Name: 真夜中の子供たち』を読むべき理由とは？- イゼルト・ガレスピー (Why should you read “Midnight’s Children”? - Iseult Gillespie)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:44:37.000Z
Duration: 5 min 56 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

a woman in Bombay goes into labor  as the clock ticks towards midnight.

Across India, people hold their breath  for the declaration of independence

after nearly two centuries of British  occupation and rule.

a squirming infant and two new  nations are born in perfect synchronicity.

These events form the foundation  of "Midnight's Children,"

a dazzling novel by the British-Indian  author Salman Rushdie.

The baby who is the exact same age  as the nation is Saleem Sinai,

His narrative stretches over  30 years of his life,

jumping backwards and forwards in time  to speculate on family secrets

These include the greatest enigma of all:  Saleem has magic powers,

and they're somehow related  to the time of his birth.

All children born in and around  the stroke of midnight

like Parvati the Witch,  a spectacular conjurer;

and Saleem's nemesis Shiva,  a gifted warrior.

Saleem forges connections with a  vast network of the children of midnight—

including a figure who can step  through time and mirrors,

a child who changes their gender  when immersed in water,

Saleem acts as a delightful guide  to magical happenings

Although his birthday is a day  of celebration,

it also marks a turbulent period  in Indian history.

In 1948, the leader of the Indian  independence movement,

Independence also coincided  with Partition,

into the two nations of India  and Pakistan.

This contributed to the outbreak of  the Indo-Pakistani Wars in 1965 and 1971.

tracing the establishment  of Bangladesh in 1971

This vast historical frame is one  reason why "Midnight's Children"

is considered one of the most illuminating works of postcolonial literature

This genre typically addresses the  experience of people living in colonized

and explores the fallout through themes  like revolution, migration, and identity.

Rushdie, who like Saleem was born in 1947, was educated in India and Britain,

and is renowned for his cross-continental  histories, political commentary,

He enriches "Midnight's Children"  with a plethora of Indian

from family traditions to food,  religion and folktales.

Scribbling by night under the  watchful eyes of his lover Padma,

Saleem's frame narrative echoes  that of "1001 Nights,"

where a woman named Scheherazade  tells her king a series of stories

1001 is “the number of night, of magic,  of alternative realities.”

Rushdie dazzles us with  multiple versions of reality.

Sometimes, this is like reading  a rollercoaster.

I am everyone everything whose being-in- the-world affected was affected by mine.

I am anything that happens  after I've gone

which would not have happened  if I had not come.

Nor am I particularly exceptional  in this matter;

each 'I,' every one of the now-six- hundred-million-plus of us,

to understand me,  you'll have to swallow a world.”

Saleem's narrative often has  a breathless quality—

and even as Rushdie depicts the  cosmological consequences of a life,

he questions the idea that we can ever  condense history into a single narrative.

His mind-bending plot and  shapeshifting characters

have garnered continuing  fascination and praise.

Not only did "Midnight's Children" win  the prestigious Man Booker Prize

but in a 2008 competition that pitted  all 39 winners against each other,

it was named the best of all the winners.

Rushdie reveals that there  are no singular truths—

rather, it's wiser to believe in several  versions of reality at once,

hold many lives in the  palms of our hands,

and experience multiple moments  in a single stroke of the clock.

字幕リスト動画再生

真夜中の子供たち』を読むべき理由とは？- イゼルト・ガレスピー (Why should you read “Midnight’s Children”? - Iseult Gillespie)

extraordinary

reveal

multiple

alternative