Arranged Marriage In Midnights Children

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Arranged Marriage In Midnights Children

“Arranged Marriages in Midnight’s Children”

An element of Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie that I particularly enjoyed was the recurring theme of loving someone in pieces. There are two instances where this is prevalent, one being the interaction between Aadam Aziz and Naseem Ghani. It is stated that: “In short: my grandfather had fallen in love, and had come to think of the perforated sheet as something sacred and magical, because through it he had seen the things which had filled up the whole inside him…”

Through the perforated sheet, Aadam Aziz never saw his bride until he asked for her hand in marriage. Instead, he fell in love with “the softness of her ticklish skin, or the perfect tiny wrists, or the beauty of her ankles.” Aadam Aziz, who had concentrating on loving the pieces of Naseem, was ill prepared for her presence in its entirety. Naseem and Aadam’s marriage “rapidly dissolved into a place of frequent and devastating warfare under whose depredations the young girl behind the sheet and the gauche young Doctor turned rapidly into different stranger beings…”

The question, or rather statement made here by Rushdie, is whether or not it is possible to love someone in pieces, without knowing their whole being. When examining the relationship between Naseem and Aadam Aziz, it seems as though Rushdie is stating that one cannot love someone through a perforated sheet, without knowing their soul. Aadam...

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