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Allegory
Definition of Alliteration
Alliteration is a figure of speech in which the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the “b” sound in: “Bob brought the box of bricks to... read full definition
Alliteration is a figure of speech in which the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the “b” sound in: “Bob brought... read full definition
Alliteration is a figure of speech in which the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the... read full definition
Part 7, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—A Garden of Fire:
At the climactic ending of Part 7, the Shaandaar Cafe burns down, and Gibreel saves Saladin from the fire. Rushdie uses elaborate visual imagery full of alliteration to describe the spread of the flames:
And now the buds are blossoming into bushes, they are climbing like creepers up the sides of the towers, they reach out towards their neighbors, forming hedges of multicolored flame. It is like watching a luminous garden, its growth accelerated many thousands of times, a garden blossoming, flourishing, becoming overgrown, tangled, becoming impenetrable, a garden of dense intertwined chimeras, rivaling in its own incandescent fashion the thornwood that sprang up around the palace of the sleeping beauty in another fairy-tale, long ago.
In this passage, Rushdie describes the fire with intricate imagery that hinges on alliteration ("buds are blossoming into bushes," "climbing like creepers") and an extended simile ("it is like watching a luminous garden..."). The alliteration, in which letters seem to spread from word to word, matches the way fire spreads through the cafe. The simile, meanwhile, separates readers from the fire's violence and destruction, which aligns with the passive manner in which TV crews film the scene. The sentence itself also resembles a "tangled" and "overgrown" "garden of dense intertwined chimeras." Broadly, then, Rushdie uses intense visual imagery to depict the appearance and atmosphere of the scene.
