TEXT ANALYSIS

Text Analysis- Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie

Text Analysis- Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie

In the first three pages of Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie discusses his views related to his past and describes the influence of his past on his present. Rushdie begins the narration by using the premodification “old”. Immediately it makes the readers realize that he would be talking about past or switching between past and present. The time of narrating is 'now' and time of narrative is 'then' and 'before then'.

The register is formal. This is according to the philosophically nostalgic mood of the writer. His purpose is to relate his past. The open class words indicate that the writer has made use of Old English and Old Norse small words and long words (polysyllabic) of Romance-derived vocabulary- Latin (fragment, acquire, evocative, universal, numinous) and French (significance, certainty, victory, nostalgia, fracture, mundane) (etymonline.com and Durkin 2009).

In the first paragraph, Rushdie describes the house in the “old” photograph. According to Aitchison 'Old problems' (Aitchison 1994, p 77), Rushdie's use of 'old' has two meanings. The photograph is old with respect to time and to the attachment Rushdie has with it. “The house is rather peculiar”. The house is a symbol of Rushdie's past which has the overtones of peculiarity. Rushdie has directed his attention to a picture. The definite article in “the house” is deictic as it refers to the photograph that is directly in front of the writer. The house is also anaphoric as in the first sentence the writer has already mentioned 'a house'. The writer makes use of a metaphor “wearing a pointy tiled hat” to portray the two towers in the picture. The metaphor “past is a foreign country” is not considered true by Rushdie. For him the present is an entire foreign country where each aspect is foreign and nothing is familiar to Rushdie. He uses a metaphorical expression for past as well, “past is home”. Rushdie has that “home sweet home” feeling for past which we usually feel for home when we return home after a long trip. Rushdie's long trip is not ending. Ayatullah Khomeni's fatwa against him (1989) has made him permanently exiled (BritishCouncil.org). His Satanic Verses with its blasphemous content has invited the wrath of Muslims especially in India and Pakistan (Britishcouncil.org). India is Rushdie's home. Rushdie says he revisited Bombay “a few years ago”. Rushdie's 'a few years ago' resounds with 'once upon a time'. He is telling his readers a story of his past. The personal pronoun 'I' refers to him, hence the story is autobiographical. The conventional metaphor (Aitchison 1991, p 127) of “feeding on images” that Rushdie uses for his memory indicates that how desperately his memory is associated with the palces of his past . The past is home for him and food for his memory. By feeding on the black and white images of his past, Rushdie's memory has got accustomed “to see” his childhood “monochromatically”. Rushdie has personified his memory by first mentioning ...