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Stream of Consciousness
Part 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Style is one of the most important aspects of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie's prose is pyrotechnic, dense, complex, intricate, and rapid. It moves quickly from event to event, and changes to fit characters, attitudes, and settings.
A good example (and description) of Rushdie's style occurs in Part 6, when the character Salman describes his own writing:
Such questions made his language too abstract, his imagery too fluid, his meter too inconstant. It led him to create chimeras of form, lionheaded goatbodied serpenttailed impossibilities whose shapes felt obliged to change the moment they were set, so that the demotic forced its way into lines of classical purity and images of love were constantly degraded by the intrusion of elements of farce.
Here, Rushdie's language is intricate and rapid, full of invented compound words (like "goatbodied" and "serpenttailed") and sentences that bend the rules of syntax—"chimeras of form." It toes the line of "too abstract" and "too fluid," but doesn't tip over the threshold. Instead, it captures an underlying sense of instability and volatility.
Style is key to the success of The Satanic Verses. By narrating a novel about the shifting dynamics of good and evil and about the constantly changing nature of the world in a style that's maximalist, inventive, and metamorphic, Rushdie both solidifies his argument and makes his novel an entertaining read.
Related Themes:
