Magic Realism in Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees

realism is a literary movement associated with a style of writing that incorporates supernatural events into realistic narrative without questioning the improbability of the events. Here is an attempt to show how the concept of magic realism is applied in two popular magic realist texts-Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees. Rushdie's Midnight's Children is one of the classics that incorporated magic realism. By exploring magic realism in Canadian literature by a close reading of Ann-Marie MacDonald's first novel Fall on Your Knees,one can observe the justification of the formal and thematic dimensions of magic realism by presenting the story of a mixed-race Cape Breton family from a lesbian feminist perspective.The term Magic was first coined in 1925 by Franz Roh, a German art critic, to support a new direction in European painting, a return to Realism after Expressionism's abstract style.The literary significance of Roh's phrase, Realism, came into clearer focus in the 1950s and the 1960s when various Latin American writers used it. Realism is a literary movement associated with a style of writing or technique that incorporates magical or supernatural events into realistic narrative without questioning the improbability of the events. Here is an attempt to show how the concept of magic realism is applicable to two popular magic realist texts-Salman Rushdie's (2006) Midnight's Children, MacDonald's (1996) Fall on Your Knees.The Two Novels from the Troubled AreasRushdie's Midnight's Children is considered to be one of the classics that made use of magic realism. Midnight's Children is a political allegory that deals with the events in India, before and after independence, partition and emergency. The narrative framework of Midnight's Children consists of a tale comprising the life story of Saleem Sinai, who recounts orally to his wife-to-be Padma. The protagonist of the story is Saleem himself, a telepath with a nasal defect, who was born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the exact moment of India's independence. From then Saleem's life is handcuffed to the history of India.Magic realism is essentially a phenomenon that existed in troubled areas of the world. It is a postcolonial as well as post-modern device. Postcolonial India was not at peace with its partition, mass migrations, emigrations, the Hindu-Muslim conflicts, language riots and border problems that led it to wars with China and Pakistan. Rushdie's maternal grandparents migrated to Pakistan after the partition; he was sent to London for education and his parents also migrated to Pakistan against his wish, which gave him a severe blow. He felt alienated, insecure, rootless and led a bohemian life in London soon after coming from Karachi, his parents' new place in Pakistan. This troubled environment inspired him to write Midnight's Children, a partly autobiographical novel which tells his story and the history of his country.At the precise instant of India's arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world... I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country. For the next three decades, there was no escape. (Rushdie, 2006, p. 9)By exploring the use of the literary device, magic realism, in Canadian literature through a close reading of Ann-Marie MacDonald's first novel Fall on Your Knees ,we can see the justification of the formal and thematic dimensions of magic realism by presenting the story of a mixed-race Cape Breton family from a lesbian feminist perspective. MacDonald's novel employs many of the manifestations of magic realism, defined by Canadian and Latin American scholars. But her portrayal of sexual, racial, and national difference focuses on the need to expand and redefine magic realism within the framework of Canadian literature.Fall on Your Kneestakes place mainly on Cape Breton Island, near the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean. …

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