized the injustice she had done against her family and husband and the child she conceived was born from an unhappy relationship. She seemingly named her daughter after the town she felt she had abandoned and soon she would have to do the same to her daughter in order to have a second chance at her old life.
3.) Zoon acts as Boonyi's caretaker and reports her condition to the rest of the town. When she finds Boonyi talking alone as if she was talking to Shalimar, she freaks out and stops giving her food.
4. More than just "Kashmir," Kashmira is expressed by Boonyi to be not only her daughter's name, but the paradise that Kashmir desires and to be free from war. Kashmira could also be Boonyi's new way to replace Kashmir itself and help her live in the Western world. "There is no Kashmir. Only Kashmira," echoes throughout Shalimar the Clown's section as her rallying point to fight to return to Kashmir. It represents Boonyi's most human moment in that she cares so deeply for her child and is a manifestation of all of Boonyi's love. She loves Kashmir and loves her daughter as well.
4. On page 229, the reader gets the first impression of Shalimar’s intent to murder Boonyi, Max, and India, when the narrator states “After he learned of her infidelity with the American, Shalimar the clown sharpened his favorite knife and headed south with murder on his mind”. Another example of foreshadowing Boonyi’s death is when Gonwati Sharga replies to her sister in conversation, “Hold tight ben. Wishes can come true” after she wishes for Boonyi’s death (233).
1. I think that Boonyi's father going to the woodshed is supposed to help the reader sympathize with his decision, if not agree with it, and to soften him as a character. However, most of his reasoning in his advice to her seems jumbled and irrational, which once again adds to the Orientalist aspect of the whole banishment situation.
Ellen Walpole Shalimar the Clown – Part II April 16, 2013
What Kind of Woman is Boonyi?
During the second half of the novel, I was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for Boonyi. While it is obvious that she should not have carried on an affair with Max and gone to America, she did realize her mistake and try to return home to right her wrongs. However, when she was received as a “dead” woman, my sympathy began to grow.
It appears that being a member of the Living Dead results in Boonyi being as close to invisible as possible. I realize that the Noman family and Boonyi’s father had to do something to “get over her,” but lying to themselves seems a little dramatic. Shalimar the Clown claimed that he had “…stopped loving Boonyi the instant he learned of her infidelity, stopped dead like an unplugged automaton, and the immense crater left behind by the destruction of the love had at once been filled by a sea of bile-yellow hatred” (236).
However, the fact that he no longer loved her did not stop him from wanting to kill her. It’s obvious that his struggle to keep his promises to both of their fathers is foreshadowing her murder. The way that he watches her outside of her shed in the summer months is disturbing and enhances his characterization of creepy assassin.
When Boonyi named her newborn daughter after Shalimar even though it was not his baby, I think she was in some way trying to give herself a life with him. It was assumed that he would not forgive her and she would not have anything to return home to. When Peggy Ophlus adopted the baby, though, any hope of having Shalmiar in her life diminished. The Kashmir that she returned to was no longer her home and she had no family to take her out of the blizzard. Just because she had an affair, her life was reduced to living in a woodshed and going completely mad. Did her crime really deserve that harsh of a punishment?
What kind of punishment would a Middle Eastern woman actually receive after having an affair? Would having a “bastard” child make the crime worse? It seems like a ridiculous notion in the twenty first century that a husband could have that much control over a wife. Maybe it is because we live in a country with such a high divorce rate and such ridiculous celebrity following that affairs seem almost “normal.” You can’t even go to the grocery store without seeing a tabloid revealing “who cheated on who.”
It seems like marriage has always been one of the biggest differences between East and West, and Shalimar the Clown only supports that notion.
1.Does Rushdie portray Islam in a certain light through different characters? Which ones? 2.Why does Rushdie portray India, someone who is half Muslim, to be crazy? 3.Describe the differences and similarities among the male characters Max and Shalimar. 4.Why are the women from Boonyi’s village portrayed as exotic? 5.How does Rushdie portray Shalimar from the beginning of the book to the end of the book?
4. Because it plays into the orientalist stereotype of the East objectifying women. There really is no better way to get a Western audience to sympathize with anti Islamic sentiment as showing them the supposedly downtrodden of their society. It makes the Western audience feel superior in the treatment of that class.
2. I believe that Rushdie portrays India as someone who is crazy because as someone who is half Muslim, she is conflicted in her nature. She seems to be very scattered and dreamy at the beginning of the novel, as someone who cannot love or form attachments. It seems as if Rushdie is trying to show that through her Muslim background, she is half mad because she comes from such an exotic and chaotic background. By being half Muslim and half American, her very self is conflicted and torn in two.
1.) Shalimar is used for the obviously insidious characterization of Islam along with Anees. The interesting character is their mother who does not seem to be as religious as the hindu Kauls. When Boonyi's mother dies during the garden performance, her father continues to pray to the gods even though they have taken away his wife. Shalimar's mother is almost disgusted and comes to the conclusion that the devout hindus actually are different than the Kashmiri muslims. I just think its interesting that Shalimar does not get his extremism from his familial relations but the political and cultural milieu in Kashmir.
2.) Her chapter is definitely more disordered than the other ones. For one, she can't sleep which might have a bearing on the narrative. Ultimately, I think it comes down to her identity and trying to reconcile her place in the world.
2. India's craziness seems to be, as others have set, the result of an identity crisis. The inability to define who she is (and, thus, to define what the country, "India," is) maps onto the instability of India itself - instability being Salman Rushdie's key descriptor of India and, as well, Kashmir.
While reading Shalimar the clown I started to become very frustrated with Salman Rushdie’s obvious way of showing his contempt for the east and his love for the west. It just shocks me that someone would be so vocal about these very radical and almost (in my opinion) absurd ideas. It very much disturbs me that someone would have these close-minded thoughts about an entire religion. It makes me confused even more when we realize who Salman Rushdie is. He is an Indian born, Great Britain raised, mixture of east and west. One would think he would be the speaker of truth, the one with all of the background to not be bias, or just more sensible than most people. What we see is a man in complete contrast with this.
Last week we read a book called Who Speaks for Islam, which gives gallup poll data about what Islamic people think about the world. I only wished that there was a book called “What the west thinks” because I think a lot of people would be greatly surprised to find that the west has a terrible Islamiphobia problem. For me I would not have thought that people would be so quick to blame terrorism on the Religion itself, until I had a casual conversation with a friend. The conversation started by talking about this class and how it tries to rid the idea that Islam is the reason for terror in this world. When I said that she looked at me and gave a curious look and said “well…..I mean”. I stared at her back with complete shock, and it occurred to me that people are quiet about their judgment. I could see in her face that she was completely Islamiphobic and it did not make much sense to me.
I mean if we talk about the Holocaust do we say “The Catholic Nazis”? No we say simply that they were “Nazis” which to me makes no sense because the Holocaust was fueled by religious hate where this recent terrorism is more likely to be about United States and Eastern relations. When we talk about the terrorism it may not be said but we all think that they are “Islamic Terrorists”. When we attach the religion to the broad term of Terrorism then we start to think that terrorism and Islam are mutual.
Salman Rushdie is a scholar, intellect, and celebrity. People look to him for information about East-West relations and he gives it to them often. My friend is apart of the University system trying to obtain higher learning and then one-day move to a career. These two people will make a mark on the world one way or another, big or small, they will influence other people. Unfortunately they will aid to Islamiphobia thinking causing portions of the population to believe that when they ride an airplane with an “eastern looking” (Whatever that is) person they will be at risk of terrorism. Before the 2000’s the most amount of casualties inside of America occurred by American citizens, which became a problem within the 90’s. Now we live in a post-9/11 world and the misconception is now that the fear comes from a far distant land that doesn’t have morals or proper culture, except the fear really comes from people like Salman Rushdie who create the distance between belief and truth. So why does Rushdie do this, well why does a bully pick on smaller kids, because he’s afraid of himself? Maybe.
What is the significance of this books publishing after 9/11? How does Salman Rushdie come out through the characters of the Novel? How is Los Angeles portrayed in the Novel and how does it show Rushdie’s views of East and West? What does it say about the overall message of the book when looking at all of the women in the book? What is Rushdie trying to say about the east with the assignation of Max by Shalimar?
1) Because Saliman Rushdie is such a well-known figure in the United States, and because he comes from an Eastern background, the expectations of the general public are that Rushdie would present an accurate representation of the East. In the post-9/11 era, where conflicts concerning the Middle East and Islam are in the news on a daily basis, Rusdhie's portrayal of the East within his writing is even more vital. Readers are inclined to trust Rushdie's portrayal of the East or Eastern characters because they believe he has a certain sense of authority in the subject due to his own Eastern heritage. However, since Rushdie's characters are presented within his writing with such an Orientalist slant, readers are inclined to believe the majority of Easterners fit the stereotypical or Orientalist viewpoint.
3. Los Angeles is viewed as a sterotypical American city. When Max went to visit his daughter, India, the neighbor women swooned and took notice of the man next door. It supports the idea of America being nosey and gossipy and somewhat celebrity obsessed. Rushdie seemed to portray both the East and the West in very sterotypical ways even though this is a somewhat recent novel.
1. Rushdie has the prestige to influence a large number of people with his writing, and especially as "one of then," someone from the East, he is easier to believe when writing on the subject of the East, its problems, and apparently terrorism. By publishing this novel after 9/11, he was able to throw a lot of his ideas about the reasons for the attacks and the tensions between the West and the East.
4. There seems to be a subtle sexism in this book. The most mystical characters are not only Eastern, but also women. For example, Shalimar's mother believes in a snake city under the ground while his father is consistently portrayed as the rational one. The majority of the women are also portrayed as exotic sexual temptresses. Even India, though not mystical, suffers from a fractured personality and speaks in tongues in her sleep.
In class last week, we discussed a lot about how Rusdhie portrays Shalimar the Clown and the Ambassador Max Ophuls through an Orientalist lens. Shalimar, a Muslim character born in the East, is presented within the first few pages of the novel as a terrorist—a murderer who kills Max seemingly in cold-blood and without reason. As readers, we aren’t presented with any reasoning for a motivation behind the killing until later in the book. Max, on the other hand, is the typical ‘victim’—first of the Holocaust, during which his parents were killed—and later of the ultimate act of revenge by Shalimar. However, we haven’t really discussed the portrayal of women throughout the novel, and how those portrayals also reinforce the Orientalist perspective Rushdie relies on throughout the entirety of the novel.
Two of the main female characters within Shalimar the Clown are Boonyi—the woman with whom Max has an affair—and Margaret ‘Peggy’ Rhodes, as known as the ‘Grey Rat’—Max’s wife. Peggy is Max’s wife, and thus the only woman in his life who is legitimate in the eyes of the law. Nicknamed the Rat by the German Nazis because of her “elusiveness” (168), Peggy is intelligent. She helps Max elude Nazi Germany into London in an “almost-fictional” (169) escape. When Max first meets her, Peggy “did her best to hide” her “obvious” (168) beauty, wearing a “loose-fitting man’s checkered shirt which…she buttoned all the way up to the neck” (168). Modest in her dress, smart in her ability to elude the Germans, and brave in her escape tactics, Peggy seems to portray the ideal Westerner. Even her relationship with her former husband seems to portray the romantic innocence with which Westerners regard love—Maurice Liota was “tortured and killed” (168) a year after their wedding for “refusing” (168) to reveal his wife’s location to the Gestapo. The notion of dying for love, I think, is mostly a Western idea that oftentimes gets romanticized in popular movies.
Boonyi, on the other hand, is the stereotypical Easterner. Presented through an Orientalist view of India, Boonyi is a sexually promiscuous girl who loses her virginity at the age of 14 and later cheats on her husband with an older man. Even the way in which she meets Max is exoticized through her dance. Perhaps the stereotypical view almost everyone has of Indian women is belly dancing, or in some form dancing sensually. And that is exactly what Rushdie gives us—Boonyi manages to seduce Max through dance. Max does not fall in love with Boonyi because of her wit or personality, but because of her physical perfection—and once that is gone, Boonyi’s status as Max’s concubine ends. While Peggy, as Max’s legitimate Western spouse, is able to walk around and enjoy her freedom, Boonyi’s freedom is contained to the apartment she is given. Not allowed to leave, she becomes the stereotypical victim of Eastern male oppression. Boonyi is defined only through her relation to Max—confined to her quarters, her entire day revolves around whether or not Max will visit her. Even when she returns home, Boonyi is shunned by the villagers of Kashmir because of her infidelity. While Peggy is not solely defined through her relationship with her husband—after all, she is the Rat, a woman who was clever enough to elude the Nazis—Boonyi’s sole purpose within the novel seems to be the adulteress, the woman who’s sexual promiscuity leads to her eventual downfall.
1. How does sex play a role in the novel? 2. How does Rushdie use foreshadowing in the novel to hint at Boonyi's future? 3. Why does Rushdie create women characters who are so unusual? 4. What is the role of names in the novel? 5. What is the Hindu-Muslim conflict and how does it affect the novel?
1. Sex is a huge part in the novel. Just in the beginning of the book we open up to India a women talking about how many shes had sex with, etc. And not much further in the book we discover that india's real mother, Boonyi, was a poor woman from Kashmir who had an affair with Max Olphus,her father. Right of the bat, Rushdie wants us to feel that the Middle East is this exotic place, where exotic people are always trying to seduce and corrupt one another. This attitude of sex and danger is always a constant theme in the novel.
2) Rushdie foreshadows Boonyi's future after Shalimar and Boonyi have sex for the first time at the age of 14. Shalimar turns to Boonyi and threatens her, warning Boonyi that if she were to ever sleep with another man, Shalimar would kill her and any children she might have with that other man. This directly foreshadows Boonyi's affair with Max, and the long journey Shalimar takes to track down, work for, and eventually kill Max.
1) We talked about this briefly in class, but do you think the character of Max Ophuls bears any resemblance to his creator, Saliman Rushdie? Are they in any way related to each other in character, ideology, personality, etc.?
2) Saliman Rushdie wrote and published this book post-9/11. Does the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir reflect at all upon the current conflict within the Middle East? How or how not?
3) How are Hindus portrayed throughout the novel, and is this an accurate portrayal? Think especially about the character of Boonyi. Is she presented through an Orientalist perspective, or is her portrayal as a Hindu accurate? Why or why not?
4) What is the significance of India as a character within the storyline of the novel? Think beyond the obvious result of infidelity.
5) Does Saliman Rushdie present an Orientalist or accurate representation of the East within the novel? He has become a world-famous novelist--why does you think his writing appeals so much to Americans or Westerners in general? How has the popularity of his writing influenced Western perspectives of the East?
1) I think the resemblance is one that Saliman Rushdie wants to be present more than actually is. Max, after all, is an ambassador while Rushdie is far from one, however, maybe Rushdie does see himself as the voice for a culture that isn't really his own. Max seems to be what Rushdie wishes he could be. I think this comparison makes it rather hard to take Rushdie serious if he wants to represent himself with this over exaggerated character.
5. I believe that Salman Rushdie eagerly submits to an Orientalist representation of the East within the novel, Shalimar the Clown. Despite his reputation as a well-written author he seemingly looks to show Americans what they expect to see in the Eastern world. Despite his origins in India, Rushdie grew up in Britain and eventually moved to America and he gained a sense of what Americans thought about and expected from the East. His novel embodies the stereotypes regarding the anger and irrationality of terrorists and he looks to have his readers sympathize with the female characters. The town of Kashmir is described as quite traditional as witnessed by the symbolic death of Boonyi when she leaves to have an affair with Max. Rushdie, who published this novel after 9/11, looks to reaffirm American beliefs in the backwards lives that Easterners lives and looks to reveal who is involved in terrorism based off of American fears. This story solely looks to create a rise in emotions in the Western world and is not based off of accuracy but off of an image Rushdie hopes to portray.
1. When speaking about sexual themes, in regards to Shalimar the Clown and Boonyi, the description is often coupled with overly aggressive undertones. Why does Rushdie represent these cultures in this light if he then argues that Islam fights modernization claiming it is overly sexualized? Are there any contradictions in what he has written?
2. Shailmar abandons his brother, Anee, without second thought to go forth and kill people. What type of stereotype is this building about Islam?
3. Boonyi's exile is described in great length, page 227-229, what does her exile signify? Does it perpetuate stereotypes that the West has of the East's treatment of women?
4. Shalimar want's to face an "invisible enemy in the invisible room in the foreign country far away" (248). What does this say about the West, does it perhaps remove responsibility of the West for the state of the East's and West's relationship?
5. On page 262, the second paragraph, Rushdie goes into great detail about what purpose the iron mullah understands Islam to serve. With consideration of Who Speaks for Islam, are there ideas in this exert that contradict what we learned about Islam?
2 This action creates an image of someone who is willing to abandon his family and life to accomplish something he is determined to do. While this example is not based around faith or religion conviction, it stereotypes the western view of what an Islamic extremist is. In particular it brings to mind suicide bombers and those without any regard for anything but accomplishing their organizations goals.
3. On page 227 the reader is forced to sympathize with Boonyi by how she is forced to leave her home because of her family’s hatred. When the narrator says “Go up the mountain and die properly. If that was her father’s message to her then she had no choice but to obey” it implies that there is still a patriarchal sense of dominance over women in Eastern society and that this ignominy and forced expulsion from her home is Rushdie’s portrayal of the status of women in the East through an orientalist lens. Islam is portrayed in a negative light by how Rushdie suggests that religion has created hatred and hostility in Boonyi’s family and community towards her because of her infidelity.
Up until the second half of the section Boonyi in Shalimir the Clown, the portrayal of Muslim people in the book has been very fair. The town’s folk of Shirmal and Pachigam get along and even help each other in times of hardship, despite one town being predominately Muslim and the other Hindu. These peaceful Muslims seem to be less religious than Muslims in other readings we have done so far, and are not shown in traditional prayer or going to mosques. They seem to be called Muslims without any aspects of their faith being used to personify them. This is interesting, because the first Muslim of devout faith seen in the novel is portrayed very differently. Bulbul Fahk is a Muslim and a prophetic sort of figure who shows up in Shirmal determined to make the towns folk more religious. While this may seem like an ambiguous characteristic, everyway this devout Muslim is characterized is negative. Even the nickname the children give him, “Balbul bad-odor” goes beyond being rude or humorous. He is described as smelling sulfurous (117); sulfur is a chemical element and it and its smell are often associated with the devil or evil actions. Not only this, but it is traditional for devout Muslims to be clean and to bathe frequently, so the association of Bulbul smelling horribly of sulfur seems to be something that would be factually incorrect. Besides characterizing Bulbul Fahk as smelly and devilish, the mosque he builds in the town ends up harboring some criminals. After Bulbul Fahk preaches a sermon of questionable taste, some young trouble makers go out to Pachigam and rape a girl. These abhorrent criminals seek refuge in the mosque and end up dying in it. Afterwards the mosque acts a mausoleum for the three criminals and acts as a reminder of what took place. Having the only mosque so far in the novel be associated with rape and shame is an interesting perspective on the people of Islamic faith in the novel.
5 questions -What is Rushdie’s intention when he personifies Kashmiri women as being very sexual?
-It seems that the conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan is being directly related to conflicts in WW2, and they are put next to each other in the novel (Boonyi and then Max). Is this just the story or is Rushdie saying something about the actions of Muslims?
-What is the significance of Elasticnagar, the Indian army base in Pachigam? What current United States foreign policy is it reminiscent of?
-Food seems very important to the cultures in India. What significance does this have when compared to the western cultures presented?
-Boonyi is restless even after her marriage to Shalimir. This considered, would she have married Shalimir without the incident with her uncle?
1. I think that Rushdie was attempting to play off of a common Orientalist stereotype. Women of the East are either portrayed, generally, as oppressed victims or as mystical, sensuous beings. By introducing Kashmiri women in this way, it is another way for him to try to reinforce to the reader that they are foreign and different than American women, and in following that vein, that Kashmir and America must be very different as well.
As a reader of world texts one must get comfortable with names that one may consider normal within the realm of ones own culture. This shouldn’t become an aspect that puts the reader off, but instead should allow for connection with another culture since names are one of the identifying aspects of people in different cultures. Throughout the novel Rushdie’s choice of names of his characters goes beyond the culturally different names into sarcastic undertones making the other culture seem inferior. The initial way the reader interacts with the characters is skewed by their names and the weight the names hold.
The most obvious representation of this is Shalimar the Clown himself. Though he may be skilled and have many other attributes more than his former occupation, we continue to call him Shalimar the Clown long after he has any association with his tight rope walking days. The depiction of him as a clown is particularly vivid in two respects; first it casts his choice of life, a murderer, in a humorous light and therefore removes all weight from the act, and second clowns are often presented as sinister. Associating a Muslim extremist with such imagery makes the reader even more uncomfortable with him and makes it easier to accept orientalist perceptions about Islam being a religion that condones violent behavior.
India’s name, too, perpetuates many orientalist ideals at the very beginning of the novel. India did not want to be associated with “sub-continental or excessive or vulgar or explosive or crowded or ancient or noisy or mystical or in any way Third World” (6) ideas and this is what she feared her name portrayed. How can the reader dissociate orientalist perspectives of the East if India herself, who’s back ground is part Eastern, cannot stand her own name and associates it with only negative things.
Rushdie plays with other names to almost make fun of the Eastern countries. Shalimar’s family name is Noman and whether or not this is truly an Eastern name or not to a Western reader, which he is writing for, cannot see past the obvious parallel in English being “no man”. He then goes further with this imagery by calling Zoon’s father “Big Man Misri” making him seem like a big shot, one who shouldn’t be taken seriously, and giving a man in Shalimar’s extremist group the name of Maqbool Butt.
Rushdie is writing to a Western audience and as such would have been very aware of the names and what they signify to his Westernized readership.
1. What is it that drives Shalimar to join a terrorist organization? Why would Rushdie choose this as Shalimar's motive?
2. Why might Rushdie use Kashmir as a major setting in the novel?
3. In Kashmir, Rushdie creates a common bond that is more important to the people than being Hindu or Muslim. What does this blurring of these two cultures do in the novel?
4. Pachigam is hard to picture because there aren't many helpful descriptions about it. As a reader, was it difficult to identify with the setting outside of America?
5. Has Rushdie done anything to de-familiarize America to the American reader, or can we always feel grounded there? When is Kashmir shown in a more desirable light?
1. Shalimar joins a terrorist organization because he swore an oath not to take vengeance on Boonyi and Max while his father and father-in-law still live, and he needs to take out his wrath on something while he waits for them to die. One of Shalimar’s handlers even tells him “For a man like you, a complete fucking crazy asshole, there will always be plenty of work” (275). This creates a very stereotypical image of terrorists. Shalimar’s story suggests that terrorists are all bloodthirsty psychopaths for whom the target is not really important. Conveniently enough, this ideology also removes any blame that could be placed on other groups for provoking acts of violence, and justifies any act of violence taken against people in the Middle East.
Shakespeare's line, "A plague on both your houses" is the second epigraph to the novel. The first question that comes up,for me, is: so are we looking at an alternative Romeo and Juliet? While Boonyi and Shalimar live in a peaceful world as children, we are surprised to see them get together because Boonyi is a Hindu and Shalimar is a Muslim. The division comes because of the Partition issues, and the Hindu/Muslim divide becomes important. Boonyi is lost to Shalimar, which drive him to terrorism and the murdering of Max. Now, it seems, the opposed two houses aren't of the Hindus and Muslims, but suddenly Shalimar and Max: the East and America. After Boonyi and Shalimar first slept together, Shalimar makes a very Shakespearian vow, "Don’t you leave me now, or I’ll never forgive you, and I’ll have my revenge, I’ll kill you and if you have any children by another man I’ll kill the children also.” Rushdie's terrorist character is one driven by something purely emotion and pretty immature. Shalimar is now a representation of the wild East out to kill the "maker of the world," America for reasons that are nearly laughable.
1.) Rushdie presents the character of Boonyi as a gluttonous woman who wants only to climb the social ladder; how does this compare with the portrayal of Boonyi when she is pregnant and yearns for her daughter? 2.) What is the significance in India’s two names—Kashmira Noman and India Ophuls—and how does her own identity change from the beginning of the novel to the end? 3.) Salman Rushdie illustrates Shalimar the Clown as violent from the beginning, before Shalimar would even have reason to be violent, when he says to Boonyi “I’ll kill you…I’ll kill your children too.” What was Rushdie’s intention in doing so? 4.) Do you think that any of the characters—Shalimar, Boonyi, Max, and Peggy—really loved each other at any point in the novel? 5.) Were Shalimar’s and India’s actions on the last page expected or surprising? Do you think that Shalimar would have really killed India?
1. During her affair with Max, Boonyi uses his wealth to live a life of luxury and vice. She becomes obese and addicted to drugs, so much that she loses the beauty and wildness which made her desirable in the first place. She becomes pregnant as a desperate act to remain in the life she leads. By doing this, the mere act of getting pregnant was an act of deception against Max which is something that Edgar Wood recognizes. However, she becomes somewhat of a pitiable character by attempting to keep her daughter. She does in fact become attached and tries to stay with her. Although she loves her daughter, she becomes condemnatory once again by abandoning her to return to Kashmir.
3) When Shalimar tells Boonyi "I'll kill you...I'll kill your children too," I think Rushdie may be attempting to do two things. First, this could be a weak attempt at foreshadowing on Rushdie's part. When I first read this quote, I was startled by the sudden change in Shalimar's disposition. I was even more surprised that there didn't seem to be any real reason behind the threat. Second, this could just be another one of Rushdie's attempts to present the East through an Orientalist perspective within the novel. Shalimar is presented as violent--violent before he even has a reason or motive to act in such a way. This suggests that men in the East (specifically Muslims) are overly violent in nature, that they don't really need a catalyst to be violent.
Previously, in the “Boonyi” section of Shalimar the Clown¬¬, the intensity of Shalimar’s infatuation for Boonyi demonstrated elements of romanticism and made him more sympathetic to the reader. For example, before Boonyi and Shalimar have their love affair the narrator describes how Shalimar “…climbed the wooded hill to Khelmarg and listened to the river flow” and how wanted the world to “remain frozen just as it was in this moment, when he was filled with hope and longing, when he was young and in love” (58). Rushdie weaves together imagery of nature with Shalimar’s passion when he says, “Standing before him, oiled of skin and with wildflowers scenting the carefully braided hair… was the girl he loved” (60). However, in the section called “Shalimar the Clown”, the reader sees Shalimar transition from a very lustful and passionate character, to a stoic hatred-filled antagonist.
The reader is struck with the horror of Shalimar’s new characterization on page 229, when the narrator says “After [Shalimar] learned of her infidelity with the American, Shalimar the clown sharpened his favorite knife and headed south with murder on his mind” (229). Rushdie first hinted at this hidden rage after the love affair scene in “Boonyi” when he says “Don’t you leave me now, or I’ll never forgive you… I’ll kill you and if you have any children by another man I’ll kill the children also” (61). However, the reader is not fully exposed to this hidden ferocity until much later when he is transitioning from a clown into a trained killer.
While still performing as a clown, his transition is made evident by how the narrator describes how he was “still as dynamically physical a comedian as ever, but there was a new ferocity in him that could easily frighten people instead of making them laugh” (231). Rushdie’s third-person narration exhibits Shalimar’s sentiment throughout parts of this section of the novel, especially when he says that the bond between relatives and neighbors in their community had been “broken forever when Boonyi ran away to Delhi to become the American ambassador’s whore” (236). The reader is fully submerged in Shalimar’s absolute hatred for Boonyi when we learn that “Shalimar the clown had stopped loving Boonyi the instant he learned of her infidelity” and that his love for her “stopped dead like an automaton, and the immense crater left behind by the destruction of that love had at once been filled by a sea of bile-yellow hatred” (236).
His obsession with destroying Boonyi, her lover, and daughter, becomes his entire life pursuit. When speaking to his brother and those involved in the liberation front, he makes this clear when he states “For now and until freedom comes I’ll kill anyone you want me to… but yes one of these days I want the American ambassador at my mercy” (252). To the characters surrounding his existence, it is clear that Boonyi is on the forefront of his mind, and his outward demeanor has changed drastically. Gonwait Sharga makes this outward transition evident when she says “If that Boonyi was dead instead of just in Delhi with her American… then perhaps poor Shalimar could start up his life again” and that “He’ll never forget that woman while she’s alive” (233). The stark contrast between Shalimar of the first half of the novel and Shalimar of the second half makes obvious Rushdie’s intent to destroy all sympathy the reader might have with this man from Kashmir. His portrayal as an assassin involved in an extremist organization creates a very negative impression of the East.
1. What is the significance of the name change from Kashmira to India, especially when it comes to India's insecurity about her name?
2. Does the reader meant to sympathize with Boonyi in the beginning of the Shalimar section when she says “There is no Kashmira, there is only Kashmir”?
3. How does the theme of death play out in Boonyi’s life as soon as her infidelity is discovered
4. Why does honor play such a significant role in Shalimar’s plan for murder?
5. What is the significance of snakes when Shalimar is transitioning into an assassin, and how does that relate to the Boonyi section?
4. The role of honor in Shalimar’s plan seems to be Rushdie’s way of attacking the actions of the East. A terrorist who kills just for the sake of killing is a psycho and in no way redeemable. However, someone who fights for honor is someone who is respected, as seen in the code of chivalry and in the mottos of many Western militaries. However, Kashmira tells Shalimar “you murdered two human beings because… you valued your honor more highly than you valued their lives. You bathed your honor in their blood…” (379). The West has the capacity to respect an honorable enemy. However, Rushdie criticizes the idea of fighting for honor, thus erasing any respect the audience might have for the East, and placing them in the “psycho-killer” category. Rushdie seems to be motivated by the desire to alienate and dehumanize the East.
4. Honoe plays such a significant role in Shalimar's plan for murder because Rushdie is trying to show that men from the middle east especially Muslim men take everything in their life to heart. That every single wrong that is done against them must be punished by some way. Shalimar wants to avenge the pain that Max has caused him and murder is played out to be the only fair and "honorable" thing to do.
2. I believe that the reader is meant to sympathize with Boonyi at this moment. At least I felt sympathetic, because she was so far in her depression that she created an illusion that she would be welcomed back in Kashmir. In her grief, she killed her daughter which is the same thing that her friends and family did. Pretending that they were dead and no longer existed was easier for her to deal with. However, because of her heinous actions there was no conceivable way for Kashmir to forgive her. Since she pretends her daughter no longer exists for a cause that is hopeless, I feel sorry for her.
1. Changing names is a theme throughout the novel. Bhoomi chooses to be known as Boonyi; Noman chooses to be known as Shalimar; Peggy is known as Ratty; and India chooses to be called Kashmira. What is the significance of choosing a name for yourself, and of asserting a new identity? Do the aforementioned characters do this in different ways, or is there a common thread?
2. Is the relationship between Max Olphus an allegory for relations between the West and the East? If so, why is the character of Max portrayed more sympathetically than Boonyi?
3. At the end of the novel, Shalimar tells India, "Your mother is a whore and your father deserves to die." India notes that the assassin used the wrong tense- referring to the past as the present. What is the significance of this line? Is living in the past the consequence of Shalimar's hatred? Or is it an Orientalist critique of the East, which Shalimar can be seen to represent?
4. What is Rushdie's attitude towards terrorism, or towards Shalimar who can represent terrorists? If Boonyi represents the East, what are the implications of Shalimar murdering Boonyi?
5. The deciding revelation at Shalimar's trial is the he killed Boonyi. Why is this death the metaphorical nail in Shalimar's coffin, and not the ambassador's?
5. Shalimar’s murder of Max may not be justifiable but his actions may not be perceived to be as brutal if Max broke Shalimar’s heart and stole away his love. Killing for love is a popular theme in idioms and stories, such as the expression “all’s fair in love and war,” as well as the countless stories about noble heroes who kill to protect the honor of their women. However, if Shalimar brutally murdered the woman he loved, than his actions could not have been motivated by a proverbial broken heart, that most sympathizing of maladies, but by sheer psychopathy and bloodlust. Therefore, it was the murder of Boonyi that was the deciding factor in Shalimar’s trial.
1. Asserting a new identity for yourself can be important because in a way you are making a new life for yourself, it does not matter what you did in that past with an old name because the new people you meet will not know that old name but only your new. As for the characters that change their names in this novel such as Booyni I believe that she might have done that to try to forget what happened between her and Max and also her and Shalimar.
4. I think the way you've posed this question is really thought-provoking. I think it's obvious Rushdie looks down upon terrorism, often portraying Shalimar as foolish or insignificant (just look at his title; 'Shalimar the Clown'). However, if Boonyi represents the east then the implication changes. Shalimar is not just a terrorist to America or the West, but also destroying the peaceful ideals of the East. The problem lies in the fact that the rest of this novel does not support that theory.
3.) This novel assumes a lot about the influence of the Koran on the political influences of its adherents. I have never read the Koran but maybe Rushdie is taking a rhetorical convention from the book and tying it to something awful.
It could also be Shalimar's self realization that the story of his life is modeled after local mythologies from his childhood (ie: the Ramayana).
4.) Rushdie believes terrorism is inherent in Islamic ideology. He thinks that Boonyi would have been better off if she had married anyone but a muslim.
Shalimar The Clown seems to contain strong elements of Orientalist stereotyping. India's change of name to Kashmir would seem to indicate some cathartic return to her roots, and yet the origin of her birth is a circumstance of adultery, prostitution and drug abuse. Boonyi, India's mother, is the hyper-sexualized stereotype of the "exotic" woman, until her self-indulgence and immorality destroy her. The return to Kashmir is for Rushdie an opportunity to introduce stereotypical Orientalist mysticism. Shalimar's mother performs snake curses; Boonyi and Shalimar can communicate through thought. Even the two paralleled rebellions in the story favor the West. The rebellion in Kashmir is basically terrorist action, while the French Resistance to which Max Olphus belonged is characterized as a noble fight for freedom.
1. How does the way in which Boonyi’s family handles her pregnancy by casting her as “dead”, follow the orientalist stereotype? 2. Do you feel that Shalimar the Clown’s decision to act in violence towards Max Olphus is justified? How does Rushdie’s vivid descriptions of him “sharpening his favorite knife” influence the character’s actions? 3. How does the introduction to television influence Shalimar the Clown, as well as the citizens of Kashmir? 4. How are spiritual myths such as “demons” used to justify the violent actions and attitudes of the characters? Do you feel that this presents the novel as an orientalist text, as well as a magical realist novel? 5. What does India’s decision to accept the name “Kashmira” signify in terms of the use of alternative names throughout the novel, as well as for her character?
1. The way in which Boonyi's family handles her pregnancy by casting her as "dead" follows the orientalist stereotype because it is comparing the idea that if a woman from a poor middle eastern country becomes pregnant that she is a slut and an outcast in the eyes of everyone, regarding the time frame that it took place. Her families judgements also shows that the women from Kashmir are exotic and untrustworth. 2. I do no feel that Shalimar the Clown's decision to act in violence towards Max Olphus is justified.Regardless of anyone's sex, race, ethnicity, or religion, no person in their right mind would ever kill another human being just because they 'took' their significant other away. Boonyi left by choice first of all and by trying to make Shalimar sound crazy by killing the man who 'took' his fiancee away puts a stereotype on the entire community of Muslim men.
2) I don't think Shalimar's actions are in any way justifiable. However, because Shalimar is given a backstory, and we are led to understand the reasons behind Shalimar's decision to murder Max, I do think Rushdie humanizes Shalimar a bit. Murder is never justifiable, but understanding why Shalimar kills Max--knowing about Max's fair with Boonyi--I am able to sympathize with Shalimar a bit. Without that backstory, Shalimar would just be another killer or terrorist. Shalimar's identity would take on that of a murderer and nothing more. However, because Shalimar's character is more fleshed out, I am able to understand the reasonings behind his decision to kill Max, even if I am not able to justify it.
2. Shalimar the Clown's actions, because of how Rushdie has portrayed him, are in no way justified. Had Rushdie chosen to subvert reader expectations, he could have made Max Ophuls a more culpable character, and simultaneously, could have made Shalimar a more innocent and understandable character. Instead, Shalimar is portrayed as an extremist villain, almost entirely without depth.
5. India's decision to accept that name is a realization of her identity. Before, as with the conflict between India and Pakistan, India herself was torn - she did not know her mother, and, thus, she did not know herself. By accepting the name Kashmira, she establishes who she is, what she defines herself as, and establishes stability, suggesting the same for the India-Pakistan divide.
Five Questions 1. After finishing this book what do you think the purpose of the title is? Why did Salman Rushdie decide to call this novel Shalimar the Clown
2.What is the importance of the relationship that we see between Booyni and Max?
3. Could Salman Rushdie be writing about some of his inscurities when he is writing about India not liking her name, could he much like this character have identity issues of his own? Why or Why Not?
4.What are some instances throughout the book which could act as reasons why people tend to look down and not like this book very much?
5. What is the importance of the last chapter in this novel? What does it do for us as readers?
3.) I firmly believe that Salman Rushdie is writing about his insecurities through India. Previous to studying him, I would have assumed that his name was not "western" in origin, thus placing an immediate stereotype on him and his subject material in his books (whether this is justified or not, it is still something I truly would have done). After reading the NYTimes article I think it's obvious he has insecurities and the article seems to be some way of compensation for that fact. It says "I'm not different, I'm not eastern, I'm one of you, an American, and I hate them just as much as you do." For the time it seems to even be a highly radical approach, since he implied that everyone had been dancing around what the "real issue" was.
1. By focusing on the antagonist, or most "bad," of the novel, one is essentially placing that character under the magnifying glass. All characters in the novel do things that aren't necessarily condoned by the majority of people but it is only Shalimar who is vilified throughout the book. By drawing attention to this, it perpetuates the Orientalist perspective so saturated within the Western civilization that the novels serves as nothing more than a propagation of Orientalist ideology.
1.) Would you consider Shalimar a terrorist or a murderer? What are the differences between these two ideas? What is the significance of labeling someone a terrorist v. labeling them a murderer? Furthermore, what is the difference between a soldier and a terrorist?
2.) What type of character is Peggy? How does she treat various other people throughout the novel? Is she justified in her approach?
3.) Analyze the sentence, "But the whole village also knew that somebody would have to do some talking sooner or later, because Boonyi didn't know she was dead" (221). What does this say about the villagers? In what sort of light does it portray Boonyi?
4.) What are the implications of Shalimar’s suggestion on 231 to have the soldiers in the performance come dressed as American soldiers?
5.) What do you make of the long italicized passages interspersed throughout the novel? What stylistic purpose do they serve? Do you feel they benefit the novel or create more confusion?
1. There is no way Shalimar can be considered anything except a murderer. Inflicting terror were not the main function of his murders and does not strive to cause widespread panic. Shalimar's purpose was murder to fulfill his own insane desires. By labeling him a terrorist, we instantly place him on a more severe scale of criminal. While those who commit murders aren't liked by the law, "terrorist" implies a negative connotation that wishes to punish entire populations of people in the name of fear. Between soldiers and terrorists, soldiers have a very prejudiced aura of "honor" (in the sense that soldiers of one's country are honorable) and are seeking to protect, terrorists are looking to harm.
Questions for theis week:
ReplyDelete1. How/why does Boonyi's relationship with Max change? Why do you think this is?
2. What do the snakes in Pachigam symbolize?
3. Does it seem like any actions by the iron commandos are justified?
4. What does Rushdie's opinion about Islam seem to be? Does he differentiate between Islam and radical, funamentalist Islam?
5. What seems to be the difference between love and hate in this book? Is there a difference?
5. When talking about Muslim's Rushdie's line between love and hate become quite blurred and I think the quality bridging the two along that blurry line is violence. Rushie's representation of Islam as a sinister religion is shown through these as love is an idea that the West holds dear. For the purpose of this book there is no difference between love and hate. The way they are presented in the novel makes Islam seem like a loveless religion.
Delete3. It seems to me that the iron commandos are driven to their actions through desperation and although many of their acts of violence are inexcusable, we should not presume to judge how people react to dire circumstances. The people of Kashmir were caught between two warring nations, and their rights and very lives were being threatened through no fault of their own. Many rebel groups throughout history have stood up against injustice and tyranny, and been labeled traitors and criminals. Our own American Patriots during the Revolutionary war were labeled traitors and either hanged, drawn, and quartered by the British or sent to brutal prison ships where many starved to death. So, while the actions of the iron commandos were not an honorable form of warfare, we must recognize that they were desperate and did not have the resources to protect their rights through conventional means.
Delete1. Boonyi and Max seem to have built their relationship solely off an interest in the other, there attraction to something different, a symbol of the Eastern and Western world. Boonyi also keeps quite true to the promise they created when the relationship started – she made sure not to fall in love with Max and instead attempted to remove all aspects of love from her life. Boonyi seems horrified that she was willing to leave her husband behind and follow her lustful desires. Thus, she attempts to cut out any sense of love in her life and this is why she eventually becomes reliant upon the drugs and food. Max doesn’t seem to understand how he impacted the rest of Boonyi’s life and her connection to tradition.
Delete5. It feels like in this book, which must stem from Rushdie's perception, love and hate are easily distinguishable when you're western but lead to the same outcome when you're eastern. When expressing his love for Boonyi, Shalimar references how willing he is to kill for her. That he cannot manifest his love without comparing it to hatred and violence seems like Rushdie trying to emphasize the backwardness of this culture. On the other hand, characters like India and Max can distinguish love over hate even though they're both pretty bad at being loving.
DeleteYes, there is a difference between love and hate in this book but the characters seen too caught up to display them the way the reader might expect.
4. Rushdie has a visible animosity towards Islam.
Deletenot only through this book, but through various statements in the media and other writings, He has expressed a need for Islam to change. This seems so futile when you get down to it. There are millions of Muslims in the world and Rushdie again and again writes it off, stating it needs "to be brought to the twenty first century." Its demonstrated through this work and others of his that he does not seem to recognize an Islam that doesn't result in radicalism. He fears it, probably due to his Fatwa-induced fugitive status, and therefore slanders it to an audience of misinformed westerners.
4.) Rushdie does not differentiate between Muslims and radical fundamentalist Muslims. Rushdie seems to be unable to even properly separate Hinduism from Islam. Repeatedly throughout the novel he lumps multiple cultures together into one massive ideology and this is completely untrue. There are some major differences between Hinduism and Islam (for starters, Hinduism is polytheistic and Islam is monothestic). Rushdie is either incredibly ignorant and unlearned (in which case - how did this book get published?), being sarcastic by trying to mimic how the 'average' westerner does not differentiate (yet there is little room for humor in this novel... it's not a funny portrayal as much as it is a mean one), or he is simply vindictive.
Delete3. I believe that their actions are in fact justified. Simply because the nature of their behavior and the driving forces behind their actions are often destructive or negative, does not mean they are any less necessary or justified than more conventional and praised forms of rebellion. Though tactics and end results may differ, the root of any form of action, be it harmful or otherwise, stems from an infuriation with injustice and an outrage to the extent to cause action. The Iron Commandos actions, therefore, must be justified.
Delete5. It seems like the emotions of love and hate are the same. "Love" in this novel, is not the gooshy, romantic type we are used to; I think it is written more realistically. Although Shalimar loved Boonyi, the feeling immediately changed when she slept with Max. And on her side, she never actually loved Max. Even love between parents and their children is not what we are used to. India and Max were not affectionate, and when he kissed her, she found it to be odd. Boonyi and her father were desperate and were forced to hide their relationship. Overall, I don't think the two emotions can stand alone; they came together.
Delete4. Rushdie's portrayal of Muslims is a very Orientalist one; not only does he fail to make any distinctions between different groups and levels of devoutness, he also tends to lump Muslims and Hindus together just because they occupy the same space. The novel seems to push a negative view of the religion as a whole, leaving the reader feeling completely out-of-place anywhere but in the company of the Americans.
Delete2. I believe that the snakes in Pachigam are a literal form of India's karmic "magic." Snakes, in mythology, tend to represent a combination of sensuality and evil (being dangerous). This sensuality and evil are combined with their connection to India to operate as an Indian "weapon" of vengeance against the invaders.
Delete4. It seems that Rushdie has some kind of self loathing as India in the book has, he wants to create a division between the east and himself. This is why we see him speaking out against Islam, which could be associated with terrorism. He is from the East and he does not want to be directly related to Islam or terrorism. His assumptions of Islam are wrong which is surprising due to his background. I do not think Rushdie's hatred for Islam is logical or justified more based off his own internal struggles.
Delete1. At first, before they even begin their relationship, Boonyi is infatuated with Max, and waits for the day that he will come and take her away. She prepares for his return and is all too willing to leave Shalimar for him. Once she is set up in her apartment though, she begins to change; she wishes she was with Shalimar and views Max as the enemy. I don't think that she ever really loved him, and she starts to turn against him when she finally realizes this.
Delete1. Although we discussed that Shalimar is, in some ways, a stereotypical "terrorist", he is also a sympathetic character, given his past. How do we justify these two seemingly contradictory descriptions from Rushdie?
ReplyDelete2. What does India's actions at the very end of the book say about her character?
3. Rushdie, in the passages on the massacre at Pachigam, creates three different "versions" of the village. What does he mean by this? What might it symbolize?
4. Why is Shalimar a "Clown"? What's the significance of that title, and why would Rushdie make him the titular character if he is just a stereotypical "terrorist"?
5. Which characters, if any, do we sympathize with in this book? Where do Rushdie's sympathies lay?
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Delete1. I think the way Rushdie presented Shalimar's past puts more blame on Boonyi, Shalimar and the community more than Max the great. Boonyi is the slut who slept around, Shalimar is the over controlling man who threatens his wife if he ever leaves him, and the community forced them to get married at a young age. Max is no longer an American ambassador, however, I don't think any blame is truly laid on him. I think in this way Rushdie can represent Shalimar as a murderer with a past that is all his fault and while we might feel bad for him, he is and his own caused his own misfortune.
Delete4. I think the title is significant in that it makes the Muslim extremist seem more sinister. Clowns are often presented in the Western society as scary and dark. As such naming the Jihadist Muslim a foreign name connected to something sinister in our society effectively causes the reader to associate scary imagery with the Muslim.
1. I feel that Rushdie in a sense depicts Shalimar as somewhat of a sympathetic character in that he is a result of his community. Although Shalimar was not forced to ultimately murder the man who slept with his wife, he was publicly embarrassed and was hungry for revenge. In a sense, Shalimar is an extremely realistic human character through his strong emotions of shame, and anger towards Max Olphus, so in this way Rushdie possibly creates sympathy towards him, however nothing in my opinion justifies murder.
Delete2. The only character within the novel I truly sympathize with is India. She is the only character throughout the novel who does not cause shame upon her family, but instead is the result of the immoral acts of the various characters involved in her life. Her disposition and choices I feel are all a result of her upbringing, and I feel that Rushdie did sympathies with her as she finally is able to understand her past and visit Kashmir within the final chapters.
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Delete1. Rushdie creates a seemingly complex character of a terrorist as we are first introduced to Shalimar when he gruesomely murders Max Ophuls by slitting his throat. Yet, readers are soon after forced to gain an insight into Shalimar’s past and his love for his wife Boonyi. Boonyi left her husband to be with Max Ophuls resulting in a deep-rooted anger Shalimar had towards Max. While I can understand that Shalimar would hate the man that took his wife from him I believe that Rushdie uses this situation for readers to somewhat still dislike Shalimar and see him as simply a terrorist. Max did nothing else to ruin Shalimar’s life. Instead it is all about the concept of honor and tradition; a Westerner should not be coming to the Eastern world and stealing the women. Thus, Rushdie looks to kind of show the sense of extreme emotion and traditional beliefs that he feels defines the Eastern/ “third world” nations and forces Shalimar to be seen as an overemotional terrorist.
DeleteI sympathize greatly with Shalimar. I can practically feel his sorrow, anguish and heartache, the pain and emptiness he feels upon losing his love and the hope and life that accompanied it. I am able to understand and follow his thought process, I can see his reasoning and feel myself thinking the same way. His actions, their causes, and the morals he stands by are ones that I also respect and would follow.
Delete1.Shalimar is a skilled terrorist and assassin, which is what he was transformed into based on what happened in his life. While we are given images of his youth and how he once was, early in the novel we are given evidence that makes it not surprising that he turns out violent. On p.61 he tells Boonyi that he will kill her and her children if she ever sleeps with another man, which seems pretty extreme for a 14 year old.
Delete4. Shalimar is a "clown" because like other characters in the novel, there is no completely "true" identity for any character. Max is a spy, India and Boonyi changed their names, and Shalimar is a clown. They are all performers and their primary function is to assume the role of an entertainer or performer and hide the truth. Shalimar is the titular character because his performance is masked by "terrorism" and fueled truly by scorn. I imagine Rushdie chose Shalimar to represent the "dangers of the East" in order to paint them in a bad light.
Delete5. I found myself sympathizing with different characters in different parts of the novel. At first, I thought India was going to be the weak character because she did not have a close relationship with her father and could not have a normal relationshiup with a man. I felt bad for Shalimar when his lover betrayed him and he had to pronounce her "dead" in order to live.I couldn't help but feel sorry for Boonyi when she returned to her home in a blizzard and no one would accept her. I think the author wanted us to sympathize with different characters in order to understand their connections to each other.
Delete4. Naming Shalimar a clown serves to belittle his actions. He becomes a terrorist because his girl was taken from him, basically. Rushdie seems to be drawing us what he believes to be a stereotypical terrorist in many ways, leading the reader to see terrorist as extreme actors without any real motives behind their actions. While obviously one cannot condone terrorism, Rushdie presents a terrorist acting over a broken heart rather than any higher drive; he paints terrorists as clowns, not letting us believe that there are any 'justified' causes for their actions.
Delete1. Shalimar is the typical terrorist because of things that have happened in the past. Although we sympathize with what has happened to him we cannot understand the decisions he makes in response to all the bad that has happened to him. Rushdie is making a clear connection with the east and irrational behavior. Bad things happen to people in the East they will just act radically and thats why they are dangerous, this is what Rushdie is saying in this novel.
Delete2. In the beginning of the novel, India is portrayed as a somewhat glamorous socialite, living in Los Angeles. She rails against anything and any part of her that could be construed as "Eastern"; this includes even her name. At the end of the book, she breaks the stereotype she set up for herself, and lies in wait with an arrow in her hand, like a predator. She is even referred to at the very end as "Kashmira." This shows her coming into and embracing not only her native roots, but more important her mother's legacy, because that is what her mother wanted of her; to be known by Kashmira and to know her heritage.
DeleteGender and Cultural Binaries in Shalimar the Clown
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Salman Rushdie created Boonyi, one of the novel’s main female characters, according to an orientalist view of the role of women in Central Asia. Boonyi is at once an exotic temptress and a powerless ghost. In fact, she is anything but human. At the beginning of the novel, Boonyi is the beautiful young woman who convinces Shalimar to sleep with her. It is her idea, and she is portrayed as the one responsible for luring him into the act. However, after her infidelity, she is pronounced dead by her community and shunned to a secluded hut outside of the village. There, she lives as a ghost completely dependent on the alms of her father. Granted, her family and friends agreed to let her “die” in order to protect her, but in the end Shalimar comes for her anyway. So, Boonyi is a contradiction that reflects stereotypical notions of “Eastern” women. She is portrayed as exotic and lustful, which gives her a certain power over the men around her. However, because of her sexuality, she is considered dangerous and is granted no legitimacy as a human being.
Rushdie also suggests that Kashmiri culture is unfairly unforgiving towards women through the character of Zoon. It is implied that she has been sexually assaulted by the Gegroo brothers, after which she is socially ostracized in a fashion similar to Boonyi. “A lot of people around these parts…think that when a thing happens to a woman like the thing that happened to me, the woman should go quietly into the trees and hang herself,” she explains to Boonyi upon her return to Kashmir (Rushdie 223). So, even though what happened was not actually Zoon’s fault, she is presumed to be guilty by default and is consequently persecuted. Rushdie’s characterization of women in Kashmir seems to purposely play into the Western expectation of what it means to be a woman in a non-Western country. It is also interesting that, although rape culture and the act of blaming the victim is a problem nearly everywhere, Zoon limits the matter to “people around these parts.”
Another problematic aspect of gender relations in this novel is the suggestion that peace between two seemingly oppositional spheres may be impossible. The marriage of Boonyi and Shalimar was not just the union of a man and a woman, but of a Hindu and a Muslim. While initially both sides of the split Kashmiri community come together to support the marriage, when the relationship falls apart so does the camaraderie between the Hindu and Muslim populations. It is no coincidence that as Shalimar leaves the hut after finally killing Boonyi, he hears a bomb go off in the distance. Pyarelal is one of the characters through which Rushdie expresses this idea of essential incompatablility. Rushdie writes, “The love of Boonyi and Shalmiar the clown had been defended by the whole of Pachigam…as a symbol of the victory of the human over the inhuman, and the dreadful ending of that love made Pyarelal question…and [begin] to wonder if discord were not a more powerful principle than harmony” (238-39). Although the masculine and the feminine, like the East and the West, are false notions socially construed through a destructive system of binary opposition, Rushdie manipulates both systems in his story to highlight the differences, rather than the common humanity, between cultures.
1. How does Boonyi's pregnancy alter the way readers interpret the relationship held between her and Max? How does the pregnancy also force readers to question the way they had previously characterized both Max and Boonyi?
ReplyDelete2. Why do you think Rushdie has Boonyi's family "kill her"? How does this fit within ideas of Orientalism?
3. Describe Talib the Afghan. Why does Rushdie include such a character?
4. How is Kashmir described when Boonyi returns home? How does the setting and the description of the village contribute to Orientalism?
5. Why do you believe the novel opens with India and ends with Kashmira? What do you think Rushdie is trying to say?
1. I think that Boonyi's pregnancy characterizes her as manipulative and takes away any of the sympathy that the reader might have felt for her and her desperate situation. This only serves to further exonerate Max from any and all blame.
Delete2. The idea that you can die without being dead is unsettling, scary, and foreign to the average reader. I think that Rushdie uses this account of Boonyi's family "killing" her to make the town of Pachigam feel even more Oriental and exotic.
5. I think that the novel begins and opens with the two different names used for one single character to show the fractured nature of identity. India/Kashmira is one character, but her identity is so contingent on so many external forces that she can barely be considered as such
2. I feel that Rushdie forces Boonyi's family to "kill" her in order to prove to their community that relationships outside of marriage are ultimately forbidden. This in turn plays into the stereotypes of an orientalist text, in that women were expected to remain faithful to their husbands, which does not necessarily hold true for men. This complicated issue comes about throughout the novel, as we witness Max Olphus take on multiple partners, and yet Boonyi is the one who is cast as "dead". It is interesting that Shalimar the Clown takes it upon himself to punish Olphus, in a sense going against the classic orientalist binary.
Delete4. Kashmir is described as extremely exotic, as Kashmira describes it as almost entering through a "magic portal". It is particularly interesting that India refuses to use the name "India" in India, preferring the identity as her mother's daughter. The entire description given about Kashmir is essentially that of a garden, full of flowers and bees, extremely innocent and foreign full of beautiful scents. I feel that this description undeniably contributes to the Orientalist perspective.
5. I believe that the novel opens with India and ends with Kashmira because she is the result of every major character throughout the novel. She represents all of the problems they face, as well as being forced to deal with these problems despite the fact that she did not cause them. In addition to this, the change of her name is extremely significant in that the issue of identity through names troubled many of the other characters, and in ending with "Kashmira", it alludes to the fact that she has finally come to terms with and accepted her past.
1. Booyni’s pregnancy alters the way we as readers interpret the relationship between her and Max because it shows us that the relationship is more than what we originally thought it might have been. Even though she made sure not to fall in love with him it seems that her lust for him got the better of her.
Delete5. I believe that this novel opens with India because it gives us the first of many problems we are going to fact in this book. This issue being the problem she has with her name, which some might call an identity issue. In a way the novel follows this issue and then finally seems to be resolved at the end, with her accepting who she is.
2) Boonyi's "death" reminded a bit of an honor killing. From what I know, honor killings are usually enacted by a victim's family (like Boonyi's father, husband, and father-in-law) and perpetrated because someone (usually a female) disgraced the family be having an extramarital affair, sex outside of marriage, etc. In the novel, Boonyi was "killed" because of her relationship with Max. While Boonyi's punishment was not as extreme as an actual honor killing, it did Rusdhie's purpose in reminding readers how foreign and removed the East is from the West. Rushdie seems to present Kashmir and its inhabitants through an Orientalist lens at every chance he gets, and symbolically killing Boonyi in an act similar to an honor killing just acts as another link between what the East is presented as in the novel and the Orientalist perspective of the East in real-life.
Delete2. I think the Noman's and Boonyi's father were forced to "kill" her because she scorned not only her reputation, but their's as well. As far as an Orientalist point of view, after the affair and pregnancy, she no longer withheld the standard of an Eastern Woman. I think they felt ashamed and had to disassociate themselves with her in order to clear their own names and move on with their own lives.
Delete5. I think the novel started with India because it was supposed to be a surprise that her mother was in fact Boonyi and she had been adopted. Also, the progress that is made to her as Kashmira portrays the cultural journey that she embraced. It's also symbolic of her father's affair and her inability until that time to actually understand her heritage. The ending allows the story to come full circle and for the character to fully develop.
Delete2. Rushdie implies that Boonyi's family is traditional and fundamentalist by how he describes their hostility towards Boonyi after her act of infidelity. By putting her in a position of public ignominy to the point of extreme hatred and disgust, the reader is forced to sympathize for Boonyi, making this situation a social commentary on how fundamentalist or even cruel life is in the East. This furthers the connection Rushdie is trying to make between the East and irrationality and extremism.
Delete5. At the outset of the novel, when India talks in her sleep and makes sounds that seem like Arabic, Rushdie implies that she is unconsciously linked to her nationality and past. India however does not consciously feel that her name is at all representative of who she is, especially by how the East is considered primitive, exotic, and colonial. However, Rushdie wants the readership to make a connection between her old name in the second half and her new identity in the first half. He describes Kashmiri women as being lustful and sexual, which is also a characteristic he attributes to India in the first section of the novel. We learn in the “India” section very quickly that she is very comfortable with her sexuality and has many sexual thoughts and encounters. I believe Rushdie might also be trying to say that regardless of whether or not you choose to change your name, the foreign and exotic past will always follow you, making it hard for anyone from the East to break from western orientalist stereotypes.
2. The "killing" of Boonyi was interesting because it was cruel and manipulative on the part of the woman who came up with the idea, but it was also agreed to as a way to protect Boonyi from Shalimar. I think the community's treatment of her in this situation is definitely influenced by some level of Orientalism on Rushdie's part, because the act of physically and emotionally ostracizing someone from a community seems rather primitive, even evoking a sense of "tribalism" that is an orientalist concept in itself. Additionally, the fact that the person being metaphorically killed is a woman is clearly a statement about the position of women in Central Asian society.
Delete5. I think that by beginning with India and ending with Kashmira, Rushdie is trying to make a statement about the complexity of the young woman's identity, given the diversity of her background. However, it is interesting that she requires different names for the "Western" and "Eastern" parts of herself. It is almost suggestive of Rushdie's Orientalism, because he implies that the two spheres are so radically different that they cannot even coexist within the same person. She must have two separate identities and two separate names.
2. What we are seeing here is Rushdie saying that the East is irrational with no values. They will turn their back on each other immediately, and will go there own family. They have no sense of family which makes them terrible people. Here we have again Rushdie telling his readers that the east is irrational.
Delete5. When Rushdie focuses on India, she is seemingly completely Westernized, living in America, speaking English, and ignoring her heritage; just as her adoptive mother, Peggy, wanted from her. At the end of the novel, she becomes Kashmira; she becomes the woman that her birth mother, Boonyi, wanted her to become, and she even stands up to her mother's ex-husband. She only becomes Kashmira after the reader is made aware of the circumstances around and following her birth, which I think also plays a part.
DeleteQuestions:
ReplyDelete1. What do the similarities between Max Olphus and Salman Rushdie suggest about the character and the author?
2. How does Rushdie equate the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir to the conflict between the East and the West?
3. What does the outcome of the novel suggest about human nature and our ability to respect and transcend differences?
4. What role does Shalmimar's brother Anees play in the novel? What does his character suggest about the nature of terrorism?
5. What roles do women generally play in the novel? How is India similar to and different from the women of Kashmir, and what does this suggest about the East and the West?
1. I think after close inspection, Max Olphus and Salman Rushdie really aren't all that similar. Max is a larger-than-life character and a womanizer. He is the epitome of western glory. On the other hand, Rushdie holds on to some literary celebrity status and harbors western and eastern influence. Rushdie's fame is western in nature and although he hails from the east he behaves western.
DeleteCertainly, it can be said that both try to distance themselves from the east to a point. Also, both spent time as fugitives. But, where it counts, I don't see them as all that similar. I think Max's character, the globe-trotting, righteous, wealthy, intelligent mega-man - is the kind of idol that a person in Rushdie's case might aspire to be.
The character of Max is beyond reality, and perhaps Rushdie knows this. But, by creating him, Rushdie can aspire towards that end.
3. The outcome of the novel suggests that human nature is inherently corruptible. India assumes the identity of "Kashmira" and vows revenge on Shalimar in the same vein that Shalimar the clown pledged to kill Boonyi and Max. Rushdie posits that there can be no way to overcome these differences because the East is corrupt and bloodthirsty, and the only way to truly stamp out these differences is through violence or condemnation. There's no evidence of respect of other cultures of all.
DeleteIndia is portrayed as an independent, nearly idealized American woman, living a life of pseduo-struggle at the beginning of the novel. She comes off as artificial, but strong nonetheless. The Kashmiri women, like Boonyi and Shalimar's mothers, are also strong, but they, and Boonyi as well, are overly-sexualized beings who have some mystical powers, especially over men, and are largely to blame for bad things that happen.
Delete1. The similarities between Max Ophuls and Salman Rushdie seem to be less indicative of anything about Ophuls's character and more an example of Rushdie's opinion of his own significance in the West-East divide. He is Rushdie's literary self, a philosophical man of the world who is a (mostly) innocent victim of an extremist.
Delete1. I think it is evident that Salman Rushdie wants to two things, distance himself from his Eastern Background and act like some sort of celebrity. He does the first by criticizing the east constantly through his books, and commentary in the media. He does the second by created some persona in his book that he strives to be, some secret agent kind of cool guy who is also a diplomat in the West.
Delete1. I think that Max Ophuls is the man that Salman Rushdie wants to be. He is successful, rich, and powerful; he comes from another country, and he is able to overcome a scandal to live a happy life in America. Rushdie writes from an Orientalist perspective, unusual for an Indian author, and is very against Islam as a religion, especially after 9/11. I feel like he does this to try and escape his background, something he finds to be scandalous as well.
DeleteJeanne Magnetti
ReplyDeleteShalimar the Clown and Islam
In the novel, Salman Rushdie makes a number of observations about Islam that are orientalist in nature. For instance, Boonyi tells her father that “the question of religion can only be answered by looking at the condition of the world. When the world is in disarray then God does not send a religion of love. At such times he sends a martial religion…” (262). This passage suggests that Islam is a religion of violence, and that subsequently it is the theology that is to blame for the violence in the Middle East. We know this to be erroneous because no religion can be classified as ‘violent’ or ‘peaceful.’ Only people can be classified as such, and religion can be interpreted by people to be violent, peaceful, and otherwise. Moreover, Rushdie associates Islam with violence when he portrays camp FC-22 as a combination of Bible camp and military training. “There was a bomb factory and a course in fifth column infiltration technique, and above all there was prayer…the only book permitted at the site – training manuals excepted – was the Holy Qur’an…Ideology was primary” (265). By drawing a direct line between faith and armament, Rushdie portrays Islam as the threat, rather than a few violent dissidents who abuse it. In addition, Rushdie suggests that the religion of Islam oppresses woman when Firdaus Noman asks angrily, “How can a woman’s face be the enemy of Islam?” and her son tells her it is because men believe that women will “inflame them in an unholy way” (301). This is another theological and cultural error. As we learned in “Who Speaks for Islam?” women are respected in the Qur’an and believe that if the legal law was tied more closely to theological law, they will have more rights. It is clear in the text that Salman Rushdie has a limited understanding of the religion of Islam and that he views from a negative and orientalist perspective.
Shalimar The Clown Part II Questions
ReplyDelete1.Consider some of the instances in the novel in which magic is used. What is the significance of magic in the novel?
2.Shalimar the clown is referred to in the novel by his performing title, “Shalimar the Clown,” and the name “Noman sher Noman.” How do these names shape Shalimar’s identity or lack thereof?
3.On page 211, Peggy Ophuls explains the nature of women to Boonyi using both a Western fairy tale and an Eastern tale. Discuss the portrayal of women in both stories and how it relates to Peggy’s argument.
4.What is the significance of India’s change in name?
5.Consider the final page of the novel. What do you think happened? Did India/Kashmira kill Shalimar the Clown?
5. I do indeed believe that Kashmira killed Shalimar the Clown. The main reason I feel so strongly about this is mainly due to the last two sentences. These read, "There was no India. There was only Kashmira, and Shalimar the clown." It's deliberately chosen to have the final standoff between two characters be between Kashmira and Shalimar, two characters with Eastern names using violence to settle the score they hold with one another. Even though India was never a big fan of her name because of its reference to the Eastern world, the significance of Kashmira is even more so in this favor. Kashmira is seemingly gaining revenge for her mother and her father and looks to use violence and killing to get rid of the terrorist that destroyed the figures in her life. The scene almost looks to comment upon the reliance towards killing that Rushdie believes that the Eastern world holds in favor.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete2.) This book has a lot of weight on the importance of names. Whether it be India's musings over her own personal identity, or the "coolness" of Max Ophuls' name, it is described as an ultimate defining factor in whom the person is. By referring to Noman sher Noman as "Shalimar the Clown" it creates a very demeaning attitude towards him. A clown is someone who makes jokes, who isn't taken seriously, who people like to laugh at. Applying this further, one could even say that by referring to him as Shalimar the Clown is Rushdie's way of demeaning him; his actions aren't to be taken seriously, his motivations are a joke. It demeans not only Noman sher Noman as a character but also as a 'Muslim terrorist,' which in turn trivializes the issue, making it seem okay to label Muslim's as clowns, as not to take them or their ideas seriously.
Delete3.) First, touching back on the idea of names - you couldn't have a more iconic name for a westernized woman. It is reminiscent of the ideal 1950's housewife, that is, 'Peggy.' This part of the novel was one of the most irritating for me. Peggy's extreme condescension towards Boonyi, paired with Boonyi’s sniveling stupidity, is the epitome of Orientalism. “Boonyi’s tears had dried. ‘Please, I do not understand,’ she said at last” (211). This sentence alone makes the dynamic clear; Peggy is smart, intelligent, in power, and Boonyi is an uneducated woman who has no power, but it’s ‘okay’ because Peggy implies that Boonyi is used to being bossed around by “killer princes” (211). The dynamic of the two fairy tales adds another layer to this. For the first time in this situation we see Peggy relating to Boonyi; “Take me, for example. I married my whimsical prince as well, the murderer of my love” (211). But instead of a genuine empathy, it’s more of a ‘take my advice, I know more than you, been there, done that’ type of attitude. She also fails to explain the fairy tale in its entirety; the eastern fairy tale she just uses to outline the utter stupidity of women.
1.Magic in the novel seems to be a tie to tradition for the people using it. Perhaps characters are alienated by modernization; for whatever reason the people using magic (typically elderly women) seem to be superstitious but not disregarded by others in their community. People seem to respect them but they don’t exactly have a place, it could tie into the theme of identity crisis.
Delete4.India’s change in name can symbolize her crisis of identity, or be an example of orientalism. Either way India does not like the associations made with her name, not believing herself to be exotic or embodying much of India.
1. The magic in the novel, the seer in Kashmir in particular, serve to mystify the East. They have a culture with a base in the illogical and inexplicable. This is a typical Orientalist motif and only serves to make the East exotic and reinforce all of the logic and science in the West.
Delete1. I found it interesting that the use of magic in the novel seemed to be associated not just with the East, but with women. It certainly plays on the West's Orientalist expectations that characters from the East should be mystical and exotic. However, there also seems to be a subtle sexism in the novel as well. For example, it is Shalimar's mother who believes in the luck of snakes and other such tales, while is father is characterized as being the stable and rational half of the relationship. And who can forget Olga Volga the potato witch.
DeleteI am confident Kashmira killed Shalimar the Clown. Terrorism won't be tolerated with the new generation of Americans. Kashmira was an American girl, despite her sudden "connection" with the east. Psycho Shalimar needed to be defeated at some point, and this was in.
DeleteSomething I have noticed reading through Shalimar the Clown is how Rushdie barely veils the fact that he is using really trite narrative structures. I understand it is impossible for an author to completely get away from any type of pre-made structure without the story sounding like garbage, but in Shalimar it seems that he deliberately inflates certain elements in the story to make the characters and their cultural contexts ridiculous. For instance, he goes great lengths to bring traditional stories into the book. The story of Sita and Ram come up a lot, but they are always, awkwardly, tied to the story in Shalimar the Clown:
ReplyDelete"This was not how things were supposed to go, according to the old story. In the old story, Sita the pure was kidnapped and Ram fought a war to win her back. In the modern world everything had been turned upside down and inside out. Sita, or rather Boonyi in the Sita role, had freely chosen to run off with her American Ravan and willingly became his mistress and bore him a child; and Ram -- the Muslim clown, Shalimar, misplaying the part of Ram -- fought no war to rescue her. In the old story..." (263)
As it was mentioned last time in class, this looking back to and literalizing of the Hindu and Islamic mythos makes these people look unbelievably antiquated and naive. It's not necessarily that the beliefs themselves are laughable but that they are used to rationalize a complicated, modern story. Rushdie makes this convention even worse because he really has to stretch these old stories in order to fit the new content.
He takes this to a whole other extreme when he brings the Quran into the mix:
"The five daily prayers at the camp maiden were compulsory for all the fighters and the only book permitted at the site -- training manuals excepted -- was the Quran... Ideology was primary. The infidel, obsessed with possessions and wealth did not grasp this, and believed that men were primarily motivated by social and material self-interest." (265)
Rushdie knows what kind of language a Westerner freaks out about and he quite freely uses this orientalist rhetoric to describe the ideology of an entire people. He makes it sound like extremism is the only path for Islam but really who is Shalimar as a character. He barely represents a human being let alone a Muslim. There is no attempt to describe him or give any nuance to his character. The political situation, as interpreted by the book, is a symptom of Islam rather than a cause for the extremism Shalimar would be forced into. So we get this dynamic between language and culture that presupposes language creates culture. Obviously, Rushdie is doing this to make his Eastern characters look hopelessly stupid.
What's worse is that he gets trapped in this language game as well. He has a clear repulsion for Islam, but instead of being directly critical of this language he finds fault with, he uses it to describe the modern problems of terrorism. So this supposedly Western commentary on Shalimar's actions at the beginning and end of the novel sounds just like Boonyi's commentary on the Ramayana. Of course, this is most likely by design. When we see Shalimar in Los Angeles, he does not fit in at all with the style in which those chapters are written. His chapter as well as Boonyi's are styled very differently. Nevertheless, I found this scenario to be equally unsatisfying since Rushdie still is not saying anything interesting about Eastern and Western relations. All he is doing is using old structures to explain new situations. The effect is really underwhelming and uncritical.
-Corey Scibilia
Subtextual Condemnation of the East through Shalimar the Clown
ReplyDeleteWhile the story itself presents no explicit arguments regarding the Orientalist perspective, evident throughout the novel is an obvious undertone of apparent hatred for the "east." The novel, written by what the west stereotypically perceives as "eastern," is unfortunately taken to be verifiable just because an exotic name is the author of the novel. These sentiments are expressed in the opening section, India, "...she didn't want to be vast or subcontinental or excessive or vulgar or explosive or crowded or ancient or noisy or mystical or in any way Third World" which unfairly assesses the qualities of the Orient (pg 5-6). The aforementioned phrase sets the tone of the novel and ultimately regresses it into a rehashing of Orientalist views.
In Boonyi and Shalimar the Clown, the narrative of these sections are dominated by mysticism. Some examples of the primitive nature of the text referring to concepts in the western world, specifically the "id" and "superego" are referred to something as "shadow-planets" that are capable of mediating the extreme emotions Shalimar feels. Furthermore, the conceptual "other" as being "east" occurs in Boonyi: "There was the earth and there were the planets...There were nine grabbers in the cosmos...They were also the dragon planets: two halves of a single bisected dragon..." (pg 45). The names of the planets indigenous to the people of Kashmir are passed off as Islamic titles but they are actually the names of Hindu deities. The lack of research or neglect to even do any research just amalgamates vastly different religions into one, regardless of Islam's more intimate connection with either Christianity or Judaism than Hinduism.
While the writing of Boonyi and Shalimar the Clown is effectively condescendingly referring to an entire region of the world, the section surrounding Max Olphus is written in pretentious prose, often sprucing up the language by gratuitously inserting French words in the narrative. The character Max himself is raised to a significantly higher standard than any other character, so devoid of flaw that he is referred to as an "American comic-book superhero, like the Flash, like a Jewish Superman..." (page 146). In contrast, while Max perceived as wholly virtuous, Shalimar the Clown is the manifestation of all that is negative, vowing to murder Boonyi once had had heard of her infidelity. Also, sentiments the "eastern" people have are often disagreeable when referring to, specifically, America and its citizens, even going so far as to say that Boonyi with Max is proof enough to condemn her to a metaphorical death. All the people of Boonyi's home village are somehow corrupt in some sinful way, with the Sharga sisters embodying the seven deadly sins in their quest to woo Shalimar and curse Boonyi.
Questions - Corey Scibilia
ReplyDelete1.) Why do the main characters get their own chapters, styles, and narratives? How does 'Kashmira' differ from the other chapters in this respect?
2.) How does sex play a role in the politics of the novel?
3.) How does the novel deal with the Holocaust in comparison to the political situation in the East?
4.) Why does Boonyi seem to attract way more sympathy than Shalimar even though she causes Shalimar to go insane
5.) Is Rushdie's outlook on Hinduism/India any better than Islam/Pakistan?
4. I think that Boonyi is portrayed as a more sympathetic character because, as an "eastern" woman, she is given absolutely no chance to find a satisfying life. She is forced by the villager's sexual prudism into marrying Shalimar, then leaves him in an attempt to sell herself in exchange for the chance at an education, and a chance to better herself at her craft. Instead, what appeared to be her only way to better herself lead to her complete destruction. Her "trump card" was her hidden pregnancy- at which point even her child was taken from her in exchange for a trip home. Overall, her powerlessness plays into the Western fantasy of the oppressed eastern woman, preyed on by men at every turn and denied opportunity.
Delete3. I think that Rushdie is much more sympathetic to the Holocaust than to the situation in Kashmir. Both situations he certainly describes being tragic and horrible, but he doesn't treat the victims of both situations the same. He treats the victims in Kashmir as being somehow culpable for their own situation, while the victims in France are not at all.
Delete4. I think that Rushdie has an equally negative view on both Hinduism and Islam. He treats them both as being foreign or Other, and somehow inherently incompatible with Western standards. This goes back to his support for Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis.
3. In the novel, the issue of the Holocaust is cut and dry. The Nazis are the cruel and inhumane villains while the Jews and the people of the French resistance are depicted as great heroes and wronged victims. Meanwhile, in the East, the people of Pachigm are given some sympathy, but their roles as victims are less respectable. Anees, Shalimar, and several other village boys are portrayed as terrorists, while the tortoise colonel mocks the idea of “Secular Nationalism.” Also, the victims in Pachigm and the rest of Kashmir are shown as more helpless than the victims of the Holocaust and the French resistance. The woman are brutalized, the men are maimed, and there are very few stories of heroic resistance; those stories that are mentioned are underemphasized in comparison to the descriptions of victimization in the novel. While victims in the West are dignified and have the strength to resist, the victims in the East are portrayed either as terrorists or as weaklings who are incapable of saving themselves.
Delete1. The main characters get their own chapters in this book and narratives to be because Salman Rushdie is trying in any way possible to make us see that this are the most important parts of this book. It is like we are seeing that section of the story through their eyes which is important because everyone sees things in a different way. Kashmir differs from the other chapters in this respect because it is India's point of view just with a different name seeming as she changed her name.
Delete4. I think in the west we are all hard-wired to feel more sympathy towards women. Boonyi, although not a saint, will still garner sympathies over Shalimar because Shalimar fulfills the stereotype of a terrorist: an eastern, religiously motivated man driven to emotional extremes.
Delete3.It seems that the situation in the East is downplayed in terms of importance. While much of the section ‘Boonyi’ is influenced by what is happening, it doesn’t seem like the townsfolk have much say over the fighting as that is the Indian armies responsibility. In the conflict in Europe, Max’s actions are completely changed by what is happening. Either the culture present or his personality seem to allow Max to help narrate his own fate.
Delete4. I think that he stating some kind of social commentary of the east in relation to women. They are trapped, treated like second class citizens and other western ideas of eastern women so he creates this character in a more sympathetic light to make the reader think that Islam and Eastern ideas are suppression filled.
DeleteI think that Boonyi elicits pity because she is a woman in the east. She, according to stereotypes, is suppose to be helpless, dependent on men. To further this stereotype, she becomes the mystical woman in the village upon her return.
DeleteQuestions:
ReplyDelete1) Compare and contrast both Max Olphus and Shalimar the Clown's fall from grace and explain how it follows Orientalist thought.
2) How does the treatment of Boonyi after he affair parallel India's separation from her family?
3) What does it say about the East if Shalimar is unable to forgive Boonyi for her infidelity but India can forgive Max? What is the significance that India turns to more barbaric measures in retaliation to Shalimar both murdering her mother and father?
4) In the interviews with Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie, how are his criticism of the East in those clips similar to criticisms of the "exotic" in Shalimar the Clown?
5) Describe how the associations with the East (Max's affair with Boonyi, India changing her name to Kashmira) yield negative results.
In conversation and in his writing, Rushdie uses his influence to criticize the east. In Shalimar the Clown, the character India hates and rejects her name. She doesnt want to be sprawling or exotic or foreign, and does what she can to combat it. Similarly, Rushdie hails from India and a Muslim upbringing but distances himself from it by criticizing it and calling for that culture to change. Rushdie, for whatever reason, carries animosity towards the east and uses his influential voice and the west's preexisting anxiety over the east to further demonize the east and the exotic.
Delete4. In the clips featuring Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie, we see them portray Islam as an inherently violent religion unlike any other. Salman Rushdie supports this notion that Islam is dangerous and that the East is extremist and hostile by how he transforms a seemingly innocent character, a clown, into a vengeful assassin. The way Boonyi’s family and community shames her and treats her as ‘The Living Dead One’ because of her infidelity negatively portrays the East as an archaic, fundamentalist, and cruel place.
DeleteQuestions from Part II:
ReplyDelete1. What does Boonyi's father's visit to the woodshed symbolize?
2. Why should the Living Dead be like the Earth?
3. What is the importance of Zoon's role in Boonyi's story?
4. Why is the fact that Boonyi named her daughter Kashmira so significant?
5.Identify two examples of foreshadowing in the "Shalimar the Clown" section.
4. The fact the Boonyi named her daughter Kashmira is so significant because she came from the village of Kashmir. It shows the pride and respresentation of the people from where she was born not just her mothers own pride.
Delete4. Kashmira is a very significant name is Shalimar the Clown. Boonyi names her illegitimate daughter this based off of the village she left behind to have an affair with Max. Kashmir is a place where Boonyi stuck by tradition and had a family and a husband. Her intrigue by the Western world and her lust for Max Ophuls caused her to leave this town and her people behind to experience a world of difference. Boonyi was quickly unhappy with her deicision and recognized the injustice she had done against her family and husband and the child she conceived was born from an unhappy relationship. She seemingly named her daughter after the town she felt she had abandoned and soon she would have to do the same to her daughter in order to have a second chance at her old life.
Delete3.) Zoon acts as Boonyi's caretaker and reports her condition to the rest of the town. When she finds Boonyi talking alone as if she was talking to Shalimar, she freaks out and stops giving her food.
Delete4. More than just "Kashmir," Kashmira is expressed by Boonyi to be not only her daughter's name, but the paradise that Kashmir desires and to be free from war. Kashmira could also be Boonyi's new way to replace Kashmir itself and help her live in the Western world. "There is no Kashmir. Only Kashmira," echoes throughout Shalimar the Clown's section as her rallying point to fight to return to Kashmir. It represents Boonyi's most human moment in that she cares so deeply for her child and is a manifestation of all of Boonyi's love. She loves Kashmir and loves her daughter as well.
Delete4. On page 229, the reader gets the first impression of Shalimar’s intent to murder Boonyi, Max, and India, when the narrator states “After he learned of her infidelity with the American, Shalimar the clown sharpened his favorite knife and headed south with murder on his mind”. Another example of foreshadowing Boonyi’s death is when Gonwati Sharga replies to her sister in conversation, “Hold tight ben. Wishes can come true” after she wishes for Boonyi’s death (233).
Delete1. I think that Boonyi's father going to the woodshed is supposed to help the reader sympathize with his decision, if not agree with it, and to soften him as a character. However, most of his reasoning in his advice to her seems jumbled and irrational, which once again adds to the Orientalist aspect of the whole banishment situation.
DeleteEllen Walpole
ReplyDeleteShalimar the Clown – Part II
April 16, 2013
What Kind of Woman is Boonyi?
During the second half of the novel, I was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for Boonyi. While it is obvious that she should not have carried on an affair with Max and gone to America, she did realize her mistake and try to return home to right her wrongs. However, when she was received as a “dead” woman, my sympathy began to grow.
It appears that being a member of the Living Dead results in Boonyi being as close to invisible as possible. I realize that the Noman family and Boonyi’s father had to do something to “get over her,” but lying to themselves seems a little dramatic. Shalimar the Clown claimed that he had “…stopped loving Boonyi the instant he learned of her infidelity, stopped dead like an unplugged automaton, and the immense crater left behind by the destruction of the love had at once been filled by a sea of bile-yellow hatred” (236).
However, the fact that he no longer loved her did not stop him from wanting to kill her. It’s obvious that his struggle to keep his promises to both of their fathers is foreshadowing her murder. The way that he watches her outside of her shed in the summer months is disturbing and enhances his characterization of creepy assassin.
When Boonyi named her newborn daughter after Shalimar even though it was not his baby, I think she was in some way trying to give herself a life with him. It was assumed that he would not forgive her and she would not have anything to return home to. When Peggy Ophlus adopted the baby, though, any hope of having Shalmiar in her life diminished. The Kashmir that she returned to was no longer her home and she had no family to take her out of the blizzard. Just because she had an affair, her life was reduced to living in a woodshed and going completely mad. Did her crime really deserve that harsh of a punishment?
What kind of punishment would a Middle Eastern woman actually receive after having an affair? Would having a “bastard” child make the crime worse? It seems like a ridiculous notion in the twenty first century that a husband could have that much control over a wife. Maybe it is because we live in a country with such a high divorce rate and such ridiculous celebrity following that affairs seem almost “normal.” You can’t even go to the grocery store without seeing a tabloid revealing “who cheated on who.”
It seems like marriage has always been one of the biggest differences between East and West, and Shalimar the Clown only supports that notion.
1.Does Rushdie portray Islam in a certain light through different characters? Which ones?
ReplyDelete2.Why does Rushdie portray India, someone who is half Muslim, to be crazy?
3.Describe the differences and similarities among the male characters Max and Shalimar.
4.Why are the women from Boonyi’s village portrayed as exotic?
5.How does Rushdie portray Shalimar from the beginning of the book to the end of the book?
4. Because it plays into the orientalist stereotype of the East objectifying women. There really is no better way to get a Western audience to sympathize with anti Islamic sentiment as showing them the supposedly downtrodden of their society. It makes the Western audience feel superior in the treatment of that class.
Delete2. I believe that Rushdie portrays India as someone who is crazy because as someone who is half Muslim, she is conflicted in her nature. She seems to be very scattered and dreamy at the beginning of the novel, as someone who cannot love or form attachments. It seems as if Rushdie is trying to show that through her Muslim background, she is half mad because she comes from such an exotic and chaotic background. By being half Muslim and half American, her very self is conflicted and torn in two.
Delete1.) Shalimar is used for the obviously insidious characterization of Islam along with Anees. The interesting character is their mother who does not seem to be as religious as the hindu Kauls. When Boonyi's mother dies during the garden performance, her father continues to pray to the gods even though they have taken away his wife. Shalimar's mother is almost disgusted and comes to the conclusion that the devout hindus actually are different than the Kashmiri muslims. I just think its interesting that Shalimar does not get his extremism from his familial relations but the political and cultural milieu in Kashmir.
Delete2.) Her chapter is definitely more disordered than the other ones. For one, she can't sleep which might have a bearing on the narrative. Ultimately, I think it comes down to her identity and trying to reconcile her place in the world.
2. India's craziness seems to be, as others have set, the result of an identity crisis. The inability to define who she is (and, thus, to define what the country, "India," is) maps onto the instability of India itself - instability being Salman Rushdie's key descriptor of India and, as well, Kashmir.
DeleteRushdie's and the Fear for Himself
ReplyDeleteWhile reading Shalimar the clown I started to become very frustrated with Salman Rushdie’s obvious way of showing his contempt for the east and his love for the west. It just shocks me that someone would be so vocal about these very radical and almost (in my opinion) absurd ideas. It very much disturbs me that someone would have these close-minded thoughts about an entire religion. It makes me confused even more when we realize who Salman Rushdie is. He is an Indian born, Great Britain raised, mixture of east and west. One would think he would be the speaker of truth, the one with all of the background to not be bias, or just more sensible than most people. What we see is a man in complete contrast with this.
Last week we read a book called Who Speaks for Islam, which gives gallup poll data about what Islamic people think about the world. I only wished that there was a book called “What the west thinks” because I think a lot of people would be greatly surprised to find that the west has a terrible Islamiphobia problem. For me I would not have thought that people would be so quick to blame terrorism on the Religion itself, until I had a casual conversation with a friend. The conversation started by talking about this class and how it tries to rid the idea that Islam is the reason for terror in this world. When I said that she looked at me and gave a curious look and said “well…..I mean”. I stared at her back with complete shock, and it occurred to me that people are quiet about their judgment. I could see in her face that she was completely Islamiphobic and it did not make much sense to me.
I mean if we talk about the Holocaust do we say “The Catholic Nazis”? No we say simply that they were “Nazis” which to me makes no sense because the Holocaust was fueled by religious hate where this recent terrorism is more likely to be about United States and Eastern relations. When we talk about the terrorism it may not be said but we all think that they are “Islamic Terrorists”. When we attach the religion to the broad term of Terrorism then we start to think that terrorism and Islam are mutual.
Salman Rushdie is a scholar, intellect, and celebrity. People look to him for information about East-West relations and he gives it to them often. My friend is apart of the University system trying to obtain higher learning and then one-day move to a career. These two people will make a mark on the world one way or another, big or small, they will influence other people. Unfortunately they will aid to Islamiphobia thinking causing portions of the population to believe that when they ride an airplane with an “eastern looking” (Whatever that is) person they will be at risk of terrorism. Before the 2000’s the most amount of casualties inside of America occurred by American citizens, which became a problem within the 90’s. Now we live in a post-9/11 world and the misconception is now that the fear comes from a far distant land that doesn’t have morals or proper culture, except the fear really comes from people like Salman Rushdie who create the distance between belief and truth. So why does Rushdie do this, well why does a bully pick on smaller kids, because he’s afraid of himself? Maybe.
5 questions
ReplyDeleteWhat is the significance of this books publishing after 9/11?
How does Salman Rushdie come out through the characters of the Novel?
How is Los Angeles portrayed in the Novel and how does it show Rushdie’s views of East and West?
What does it say about the overall message of the book when looking at all of the women in the book?
What is Rushdie trying to say about the east with the assignation of Max by Shalimar?
1) Because Saliman Rushdie is such a well-known figure in the United States, and because he comes from an Eastern background, the expectations of the general public are that Rushdie would present an accurate representation of the East. In the post-9/11 era, where conflicts concerning the Middle East and Islam are in the news on a daily basis, Rusdhie's portrayal of the East within his writing is even more vital. Readers are inclined to trust Rushdie's portrayal of the East or Eastern characters because they believe he has a certain sense of authority in the subject due to his own Eastern heritage. However, since Rushdie's characters are presented within his writing with such an Orientalist slant, readers are inclined to believe the majority of Easterners fit the stereotypical or Orientalist viewpoint.
Delete3. Los Angeles is viewed as a sterotypical American city. When Max went to visit his daughter, India, the neighbor women swooned and took notice of the man next door. It supports the idea of America being nosey and gossipy and somewhat celebrity obsessed. Rushdie seemed to portray both the East and the West in very sterotypical ways even though this is a somewhat recent novel.
Delete1. Rushdie has the prestige to influence a large number of people with his writing, and especially as "one of then," someone from the East, he is easier to believe when writing on the subject of the East, its problems, and apparently terrorism. By publishing this novel after 9/11, he was able to throw a lot of his ideas about the reasons for the attacks and the tensions between the West and the East.
Delete4. There seems to be a subtle sexism in this book. The most mystical characters are not only Eastern, but also women. For example, Shalimar's mother believes in a snake city under the ground while his father is consistently portrayed as the rational one. The majority of the women are also portrayed as exotic sexual temptresses. Even India, though not mystical, suffers from a fractured personality and speaks in tongues in her sleep.
DeleteIn class last week, we discussed a lot about how Rusdhie portrays Shalimar the Clown and the Ambassador Max Ophuls through an Orientalist lens. Shalimar, a Muslim character born in the East, is presented within the first few pages of the novel as a terrorist—a murderer who kills Max seemingly in cold-blood and without reason. As readers, we aren’t presented with any reasoning for a motivation behind the killing until later in the book. Max, on the other hand, is the typical ‘victim’—first of the Holocaust, during which his parents were killed—and later of the ultimate act of revenge by Shalimar. However, we haven’t really discussed the portrayal of women throughout the novel, and how those portrayals also reinforce the Orientalist perspective Rushdie relies on throughout the entirety of the novel.
ReplyDeleteTwo of the main female characters within Shalimar the Clown are Boonyi—the woman with whom Max has an affair—and Margaret ‘Peggy’ Rhodes, as known as the ‘Grey Rat’—Max’s wife. Peggy is Max’s wife, and thus the only woman in his life who is legitimate in the eyes of the law. Nicknamed the Rat by the German Nazis because of her “elusiveness” (168), Peggy is intelligent. She helps Max elude Nazi Germany into London in an “almost-fictional” (169) escape. When Max first meets her, Peggy “did her best to hide” her “obvious” (168) beauty, wearing a “loose-fitting man’s checkered shirt which…she buttoned all the way up to the neck” (168). Modest in her dress, smart in her ability to elude the Germans, and brave in her escape tactics, Peggy seems to portray the ideal Westerner. Even her relationship with her former husband seems to portray the romantic innocence with which Westerners regard love—Maurice Liota was “tortured and killed” (168) a year after their wedding for “refusing” (168) to reveal his wife’s location to the Gestapo. The notion of dying for love, I think, is mostly a Western idea that oftentimes gets romanticized in popular movies.
Boonyi, on the other hand, is the stereotypical Easterner. Presented through an Orientalist view of India, Boonyi is a sexually promiscuous girl who loses her virginity at the age of 14 and later cheats on her husband with an older man. Even the way in which she meets Max is exoticized through her dance. Perhaps the stereotypical view almost everyone has of Indian women is belly dancing, or in some form dancing sensually. And that is exactly what Rushdie gives us—Boonyi manages to seduce Max through dance. Max does not fall in love with Boonyi because of her wit or personality, but because of her physical perfection—and once that is gone, Boonyi’s status as Max’s concubine ends. While Peggy, as Max’s legitimate Western spouse, is able to walk around and enjoy her freedom, Boonyi’s freedom is contained to the apartment she is given. Not allowed to leave, she becomes the stereotypical victim of Eastern male oppression. Boonyi is defined only through her relation to Max—confined to her quarters, her entire day revolves around whether or not Max will visit her. Even when she returns home, Boonyi is shunned by the villagers of Kashmir because of her infidelity. While Peggy is not solely defined through her relationship with her husband—after all, she is the Rat, a woman who was clever enough to elude the Nazis—Boonyi’s sole purpose within the novel seems to be the adulteress, the woman who’s sexual promiscuity leads to her eventual downfall.
1. How does sex play a role in the novel?
ReplyDelete2. How does Rushdie use foreshadowing in the novel to hint at Boonyi's future?
3. Why does Rushdie create women characters who are so unusual?
4. What is the role of names in the novel?
5. What is the Hindu-Muslim conflict and how does it affect the novel?
1. Sex is a huge part in the novel. Just in the beginning of the book we open up to India a women talking about how many shes had sex with, etc. And not much further in the book we discover that india's real mother, Boonyi, was a poor woman from Kashmir who had an affair with Max Olphus,her father. Right of the bat, Rushdie wants us to feel that the Middle East is this exotic place, where exotic people are always trying to seduce and corrupt one another. This attitude of sex and danger is always a constant theme in the novel.
Delete2) Rushdie foreshadows Boonyi's future after Shalimar and Boonyi have sex for the first time at the age of 14. Shalimar turns to Boonyi and threatens her, warning Boonyi that if she were to ever sleep with another man, Shalimar would kill her and any children she might have with that other man. This directly foreshadows Boonyi's affair with Max, and the long journey Shalimar takes to track down, work for, and eventually kill Max.
DeleteQuestions about Shalimar the Clown:
ReplyDelete1) We talked about this briefly in class, but do you think the character of Max Ophuls bears any resemblance to his creator, Saliman Rushdie? Are they in any way related to each other in character, ideology, personality, etc.?
2) Saliman Rushdie wrote and published this book post-9/11. Does the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir reflect at all upon the current conflict within the Middle East? How or how not?
3) How are Hindus portrayed throughout the novel, and is this an accurate portrayal? Think especially about the character of Boonyi. Is she presented through an Orientalist perspective, or is her portrayal as a Hindu accurate? Why or why not?
4) What is the significance of India as a character within the storyline of the novel? Think beyond the obvious result of infidelity.
5) Does Saliman Rushdie present an Orientalist or accurate representation of the East within the novel? He has become a world-famous novelist--why does you think his writing appeals so much to Americans or Westerners in general? How has the popularity of his writing influenced Western perspectives of the East?
1) I think the resemblance is one that Saliman Rushdie wants to be present more than actually is. Max, after all, is an ambassador while Rushdie is far from one, however, maybe Rushdie does see himself as the voice for a culture that isn't really his own. Max seems to be what Rushdie wishes he could be. I think this comparison makes it rather hard to take Rushdie serious if he wants to represent himself with this over exaggerated character.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete5. I believe that Salman Rushdie eagerly submits to an Orientalist representation of the East within the novel, Shalimar the Clown. Despite his reputation as a well-written author he seemingly looks to show Americans what they expect to see in the Eastern world. Despite his origins in India, Rushdie grew up in Britain and eventually moved to America and he gained a sense of what Americans thought about and expected from the East. His novel embodies the stereotypes regarding the anger and irrationality of terrorists and he looks to have his readers sympathize with the female characters. The town of Kashmir is described as quite traditional as witnessed by the symbolic death of Boonyi when she leaves to have an affair with Max. Rushdie, who published this novel after 9/11, looks to reaffirm American beliefs in the backwards lives that Easterners lives and looks to reveal who is involved in terrorism based off of American fears. This story solely looks to create a rise in emotions in the Western world and is not based off of accuracy but off of an image Rushdie hopes to portray.
Delete1. When speaking about sexual themes, in regards to Shalimar the Clown and Boonyi, the description is often coupled with overly aggressive undertones. Why does Rushdie represent these cultures in this light if he then argues that Islam fights modernization claiming it is overly sexualized? Are there any contradictions in what he has written?
ReplyDelete2. Shailmar abandons his brother, Anee, without second thought to go forth and kill people. What type of stereotype is this building about Islam?
3. Boonyi's exile is described in great length, page 227-229, what does her exile signify? Does it perpetuate stereotypes that the West has of the East's treatment of women?
4. Shalimar want's to face an "invisible enemy in the invisible room in the foreign country far away" (248). What does this say about the West, does it perhaps remove responsibility of the West for the state of the East's and West's relationship?
5. On page 262, the second paragraph, Rushdie goes into great detail about what purpose the iron mullah understands Islam to serve. With consideration of Who Speaks for Islam, are there ideas in this exert that contradict what we learned about Islam?
2
DeleteThis action creates an image of someone who is willing to abandon his family and life to accomplish something he is determined to do. While this example is not based around faith or religion conviction, it stereotypes the western view of what an Islamic extremist is. In particular it brings to mind suicide bombers and those without any regard for anything but accomplishing their organizations goals.
3. On page 227 the reader is forced to sympathize with Boonyi by how she is forced to leave her home because of her family’s hatred. When the narrator says “Go up the mountain and die properly. If that was her father’s message to her then she had no choice but to obey” it implies that there is still a patriarchal sense of dominance over women in Eastern society and that this ignominy and forced expulsion from her home is Rushdie’s portrayal of the status of women in the East through an orientalist lens. Islam is portrayed in a negative light by how Rushdie suggests that religion has created hatred and hostility in Boonyi’s family and community towards her because of her infidelity.
DeleteBlog Response Shalamir pt. 2
ReplyDeleteUp until the second half of the section Boonyi in Shalimir the Clown, the portrayal of Muslim people in the book has been very fair. The town’s folk of Shirmal and Pachigam get along and even help each other in times of hardship, despite one town being predominately Muslim and the other Hindu. These peaceful Muslims seem to be less religious than Muslims in other readings we have done so far, and are not shown in traditional prayer or going to mosques. They seem to be called Muslims without any aspects of their faith being used to personify them.
This is interesting, because the first Muslim of devout faith seen in the novel is portrayed very differently. Bulbul Fahk is a Muslim and a prophetic sort of figure who shows up in Shirmal determined to make the towns folk more religious. While this may seem like an ambiguous characteristic, everyway this devout Muslim is characterized is negative. Even the nickname the children give him, “Balbul bad-odor” goes beyond being rude or humorous. He is described as smelling sulfurous (117); sulfur is a chemical element and it and its smell are often associated with the devil or evil actions. Not only this, but it is traditional for devout Muslims to be clean and to bathe frequently, so the association of Bulbul smelling horribly of sulfur seems to be something that would be factually incorrect. Besides characterizing Bulbul Fahk as smelly and devilish, the mosque he builds in the town ends up harboring some criminals. After Bulbul Fahk preaches a sermon of questionable taste, some young trouble makers go out to Pachigam and rape a girl. These abhorrent criminals seek refuge in the mosque and end up dying in it. Afterwards the mosque acts a mausoleum for the three criminals and acts as a reminder of what took place. Having the only mosque so far in the novel be associated with rape and shame is an interesting perspective on the people of Islamic faith in the novel.
5 questions
ReplyDelete-What is Rushdie’s intention when he personifies Kashmiri women as being very sexual?
-It seems that the conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan is being directly related to conflicts in WW2, and they are put next to each other in the novel (Boonyi and then Max). Is this just the story or is Rushdie saying something about the actions of Muslims?
-What is the significance of Elasticnagar, the Indian army base in Pachigam? What current United States foreign policy is it reminiscent of?
-Food seems very important to the cultures in India. What significance does this have when compared to the western cultures presented?
-Boonyi is restless even after her marriage to Shalimir. This considered, would she have married Shalimir without the incident with her uncle?
1. I think that Rushdie was attempting to play off of a common Orientalist stereotype. Women of the East are either portrayed, generally, as oppressed victims or as mystical, sensuous beings. By introducing Kashmiri women in this way, it is another way for him to try to reinforce to the reader that they are foreign and different than American women, and in following that vein, that Kashmir and America must be very different as well.
DeleteWhat’s In a Name?
ReplyDeleteAs a reader of world texts one must get comfortable with names that one may consider normal within the realm of ones own culture. This shouldn’t become an aspect that puts the reader off, but instead should allow for connection with another culture since names are one of the identifying aspects of people in different cultures. Throughout the novel Rushdie’s choice of names of his characters goes beyond the culturally different names into sarcastic undertones making the other culture seem inferior. The initial way the reader interacts with the characters is skewed by their names and the weight the names hold.
The most obvious representation of this is Shalimar the Clown himself. Though he may be skilled and have many other attributes more than his former occupation, we continue to call him Shalimar the Clown long after he has any association with his tight rope walking days. The depiction of him as a clown is particularly vivid in two respects; first it casts his choice of life, a murderer, in a humorous light and therefore removes all weight from the act, and second clowns are often presented as sinister. Associating a Muslim extremist with such imagery makes the reader even more uncomfortable with him and makes it easier to accept orientalist perceptions about Islam being a religion that condones violent behavior.
India’s name, too, perpetuates many orientalist ideals at the very beginning of the novel. India did not want to be associated with “sub-continental or excessive or vulgar or explosive or crowded or ancient or noisy or mystical or in any way Third World” (6) ideas and this is what she feared her name portrayed. How can the reader dissociate orientalist perspectives of the East if India herself, who’s back ground is part Eastern, cannot stand her own name and associates it with only negative things.
Rushdie plays with other names to almost make fun of the Eastern countries. Shalimar’s family name is Noman and whether or not this is truly an Eastern name or not to a Western reader, which he is writing for, cannot see past the obvious parallel in English being “no man”. He then goes further with this imagery by calling Zoon’s father “Big Man Misri” making him seem like a big shot, one who shouldn’t be taken seriously, and giving a man in Shalimar’s extremist group the name of Maqbool Butt.
Rushdie is writing to a Western audience and as such would have been very aware of the names and what they signify to his Westernized readership.
1. What is it that drives Shalimar to join a terrorist organization? Why would Rushdie choose this as Shalimar's motive?
ReplyDelete2. Why might Rushdie use Kashmir as a major setting in the novel?
3. In Kashmir, Rushdie creates a common bond that is more important to the people than being Hindu or Muslim. What does this blurring of these two cultures do in the novel?
4. Pachigam is hard to picture because there aren't many helpful descriptions about it. As a reader, was it difficult to identify with the setting outside of America?
5. Has Rushdie done anything to de-familiarize America to the American reader, or can we always feel grounded there? When is Kashmir shown in a more desirable light?
1. Shalimar joins a terrorist organization because he swore an oath not to take vengeance on Boonyi and Max while his father and father-in-law still live, and he needs to take out his wrath on something while he waits for them to die. One of Shalimar’s handlers even tells him “For a man like you, a complete fucking crazy asshole, there will always be plenty of work” (275). This creates a very stereotypical image of terrorists. Shalimar’s story suggests that terrorists are all bloodthirsty psychopaths for whom the target is not really important. Conveniently enough, this ideology also removes any blame that could be placed on other groups for provoking acts of violence, and justifies any act of violence taken against people in the Middle East.
DeleteShakespeare's line, "A plague on both your houses" is the second epigraph to the novel. The first question that comes up,for me, is: so are we looking at an alternative Romeo and Juliet? While Boonyi and Shalimar live in a peaceful world as children, we are surprised to see them get together because Boonyi is a Hindu and Shalimar is a Muslim. The division comes because of the Partition issues, and the Hindu/Muslim divide becomes important. Boonyi is lost to Shalimar, which drive him to terrorism and the murdering of Max. Now, it seems, the opposed two houses aren't of the Hindus and Muslims, but suddenly Shalimar and Max: the East and America. After Boonyi and Shalimar first slept together, Shalimar makes a very Shakespearian vow, "Don’t you leave me now, or I’ll never forgive you, and I’ll have my revenge, I’ll kill you and if you have any children by another man I’ll kill the children also.” Rushdie's terrorist character is one driven by something purely emotion and pretty immature. Shalimar is now a representation of the wild East out to kill the "maker of the world," America for reasons that are nearly laughable.
ReplyDeleteFive Questions
ReplyDelete1.) Rushdie presents the character of Boonyi as a gluttonous woman who wants only to climb the social ladder; how does this compare with the portrayal of Boonyi when she is pregnant and yearns for her daughter?
2.) What is the significance in India’s two names—Kashmira Noman and India Ophuls—and how does her own identity change from the beginning of the novel to the end?
3.) Salman Rushdie illustrates Shalimar the Clown as violent from the beginning, before Shalimar would even have reason to be violent, when he says to Boonyi “I’ll kill you…I’ll kill your children too.” What was Rushdie’s intention in doing so?
4.) Do you think that any of the characters—Shalimar, Boonyi, Max, and Peggy—really loved each other at any point in the novel?
5.) Were Shalimar’s and India’s actions on the last page expected or surprising? Do you think that Shalimar would have really killed India?
1. During her affair with Max, Boonyi uses his wealth to live a life of luxury and vice. She becomes obese and addicted to drugs, so much that she loses the beauty and wildness which made her desirable in the first place. She becomes pregnant as a desperate act to remain in the life she leads. By doing this, the mere act of getting pregnant was an act of deception against Max which is something that Edgar Wood recognizes. However, she becomes somewhat of a pitiable character by attempting to keep her daughter. She does in fact become attached and tries to stay with her. Although she loves her daughter, she becomes condemnatory once again by abandoning her to return to Kashmir.
Delete3) When Shalimar tells Boonyi "I'll kill you...I'll kill your children too," I think Rushdie may be attempting to do two things. First, this could be a weak attempt at foreshadowing on Rushdie's part. When I first read this quote, I was startled by the sudden change in Shalimar's disposition. I was even more surprised that there didn't seem to be any real reason behind the threat. Second, this could just be another one of Rushdie's attempts to present the East through an Orientalist perspective within the novel. Shalimar is presented as violent--violent before he even has a reason or motive to act in such a way. This suggests that men in the East (specifically Muslims) are overly violent in nature, that they don't really need a catalyst to be violent.
DeleteShalimar’s Character Development
ReplyDeletePreviously, in the “Boonyi” section of Shalimar the Clown¬¬, the intensity of Shalimar’s infatuation for Boonyi demonstrated elements of romanticism and made him more sympathetic to the reader. For example, before Boonyi and Shalimar have their love affair the narrator describes how Shalimar “…climbed the wooded hill to Khelmarg and listened to the river flow” and how wanted the world to “remain frozen just as it was in this moment, when he was filled with hope and longing, when he was young and in love” (58). Rushdie weaves together imagery of nature with Shalimar’s passion when he says, “Standing before him, oiled of skin and with wildflowers scenting the carefully braided hair… was the girl he loved” (60). However, in the section called “Shalimar the Clown”, the reader sees Shalimar transition from a very lustful and passionate character, to a stoic hatred-filled antagonist.
The reader is struck with the horror of Shalimar’s new characterization on page 229, when the narrator says “After [Shalimar] learned of her infidelity with the American, Shalimar the clown sharpened his favorite knife and headed south with murder on his mind” (229). Rushdie first hinted at this hidden rage after the love affair scene in “Boonyi” when he says “Don’t you leave me now, or I’ll never forgive you… I’ll kill you and if you have any children by another man I’ll kill the children also” (61). However, the reader is not fully exposed to this hidden ferocity until much later when he is transitioning from a clown into a trained killer.
While still performing as a clown, his transition is made evident by how the narrator describes how he was “still as dynamically physical a comedian as ever, but there was a new ferocity in him that could easily frighten people instead of making them laugh” (231). Rushdie’s third-person narration exhibits Shalimar’s sentiment throughout parts of this section of the novel, especially when he says that the bond between relatives and neighbors in their community had been “broken forever when Boonyi ran away to Delhi to become the American ambassador’s whore” (236). The reader is fully submerged in Shalimar’s absolute hatred for Boonyi when we learn that “Shalimar the clown had stopped loving Boonyi the instant he learned of her infidelity” and that his love for her “stopped dead like an automaton, and the immense crater left behind by the destruction of that love had at once been filled by a sea of bile-yellow hatred” (236).
His obsession with destroying Boonyi, her lover, and daughter, becomes his entire life pursuit. When speaking to his brother and those involved in the liberation front, he makes this clear when he states “For now and until freedom comes I’ll kill anyone you want me to… but yes one of these days I want the American ambassador at my mercy” (252). To the characters surrounding his existence, it is clear that Boonyi is on the forefront of his mind, and his outward demeanor has changed drastically. Gonwait Sharga makes this outward transition evident when she says “If that Boonyi was dead instead of just in Delhi with her American… then perhaps poor Shalimar could start up his life again” and that “He’ll never forget that woman while she’s alive” (233). The stark contrast between Shalimar of the first half of the novel and Shalimar of the second half makes obvious Rushdie’s intent to destroy all sympathy the reader might have with this man from Kashmir. His portrayal as an assassin involved in an extremist organization creates a very negative impression of the East.
5 Questions on Shalimar the Clown
ReplyDelete1. What is the significance of the name change from Kashmira to India, especially when it comes to India's insecurity about her name?
2. Does the reader meant to sympathize with Boonyi in the beginning of the Shalimar section when she says “There is no Kashmira, there is only Kashmir”?
3. How does the theme of death play out in Boonyi’s life as soon as her infidelity is discovered
4. Why does honor play such a significant role in Shalimar’s plan for murder?
5. What is the significance of snakes when Shalimar is transitioning into an assassin, and how does that relate to the Boonyi section?
4. The role of honor in Shalimar’s plan seems to be Rushdie’s way of attacking the actions of the East. A terrorist who kills just for the sake of killing is a psycho and in no way redeemable. However, someone who fights for honor is someone who is respected, as seen in the code of chivalry and in the mottos of many Western militaries. However, Kashmira tells Shalimar “you murdered two human beings because… you valued your honor more highly than you valued their lives. You bathed your honor in their blood…” (379). The West has the capacity to respect an honorable enemy. However, Rushdie criticizes the idea of fighting for honor, thus erasing any respect the audience might have for the East, and placing them in the “psycho-killer” category. Rushdie seems to be motivated by the desire to alienate and dehumanize the East.
Delete4. Honoe plays such a significant role in Shalimar's plan for murder because Rushdie is trying to show that men from the middle east especially Muslim men take everything in their life to heart. That every single wrong that is done against them must be punished by some way. Shalimar wants to avenge the pain that Max has caused him and murder is played out to be the only fair and "honorable" thing to do.
Delete2. I believe that the reader is meant to sympathize with Boonyi at this moment. At least I felt sympathetic, because she was so far in her depression that she created an illusion that she would be welcomed back in Kashmir. In her grief, she killed her daughter which is the same thing that her friends and family did. Pretending that they were dead and no longer existed was easier for her to deal with. However, because of her heinous actions there was no conceivable way for Kashmir to forgive her. Since she pretends her daughter no longer exists for a cause that is hopeless, I feel sorry for her.
Delete1. Changing names is a theme throughout the novel. Bhoomi chooses to be known as Boonyi; Noman chooses to be known as Shalimar; Peggy is known as Ratty; and India chooses to be called Kashmira. What is the significance of choosing a name for yourself, and of asserting a new identity? Do the aforementioned characters do this in different ways, or is there a common thread?
ReplyDelete2. Is the relationship between Max Olphus an allegory for relations between the West and the East? If so, why is the character of Max portrayed more sympathetically than Boonyi?
3. At the end of the novel, Shalimar tells India, "Your mother is a whore and your father deserves to die." India notes that the assassin used the wrong tense- referring to the past as the present. What is the significance of this line? Is living in the past the consequence of Shalimar's hatred? Or is it an Orientalist critique of the East, which Shalimar can be seen to represent?
4. What is Rushdie's attitude towards terrorism, or towards Shalimar who can represent terrorists? If Boonyi represents the East, what are the implications of Shalimar murdering Boonyi?
5. The deciding revelation at Shalimar's trial is the he killed Boonyi. Why is this death the metaphorical nail in Shalimar's coffin, and not the ambassador's?
5. Shalimar’s murder of Max may not be justifiable but his actions may not be perceived to be as brutal if Max broke Shalimar’s heart and stole away his love. Killing for love is a popular theme in idioms and stories, such as the expression “all’s fair in love and war,” as well as the countless stories about noble heroes who kill to protect the honor of their women. However, if Shalimar brutally murdered the woman he loved, than his actions could not have been motivated by a proverbial broken heart, that most sympathizing of maladies, but by sheer psychopathy and bloodlust. Therefore, it was the murder of Boonyi that was the deciding factor in Shalimar’s trial.
Delete1. Asserting a new identity for yourself can be important because in a way you are making a new life for yourself, it does not matter what you did in that past with an old name because the new people you meet will not know that old name but only your new. As for the characters that change their names in this novel such as Booyni I believe that she might have done that to try to forget what happened between her and Max and also her and Shalimar.
Delete4. I think the way you've posed this question is really thought-provoking. I think it's obvious Rushdie looks down upon terrorism, often portraying Shalimar as foolish or insignificant (just look at his title; 'Shalimar the Clown'). However, if Boonyi represents the east then the implication changes. Shalimar is not just a terrorist to America or the West, but also destroying the peaceful ideals of the East. The problem lies in the fact that the rest of this novel does not support that theory.
Delete3.) This novel assumes a lot about the influence of the Koran on the political influences of its adherents. I have never read the Koran but maybe Rushdie is taking a rhetorical convention from the book and tying it to something awful.
DeleteIt could also be Shalimar's self realization that the story of his life is modeled after local mythologies from his childhood (ie: the Ramayana).
4.) Rushdie believes terrorism is inherent in Islamic ideology. He thinks that Boonyi would have been better off if she had married anyone but a muslim.
Shalimar The Clown seems to contain strong elements of Orientalist stereotyping. India's change of name to Kashmir would seem to indicate some cathartic return to her roots, and yet the origin of her birth is a circumstance of adultery, prostitution and drug abuse. Boonyi, India's mother, is the hyper-sexualized stereotype of the "exotic" woman, until her self-indulgence and immorality destroy her.
ReplyDeleteThe return to Kashmir is for Rushdie an opportunity to introduce stereotypical Orientalist mysticism. Shalimar's mother performs snake curses; Boonyi and Shalimar can communicate through thought.
Even the two paralleled rebellions in the story favor the West. The rebellion in Kashmir is basically terrorist action, while the French Resistance to which Max Olphus belonged is characterized as a noble fight for freedom.
1. How does the way in which Boonyi’s family handles her pregnancy by casting her as “dead”, follow the orientalist stereotype?
ReplyDelete2. Do you feel that Shalimar the Clown’s decision to act in violence towards Max Olphus is justified? How does Rushdie’s vivid descriptions of him “sharpening his favorite knife” influence the character’s actions?
3. How does the introduction to television influence Shalimar the Clown, as well as the citizens of Kashmir?
4. How are spiritual myths such as “demons” used to justify the violent actions and attitudes of the characters? Do you feel that this presents the novel as an orientalist text, as well as a magical realist novel?
5. What does India’s decision to accept the name “Kashmira” signify in terms of the use of alternative names throughout the novel, as well as for her character?
1. The way in which Boonyi's family handles her pregnancy by casting her as "dead" follows the orientalist stereotype because it is comparing the idea that if a woman from a poor middle eastern country becomes pregnant that she is a slut and an outcast in the eyes of everyone, regarding the time frame that it took place. Her families judgements also shows that the women from Kashmir are exotic and untrustworth.
Delete2. I do no feel that Shalimar the Clown's decision to act in violence towards Max Olphus is justified.Regardless of anyone's sex, race, ethnicity, or religion, no person in their right mind would ever kill another human being just because they 'took' their significant other away. Boonyi left by choice first of all and by trying to make Shalimar sound crazy by killing the man who 'took' his fiancee away puts a stereotype on the entire community of Muslim men.
2) I don't think Shalimar's actions are in any way justifiable. However, because Shalimar is given a backstory, and we are led to understand the reasons behind Shalimar's decision to murder Max, I do think Rushdie humanizes Shalimar a bit. Murder is never justifiable, but understanding why Shalimar kills Max--knowing about Max's fair with Boonyi--I am able to sympathize with Shalimar a bit. Without that backstory, Shalimar would just be another killer or terrorist. Shalimar's identity would take on that of a murderer and nothing more. However, because Shalimar's character is more fleshed out, I am able to understand the reasonings behind his decision to kill Max, even if I am not able to justify it.
Delete2. Shalimar the Clown's actions, because of how Rushdie has portrayed him, are in no way justified. Had Rushdie chosen to subvert reader expectations, he could have made Max Ophuls a more culpable character, and simultaneously, could have made Shalimar a more innocent and understandable character. Instead, Shalimar is portrayed as an extremist villain, almost entirely without depth.
Delete5. India's decision to accept that name is a realization of her identity. Before, as with the conflict between India and Pakistan, India herself was torn - she did not know her mother, and, thus, she did not know herself. By accepting the name Kashmira, she establishes who she is, what she defines herself as, and establishes stability, suggesting the same for the India-Pakistan divide.
Five Questions
ReplyDelete1. After finishing this book what do you think the purpose of the title is? Why did Salman Rushdie decide to call this novel Shalimar the Clown
2.What is the importance of the relationship that we see between Booyni and Max?
3. Could Salman Rushdie be writing about some of his inscurities when he is writing about India not liking her name, could he much like this character have identity issues of his own? Why or Why Not?
4.What are some instances throughout the book which could act as reasons why people tend to look down and not like this book very much?
5. What is the importance of the last chapter in this novel? What does it do for us as readers?
3.) I firmly believe that Salman Rushdie is writing about his insecurities through India. Previous to studying him, I would have assumed that his name was not "western" in origin, thus placing an immediate stereotype on him and his subject material in his books (whether this is justified or not, it is still something I truly would have done). After reading the NYTimes article I think it's obvious he has insecurities and the article seems to be some way of compensation for that fact. It says "I'm not different, I'm not eastern, I'm one of you, an American, and I hate them just as much as you do." For the time it seems to even be a highly radical approach, since he implied that everyone had been dancing around what the "real issue" was.
Delete1. By focusing on the antagonist, or most "bad," of the novel, one is essentially placing that character under the magnifying glass. All characters in the novel do things that aren't necessarily condoned by the majority of people but it is only Shalimar who is vilified throughout the book. By drawing attention to this, it perpetuates the Orientalist perspective so saturated within the Western civilization that the novels serves as nothing more than a propagation of Orientalist ideology.
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ReplyDelete1.) Would you consider Shalimar a terrorist or a murderer? What are the differences between these two ideas? What is the significance of labeling someone a terrorist v. labeling them a murderer? Furthermore, what is the difference between a soldier and a terrorist?
ReplyDelete2.) What type of character is Peggy? How does she treat various other people throughout the novel? Is she justified in her approach?
3.) Analyze the sentence, "But the whole village also knew that somebody would have to do some talking sooner or later, because Boonyi didn't know she was dead" (221). What does this say about the villagers? In what sort of light does it portray Boonyi?
4.) What are the implications of Shalimar’s suggestion on 231 to have the soldiers in the performance come dressed as American soldiers?
5.) What do you make of the long italicized passages interspersed throughout the novel? What stylistic purpose do they serve? Do you feel they benefit the novel or create more confusion?
1. There is no way Shalimar can be considered anything except a murderer. Inflicting terror were not the main function of his murders and does not strive to cause widespread panic. Shalimar's purpose was murder to fulfill his own insane desires. By labeling him a terrorist, we instantly place him on a more severe scale of criminal. While those who commit murders aren't liked by the law, "terrorist" implies a negative connotation that wishes to punish entire populations of people in the name of fear. Between soldiers and terrorists, soldiers have a very prejudiced aura of "honor" (in the sense that soldiers of one's country are honorable) and are seeking to protect, terrorists are looking to harm.
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