From Men to Dogs and Back Again: the Plight of the Perfect Soldiers in Midnight’s Children
Presentation Type
Presentation
Release Option
Event
Description
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children explores many facets of warfare across different time periods in South Asia, and the most striking of these instances occurs when main protagonist Saleem Sinai takes on the aspect of the buddha and fights in the Bangladesh Liberation War alongside three young Pakistani soldiers. The loyal dogs they train with in the days before battle represent the ideal that the young Pakistanis are being pushed towards, and that the buddha has already attained. This paper examines the dehumanizing impact of soldierhood on humans, provides a potential explanation for how ordinary people can be pushed to commit terrible atrocities in the name of god and country, and questions how humanity is recovered after the fog of violence has lifted. Research sources concerning the weakness of the individual facing the will of a community help inform the voyage back from that extreme state the buddha and his unit reached during the peak of their cruelties and call into focus the lasting impact that reaching such a state has left on the soldiers, as seen by their horrific encounters with ghosts and other haunting manifestations of their guilt in the jungle.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Hans-Georg Erney
Department of Primary Presenter's Major
Department of Literature
Location
Concurrent Sessions (Room 231)
Symposium Year
2022
From Men to Dogs and Back Again: the Plight of the Perfect Soldiers in Midnight’s Children
Concurrent Sessions (Room 231)
