Chronology and Meaning in Midnight's Children

Hi, this is Maria.

One part of the novel which I found really interesting was Ahmed Sinai’s ambition to rearrange the Quran in chronological order, the details of which are parenthesised:

‘(He once told me: “When Muhammed prophesised, people wrote down what he said on palm leaves, which were kept in any old how in a box. After he died, Abubakr and the others tried to remember the correct sequence; but they didn’t have very good memories.” Another wrong turning: instead of rewriting a sacred book, my father lurked in a ruin, awaiting demons. It’s no wonder he wasn't happy; and I would be no help. When I was born I broke his big toe.)’ (Vintage ed, p.107)

Ahmed’s fixation on time periods and order suggests a focus on the historiography of the Quran and the act of recording Muhammed’s actual words as opposed to its spiritual importance as a religious text. The colloquial and almost nonsensical phrase ‘any old how in a box’ communicates the jumbled and fragmented nature of these Quran verses, which Ahmed feels does no justice to the reality of their genesis. In this it can be inferred that Ahmed would feel more comfortable with the idea of the Quran as a single ordered entity, as an exhaustive profession of the Islamic faith.

Saleem’s remark ‘I would be no help’ can be related to his vastly different method of recounting history where ‘To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.’ (p.145) Saleem doesn’t just recognise the chaos of life, but constantly embraces ideas of it throughout Midnight’s Children. In beginning to comprehend life, it is not recognition of order that is paramount but of finding meaning in its disorder. This is evident in Saleem’s constant jumping back and forth between time frames in the novel, an example of which is present in the above excerpt. By mentioning Ahmed’s broken toe in a scene which takes place several months before the actual incident occurs, Saleem covertly demonstrates how chronology is often irrelevant to ideas of meaning and by doing this, implicitly suggests that it is perhaps fortunate that his father never got around to rewriting this ‘sacred book’. By parenthesising Ahmed’s ambition and acknowledging his failure to carry it out, the reader is led to realise how (as with the apparently disorganised verses of the Quran) we recognise meaning more effectively by rearranging the countless fragments that make up life, rather than in any attempts to preserve events in their correct time frame.