| Salman Rushdie makes widespread use of bestial imagery in writings about the postcolonial subcontinent. This thesis examines Rushdie's use of zoological language and the metamorphosis of human characters into animals in Midnight's Children (1981), Shame (1983), The Satanic Verses (1988), and Shalimar the Clown (2005). The great majority of metamorphic experiences in Rushdie's fiction are not positive. With very few exceptions, sustained animal metaphors attached to particular characters, or tales of the transfiguration of human characters into animals, use bestial imagery in a pejorative sense, to represent the destructive consequences of intolerance, dislocation, violence and injustice, or as a vehicle for ridiculing/condemning those who treat others unjustly. |
