Salman Rushdie: Haroun And The Sea Of Stories

After Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses in 1988, the Ayatollah Khomeini placed a fatwah upon him, causing Rushdie to adopt a life of separation and hiding. During his hiding, Rushdie broke his silence with Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), a children's book written as a means of explaining his situation to his son, largely through the use of his allegory. Rushdie's experiences with censorship appear in the novel under the guise of the Old Zone section of the Sea of Stories and the division between the Guppees and the Chupwalas. Rushdie himself also appears allegorically in many characters of the book, like Rashid, Princess Batcheat, Prince Bolo, but most closely with Haroun. With this allegorical approach, Rushdie proposes his own
The sides concentrate too much on the belief that they are absolutely different to attempt to learn anything from each other. Therefore, Rushdie does acknowledge his own favor toward the side of the Guppees, and the freedom of speech, while admitting that the sides are not entirely different and could learn from one another. Rushdie also comments upon the absurdity of the conflict between the two sides as he writes of the battle between the Guppees and the Chupwalas: "The Chupwalas who lived there wore little spherical nosewarmers that gave them the look of circus clowns," and, "Red nosewarmers were issued to the Pages of Gup as they marched into the Darkness"(179). Rashid even says, "Really, this is beginning to look like a war between buffoons"(179). Rushdie gives both sides equally ridiculous, clown-like appearances, mocking the battle between the censors and the free-speech activists. The Chupwalas, or censors, wear the nosewarmers at all times, while the Guppees don them merely for the battle, but at the time of the fight both sides appear equally silly. The fact that the Chupwalas wear the noses all the time simply suggests that Rushdie does, still, favor the Guppees. Regardless, he asserts that even though he may support one side over the other, the battle is ridiculous and pointless. At the same time, Rashid also remarks that, "Neither army will even be able to see properly during the fight"(180), because of the disparity in the amount of light each is used to. Thus, neither army in this censorship battle will ever see things in the exact same way, but that is merely a product of their environments. Here, Rushdie suggests that certain differences between groups are inherent and unavoidable. The actual fight, however,