Term Paper On Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Reading a Sea of Stories (Pgs. 15, 19-24, 47-50, 119, 155-156, 185)

Many of the characters in Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories challenge the worth of creativity. Mr Sengupta and Khattam-Shud pose the question: “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?”—the implication being that these stories are, in fact, useless (Rushdie 20, 155). Haroun’s mother, Soraya, criticizes her husband Rashid for his active imagination and obsession with storytelling. Abandoning Rashid and Haroun for the more serious Mr Sengupta, she leaves Rashid a parting note:

You are only interested in pleasure, but a proper man would know that life is a serious business. Your brain is full of make-believe, so there is no room for facts. Mr Sengupta has no imagination at all. This is okay by me (23).

Soraya, Mr Sengupta, and Khattam-Shud uphold logic and pragmatism at the expense of creativity. As an appreciator of literature, their rejection of storytelling and imagination offends me. I believe that creativity is often a source of liberation and happiness. For a time, this seems to be the case for Khalifa family. Mr Sengupta, Rashid, Soraya, and Haroun live in “a sad city, the saddest cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name” (15). Despite the melancholy pervading the city, Rashid was a happy man before Soraya left him and “cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis” (15). Before Soraya adopted Mr Sengupta’s somber views, she was happy with Rashid as well:

To his wife, Soraya, Rashid was for many years as loving a husband as anyone could wish for, and during those years Haroun grew up in a home in which, instead of misery and frowns, he had his father’s ready laughter and his mother’s sweet voice raised in song. (15)

While everyone around them was sad, Rashid stories and Soraya’s singing enabled the Khalifa family to be happy. However, when Soraya no longer sees the worth of creativity and art, she stops singing and leaves Haroun and Rashid, who consequently loses his talent for storytelling. In the absence of creativity, the Khalifa family becomes sad like everyone else.

This part of the story reminds me of my parents. My father loves music. He is a self-taught guitarist and more recently taught himself to play the congas. His unfulfilled dream is to be a professional musician. When he was young, he wanted to play the guitar in a “du-op” band. Not long after he and my mother were married, he shared his ambition with her. Her response reminds me of Soraya’s note to Rashid. She said that playing music was fine for a hobby, but she had not realized he wanted to that for a career—the implication being that he should not pursue such an impractical dream, because life is, after all, “a serious business,” as Soraya wrote. My mother devalued the creative lifestyle by suggesting that it is not a worthy lifestyle at all; it is only fit for a hobby, a pastime, but nothing to which anyone should devote most of their time and energy—nothing to which anyone should devote their whole heart. But I just cannot understand how you can put your whole heart into something you do not love, into a career you pursue merely because it is pragmatic.

I think that, in general, our society emphasizes pragmatism, so much so, that we often suffocate spontaneity and creativity. We tend to perceive the pursuit of careers in artistry as impractical, and those people that want to pursue them as somewhat naïve, perhaps even immature. It seems like we define people by the work that they do. One of the first questions people often ask upon meeting someone knew is, “What do you do?” A person’s job becomes his or her master status—nothing else is quite as important—so that when someone plans on doing something ‘impractical,’ i.e. being a musician or a storyteller, we may have sarcastic thoughts such as, “Good luck with that,” as though it is an unrealistic dream, and would be better off left alone.

Perhaps I am projecting my own fear of rejection, because I enjoy writing stories and poetry. I feel as though Mr Sengupta and Khattam-Shud’s question, “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true,” reflects our society’s dominant attitude toward creativity—that it is of little or no value (Rushdie 20, 155). Because of this attitude, I believe that I cannot feasibly support myself by writing stories and poetry. If I want to write, I have to pursue it on my own time, but must find some other form of work that is more pragmatic. All too often, people ask me what I want to do when I graduate. What I really want to do is write and travel, but I have not yet decided what ‘practical’ career path I will pursue. I feel self-conscious about this, as though it somehow reflects negatively on my character—that being “interested in pleasure” and having a “brain full of make-believe” is in fact a negative thing (Rushdie, 23). But in all honesty, I just cannot see the point in living life without pursuing happiness—of living life in “the saddest of cities” and never doing anything to make it better. I do not see the “use” of wallowing in perpetual misery, and to me, life without literature, life without art, is a miserable existence.

Throughout Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Rushdie seems to reject logical thinking, or, (perhaps more accurately) narrow thinking that excludes the fantastical. This seems particularly evident in the Tale of the Moody Land. Moody Land was “a magical country that changed constantly, according to the moods of its inhabitants” (Rushdie 49). As Haroun, his father, and others are crossing Dull Lake, Haroun realizes that they are in fact in Moody Land. Everyone rejects this idea, including Rashid, who says that they’re “somewhere real” whereas Moody Land was “only a story” (48). In the film Waking Life, one of the characters says, “The worst mistake you can make is to think you’re alive, when really you’re asleep in life’s waiting room.” Rashid seems to make this mistake, by claiming that they are “somewhere real.” In claiming that we are alive or in reality, we often inhibit ourselves and become slaves to our situation. Because he believes he is “somewhere real,” Rashid believes that the awful weather on Dull Lake is beyond his control. Ironically, he not only has the ability to control the weather, but is actually creating and exacerbating those horrible weather conditions:

as Rashid sank into silent wretchedness the greeny-yellow mist with the toilet stink came rushing towards them across the Lake; and the water was angrier than ever…The mist enfolded the swan-boat once again…and the more shrieks and yelps there were, the rougher the waters became, and the hotter and more violent the wind. (Rushdie 49)

Haroun is the only one who realizes that Moody Land in not merely a tale, and that they all have power they all have over the situation. He realizes “the trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Cause if you can do that, you can do anything” (Waking Life). Haroun instructs his father to “Think of the happiest times you can remember,” and the weather calms down (Rushdie 50).

In thinking that we are “alive” or even “awake,” it seems as though we assume the things that happen to us are beyond our control and in doing so, may put up with those things that make us miserable. Another man in Waking Life says it seems like “everyone’s sleepwalking through their waking state or wakewalking through their dreams. Either way they’re not going to get much out of it.” When we assume that life is beyond our control, we are sleepwalking in the sense that we passively accept everything that happens. When we dream, we dictate what happens, yet, we are often unaware of the fact that we are dreaming, and consequently are unaware that we are controlling our experiences—like Rashid and the people in the swan-boat who did not realize they were controlling the weather. In Waking Life, the second character mentioned says we need to become lucid dreamers—we need to ask ourselves if we are in a dream, because if we are, we realize we can do anything. Yet, most people never ask themselves this question. But why should this power only be reserved for dreams? Rashid assumed Moody Land was only a story, but it was real, and their power to dictate their experience was real. How can we be sure we are not dreaming now when dreams themselves often appear real? How can we be so sure that the infinite possibilities that exist in our dreams do not also exist in waking life? When we live without the confinements of ordinary waking life logic, we liberate ourselves and are more like to find happiness, because we believe we can do or obtain those things that will make us happy.

In Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie contends that when we reject imagination, ironically, we become captives of our own imagination. We develop the misconception that our opinions, which are constructions of our imagination, whether they uphold pragmatism, logic or creativity, are correct. He writes,

We first construct pictures of the world and then we step inside the frames. We come to equate the picture with the world, so that, in certain circumstances, we will even go to war because we find someone else’s picture less pleasing than our own. It is very tempting to say that this behaviour conforms very well to the Hindu idea of maya, the veil of illusion that hangs before our limited human eyes and prevents us from seeing things as they truly are—so that we mistake the veil, maya, for reality. Dreaming is our gift; it may also be our tragic flaw. (Imaginary Homelands 377)

Khattam-Shud believes that “the world is for Controlling…worlds…are all there to be Ruled” (Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 161). Mr Sengupta believes that “Life is not a storybook or jokeshop,” and Soraya, for a time, believes that “life is a serious business” (23). In each of their worldviews, there is no room for storytelling, creativity, or art—they have narrow visions of reality. When we see the world in one particular way, we are not “seeing things as they truly are” (Imaginary Homelands 377). We begin believing that our conceptions of the world are right and that everyone else’s conceptions are either wrong or inferior to our own. Khattam-Shud, for instance, believes so strongly that the all worlds are meant to be controlled that he strives to annihilate stories because they are beyond the realm of control. His “picture of the world” as a place that is story free brings about war between the lands of Gup and Chup—he finds the Gup’s picture of the world as a place omnipresent with stories less pleasing than his own. Khattam-Shud’s desire to control all worlds and obliterate stories, though dark, is a dream as well. This is why Rushdie say’s that dreaming is both our gift and tragic flaw—dreams can bring us a great deal of happiness, and can potentially improve the quality of our lives, but they can also be harmful. We should not try to impose our own dreams on others. If other people accept our dreams and want to share them with us that’s wonderful—but if they do not, we should not try to make them conform to our image of reality.

Rushdie also discusses the importance of open communication and even argument in Imaginary Homelands: “Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the unsayable…understanding remains possible, and can be achieved without the suppression of the principle of free speech” (395). In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Rashid is bewildered by the Guppees, who “were busily arguing over every little detail,” and he wondered, “How is it possible to fight a battle with all this chatter and natter?” (Rushdie 184). Yet the Guppees’ arguments are the reason for their victory: “All those arguments and debates, all that openness, had created powerful bonds of fellowship between them. The Chuwalas, on the other hand, turned out to be a disunited rabble…their vows of silence and their habits of secrecy had made them suspicious and distrustful of one another” (185). When we refuse to communicate, like the Chuwalas, we may become distrustful of one another. We may also become “stuck” in our own “picture of the world” and fail to realize that it is only a picture, and not the world as it really is (Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 377). In order to remove the veil that “prevents us from seeing things as they truly are,” we must openly communicate with one another. In this way, we can come to understand one another’s points of view.

Rushdie fervently advocates Freedom of Speech, open mindedness, and communication, in part because he knows that these things have often been and often are rejected. Many people have been punished for their independence of thought. In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Haroun observes:

Such was the freedom evidently allowed to the Pages and other citizens of Gup, that the old General seemed perfectly happy to listen to these tirades of insults and insubordination without batting an eyelid…

‘What an army!’ Haroun mused. ‘If any soldiers behaved like this on Earth, they’d be court-martialled quick as thinking.’

‘But but but what is the point of giving persons Freedom of Speech,’ declaimed Butt the Hoopoe, ‘if you then say they must not utilize the same? And is not the Power of Speech the greatest Power of all? Then surely it must be exercised to the full?” (Rushdie 119)

Freedom of Speech seems such a simple idea, something that every person should have, as Butt the Hoopoe indicates. Yet, Haroun’s surprise that the Guppees are not court-martialled for their “tirades of insults and insubordinations” reflects the reality that people are often denied such freedom, are, in fact, “court-martialled” for expressing personal opinions. This reminds me of the first Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay. Many of the colonists were “court-martialled” in a sense, for their “insults and insubordination” to Puritanical beliefs. The Puritans had a very clear vision of how life should be lived: “Winthrop and his associates intended to build a new Israel in the forests of Massachusetts, a Bible state of such compelling virtue that it would reform all Christianity by example” (Erikson xiv). They had stepped inside the frame of the picture they had constructed of the world, and in this picture, there was no room for diverging

opinions (Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 377). During the Antinomian Controversy in 1637, when many of the colonists challenged the authority of ministers to “act as the final moral authority in civil as well as spiritual matters,” the clergy called a religious synod to define these colonists’ offenses against Puritanism:

before the synod ended, the clergy had engaged in a true orgy of heresy-hunting: they identified no less than eighty-two ‘unsafe opinions’…and capped off that performance by adding nine ‘unwholesome expressions’ to the list. The convention lasted twenty-four days, during which time the roster of potential heresies was drawn to epic length. (Erikson 72, 90-91)

Anne Hutchinson was one of the colonists singled out for such “unsafe opinions.” “Mrs. Hutchinson met with a delegation of ministers and announced that none of them were competent to preach the gospel…that the incumbent ministers of the Bay were not fit to occupy their pulpits…this opinion was quite enough to set the whole machinery of the state against her” (Erikson 80, 85). Anne Hutchinson championed freedom of speech and the Puritan authorities punished her for it. She was, in a way, a leader of the Antinomian Controversy. The controversy began with the religious discussions she held in her home, where she “loved to discuss the more obscure points of Puritan theology and who knew how to defend her opinions with a formidable display of Biblical scholarship” (77). Her home became “a kind of theological salon. As many as eighty people might gather in the parlor to talk about the sermon of the last Sabbath” (77). These gatherings remind me of the Guppees in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, with all their open discussion. Rushie would say that Anne’s religious discussions were important, that her challenge to the Puritan church was necessary for understanding. If the clergy and those Puritans who were outraged by Anne’s opinions had been open listeners, the colonists of the Bay might have established a sense of solidarity, as the Guppees had done with their open communication. Yet, the offended Puritans were not willing recipients of Anne’s opinions and wanted to silence her—an attitude similar to that of the Chupwalas. John Winthrop, serving as both prosecutor and judge, made this opening remark during Anne’s trial: “Mrs. Hutchinson, you are called here as one of those that have troubled the peace of the commonwealth and the churches here” (Erikson 93). Rather than seeing the value of “arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the unsayable,” John Winthrop and other authorial figures viewed such challenges as a source of evil (Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 395). At the conclusion of the Antinomian controversy, the General Court banished Anne Hutchinson from the colony, “disenfranchised eight other persons from Boston who had been among the offending faction, and…rounded out the purge by disarming seventy-five persons in the country, including fifty-eight from Boston alone. (Erikson 91-92). It is unfortunate that many colonists were punished for their independence of thought. As Butt the Hoopoe, said to Haroun, people must be allowed to exercise the Power of Speech in full—this is the only way we can begin to understand one another (Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 119).

Works Cited

Erikson, Kai. Wayward Puritans. Boston: Pearson Education, 2005.

Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. London: Granta Books, 1990.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta Books, 1991.

Waking Life. Dir. Richard Waking Life. Perf. Wiley Wiggins. DVD. Fox Searchlight Pictures,

2002.