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Dramatic Irony
Part 5, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Language is Courage:
In Chapter 1 of Part 5, Jumpy Joshi resents Mishal Sufyan's "illegal sexual relations with Hanif Johnson." In a long passage of internal monologue, Jumpy tries to consider this resentment to be "primarily [...] linguistic." He concludes with the assertion, which features a fallacy and a metaphor:
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
This line is a metaphor likening language to courage. It helps clarify Jumpy's position, and his resentment of Hanif's ability to use language to provoke the events he desires. But it also illuminates Rushdie's own attitude toward language. To Rushdie, language is a way of directly acting on the world. It has tangible, practical impacts. Just as myth and reality blur in The Satanic Verses, language, for Rushdie, blurs with life.
But this metaphor and this stance are slippery. The idea of speaking something and "by doing so making it true" is a logical fallacy: though language has power and is capable of inspiring tangible impact, a gap remains between merely speaking something and making it true. This gap illuminates another way of interpreting the relationship between language and reality. For Rushdie, language doesn't simply describe reality: it also plays an active role in defining reality in the first place. If a person can convince people that something is true, Rushdie might argue, doesn't that mean that, for all intents and purposes, it is true? With both these interpretations of Jumpy's metaphor, Rushdie spotlights the way language plays a crucial role in constructing reality.
