...Haroun and the Sea of Stories SALMAN RUSHDIE Novel, 1990. Summary. In this story we encounter storytelling as a means of saving your identity, your relationship with your family, and perhaps even your life—which means that, in a sense, you are saving a world. The British-Indian author Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) had to go underground after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses in 1988. The book was considered blasphemous to Islam by the fundamentalist government of Iran, which issued a death warrant against him. He says that he reached a point where he was so distressed he wasn’t able to think of any stories to tell. But he worked himself out of his depression, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a book for children and other people who have a natural love for stories, is the result. This modern fairy tale has many surprising elements, but here we will focus just on the core issue: why stories have value. Haroun’s father Rashid is a professional storyteller and a very popular one. He usually tells cheerful stories, even though they live in a very sad city. Haroun is beginning to ask questions about his father’s storytelling: Where do the stories come from? From the great Story Sea, says Rashid, and you have to be a subscriber to the water, which comes from a tap installed by one of the Water-Genies. But Haroun doesn’t believe him. And now a sad thing happens in their lives: Haroun’s mother Soraya with the beautiful voice leaves her husband and child for another tenant...
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...Valazia Sophorlrath IB English Mr. Tetenbaum October 28, 2015 Ocean of Feelings Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie is a book about a boy whose mother had left the family for his neighbor, Mr. Sengupta, who did not like stories at all. Due to that tragedy, his father, Rashid, is not able to tell stories. Haroun goes on an adventure to bring back the joy of stories to his father. What do you think Rushdie's saying about the value of stories and how they make people feel? By looking at the roles stories play in Haroun’s society, we can see how important stories are to his father and how his situation with his family affects his ability to tell stories; this is important because it shows that in order for someone to persevere, they...
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...January 13, 2014 In Salman Rushdie's excellent book Haroun and the Sea of Stories, there's a striking scene near the beginning where Haroun, the child of a famous storyteller, confronts his father by repeating a line that was previously parroted by a narrow-minded neighbour: What's the use of stories that aren't even true? Haroun spends much of the story (which I gather might be imagined rather than true) making up for this mistake, through fantastic adventures in a universe where two factions are at war: those who tell stories, and those who want all stories to end and silence to reign. For this is where fiction is so much better: at the telling not of factual truths that anyone can observe, but of greater Truths about life, about what it means, what it's about, how to live it, how to enjoy it and be happy and find a purpose. To observe these Truths, one needs very good eyes indeed, and telling them directly is almost impossible. Instead, a great author must tell a story that illustrates the Truth that they experienced and observed. If they do it extremely well, it becomes a kind of distilled life experience that the reader assimilates and which changes their understanding of life in subtle and important ways. The plot concerns a boy who all but curses his father in a moment of despair by saying, cynically, ''What's the use of stories that aren't even true?'' As a consequence, the father becomes heartbroken, and loses his storytelling mojo. Haroun then embarks on a fantastic...
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...particular aspect dominates or fades off at some space-time coordinate. The pattern of human activity and the symbolic structures give such activities significance and importance. Rushdie, like other postcolonial writers not only reflects upon the political aspects of history but also deconstructs the interrelationships between history and individual to delve into the moral and psychological tensions of the native homeland. His novels are the fine example where ethics of the nation are well represented in the aesthetics of his works. Rushdie himself has come to represent pop culture and has always been a powerful figure in re-presenting culture in his writings and this paper is an attempt to decipher a pattern in this representation. Rushdie’s self-avowed purpose in writing the novels is to highlight ‘the connection between public affairs and private lives.’...
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...Haroun and the Sea of Stories SALMAN RUSHDIE Novel, 1990. Summary. In this story we encounter storytelling as a means of saving your identity, your relationship with your family, and perhaps even your life—which means that, in a sense, you are saving a world. The British-Indian author Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) had to go underground after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses in 1988. The book was considered blasphemous to Islam by the fundamentalist government of Iran, which issued a death warrant against him. He says that he reached a point where he was so distressed he wasn’t able to think of any stories to tell. But he worked himself out of his depression, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a book for children and other people who have a natural love for stories, is the result. This modern fairy tale has many surprising elements, but here we will focus just on the core issue: why stories have value. Haroun’s father Rashid is a professional storyteller and a very popular one. He usually tells cheerful stories, even though they live in a very sad city. Haroun is beginning to ask questions about his father’s storytelling: Where do the stories come from? From the great Story Sea, says Rashid, and you have to be a subscriber to the water, which comes from a tap installed by one of the Water-Genies. But Haroun doesn’t believe him. And now a sad thing happens in their lives: Haroun’s mother Soraya with the beautiful voice leaves her husband and child for another tenant...
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