A Postcolonial Study Of Cultural Identity In Midnight’s Children By Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is one of the most outstanding writers in the twentieth century.His works are paid much attention to when we study postcolonial writers and works,especially his representative novel Midnight’s Children.In this book, the author tells the story of the protagonist and his family members,as well as the history of the nation, presenting an overall view of the Indian historyafter Independence. The previous analyses of this novel usually focus on the topics,such as Magical Realism, New Historism, the theme or the writing techniques. Butthis thesis tries to analyze it from the postcolonial point of view that is not frequentlystudied. Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial theories are mainly used to analyze Midnight’sChildren, especially “the Third Space”. According to Homi Bhabha, different culturescan exist in this special space in a relatively balanced state instead of conflicting witheach other fiercely. As a result, it helps to solve the basic problem about identitycrisis.In order to have overall background information, first of all, this thesis gives abrief introduction to Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, and cultural identity inpostcolonial studies. The research status is also briefly introduced in this part. Inaddition, different levels of the loss of cultural identity are introduced separately: theloss of individual cultural identity and the loss of national cultural identity. As for theloss of individual cultural identity, it takes Aadam Aziz and Brass Monkey asexamples. The loss of national identity is analyzed in two aspects: Spiritual Invasionand Political Struggle. In accordance with this part, the construction of individual cultural identity and national cultural identity are presented in the next part. In “theThird Space” that Homi Bhabha explores in his postcolonial study, individual culturalidentity is constructed through the attempts of different generations in Midnight’sChildren. In the construction of national cultural identity, the voice of the third worldis heard and the history is also known by the using of Indian-English and the narrationof their own history. The cultural identity that is lost in the novel is constructed in theend.By analyzing Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children from cultural identity pointof view, this thesis put the postcolonial theory about cultural identity into a textualpractice, making the analysis of postcolonial novel more practical. It does not onlyhave significant meanings for text analysis, but also conveys the significance forexploring the possibility to solve identity crisis under the postcolonial background.