''The Terrible Power of Metaphor''. The Performativity of Language in Salman Rushdie

The free society of MCC fails to achieve anything; worse, its members undergo persecution because they communicate with each other. Nehru’s prophecy ends in the worst case (“passive-literal”) for Saleem and his attempt to create a better society does not succeed. Ramram Shet’s premonitions are not understood by Amina, while Tai Bibi’s revelation probably drove to the
abandonment of Saleem to the Pakistani Army by Jamila Singer. Padma is not the perfect audience and, finally, Mary Pereira’s little song is revealed to be false. And is not Bombay parted after the language riots? One could be tempted
to see communication as a failure, and so to look at Rushdie’s novel as a pessimistic invocation against communication, in contrast with his essays. Yet perhaps another perspective is possible: that Saleem, ― at that moment nameless ― after having once narrated his story to Aooba, Shaheed and Farooq, writes it to prevent his son, Aadam, from falling into the trap of language: the trap of being defined by others before than by himself (is it not the Widow who defines the midnight’s children as a problem, a potential and dangerous new deity?). The trap of being too influenced by words. The trap of an indispensable but dangerous tool. It is, by the way, a lesson that the second generation of midnight’s children seems to have already grasped: Aadam refuses to use language, remaining silent and stubborn, perfectly aware, time after time, of what he wants.
The same perspective is valid for the narration ― as communication ― as well: Saleem is an unreliable narrator and presents his point of view with many mistakes. According to Keith Wilson, “the willingness to confront, shape and communicate the inevitable compromises of illusory fictional realism […] is what makes Midnight’s Children such a remarkable, important and heartening novel”.