Desire and Ideological Resistance: Fabulation in Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rusdie

Abstract

Salman Rusdie's Haroun and the Sea of the Stories challenges censorship allegorically. Fabulation has become the special literary mode of Rusdie to make ideological assertion. Elsewhere in the third world countries, freedom of expression is often restrained. For Islamic fundamentalists, Rusdie was considered harmful. So, he could not fight directly against the censorship. Rusdie had to counter the fierce threat from the Islamic countries after he published Satanic Verse. Therefore, Rushdie used allegorical way to resist censorship which is practiced not only in the Islamic countries but in other third world countries also. In the present text, Rashid is the famous story teller. Listeners are held spellbound by his magic power of telling stories. Once his wife eloped with his neighbor. After his wife's elopement, Rashid lost his story- telling power. He makes a journey to the ocean of stories. His encounter with Sea Genie and Sea Genie's grace and gift restore Rashid's imaginative power of telling stories. Thus, Haroun's encounter with Gennie and restoration of Rashid's story telling power proves to challenge censorship.