The story is set in India, throughout the 1900s. As the author is telling several stories at once, the place jumps around, from big cities to rural villages. He also does an excellent job describing the everyday details things, such as the way the old men play "Hit-the-Spittoon" every day. I recently saw an exhibit at the MIA about India's history, and I like being able to connect the images described in the story with the photographs from the museum.
So far, there are two main places that the story has been. The first is a small village, Kashmiri, I think, and that is where Aadam Aziz grew up and met his wife. It's a picturesque little town, nestled in a valley and surrounded by beautiful mountains. It probably represents the simplicity in Aziz's life when he lived there. He later moved to a large city, loud, crowded, and not very stable. India is at this time in the midst of a major uprising against the British, and Aziz's life is similarly unstable. He and his wife are not getting along well and his daughters are starting to get involved with men.
I think it's interesting how the setting relates to Aziz's life because there is also some sort of connection between Saleem's life and India's history.
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I've also enjoyed the descriptions of little details regarding the setting. I found the description of Naseem's house in Kashmir especially interesting. Saleem says his grandfather could tell the father was a blind widower because the house was dim, cluttered, and full of cobwebs. I probably would not have made that inference on my own.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting this connection between the setting and the character. I wonder if there will be more characters that support this idea.
ReplyDeleteI think the small details about the setting really further our understanding of the culture and I like it a lot too. You can tell by all the little details that he puts into his writing about the setting, that Saleem really thinks that the setting needs to be developed and is very vital to his family's story. I also really like how everybody who has posted so far has really connected the setting to the character development and I agree in that the characters really wouldn't be the same if the setting was changed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Greer that Saleem seems to value details and setting description. That's why it takes him so long to tell his story. As a result, I have a clear mental picture of most of the locations in the book.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Saleem (Salman) love to delve into details about everything, and give the reader a great mental picture of what is going on. I like it though, because it really helps me what's going on in the novel and helps me sympathize and relate to the characters.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the author does a very nice job with setting switches. This is an area which could easily become confusing (taking it from rural to city while incorporating many characters), but for me, the author keeps everything on track. I sort of realized how as the setting changes, so do relationships and people (such as Aadam and Naseem). It's funny to observe how characters merge into their new settings.
ReplyDeleteThe author's switches between settings to me show the building tension that i believe will become Saleem.
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