Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Brandy PappasReadings in World LiteratureGranite Stat CollegeCara ChanoineFinal EssayHaroun and the Sea of StoriesThe novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Rushdie presents a concept referred throughout this essay as intertextuality. Through intertextuality, Rushdie’s authorship presents a rather informal approach to writing where integration of mashed up stories is seen as a rather confusing approach than a comprehensible one. However, to develop a thesis statement, sediments by Rushdie’s son, Haroun, echo the absence of flow and connectivity while at the same time providing a guiding context into story telling. Within the written literature, Haroun’s sediments showcase his doubt of Rushdie’s writing by questioning the wits of the author while at the same time putting forward that stories do not come from nothing. As a sediment to go by, the thesis statement for this essay is developed with direct influence of interweaving unconnected stories to merit imagination and disregard literal limitation. The literature’s use of interweaving stories through by merging the themes of good and evil is borrowed from the Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights, which combines multiple stories, each independent of each other, to collectively tell a story of the Sultan Shahrayar & Scheherazade as a married couple.
Thesis StatementRushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a collection of segmented and unrelated stories that merge to display random use of fiction mixing the themes of good and evil borrowed from (Kundu, pp. 144-145), One Thousand and One Nights.AnalysisHaroun and the Sea of Stories is a collection of numerous stories told from two perspectives. One of the perspective is Rashid’s and the other is from Haroun’s. As a story teller, the perspective by Rashid, Haroun’s father, is borrowed from the novel’s ancient counterpart, One Thousand and One Nights. The perspective by Rashid of telling various stories that have no connection resembles the stories within the One Thousand and One novel which takes into account the perspective taken by Scheherazade. However, while the themes of good and evil are paramount within the two novels, the resemblance of the two novels is in the manner in which Rashid, despite his ability to tell many stories mostly made up, is unable to tell any more stories after his son, Haroun insults him by disapproving the authenticity of his stories (Gundersen, & Cedars, pp. para. 4-15).