Haroun and the Sea of Stories Final Week
Happy Halloween Everyone!
This is my final blog post on Haroun and the Sea of Stories as I have finally reached the end of the book...
Thoughts on the Ending
I really enjoyed the ending of Haroun and the Sea of Stories and was particularly surprised by it. While I thought some of the novel was slow and predictable, the ending was completely
the opposite. So much happened in the final few chapters of the novel that I didn't see coming. The part that surprised me the most in the end was when the people in Alifbay said they remembered the name of their city and they called it Kahani. I thought a lot about this at the end of the story and how this ending was open to interpretation. What actually happened in this story? Did Haroun ever actually leave the city? Is he still on the moon of Kahani?
Looking Through Lenses
By looking through different lenses, we can get something different out of a story even if we read it multiple times. When we look into the hero's journey and
Joseph Cambell's Monomyth, we can deeply analyze and look into the obstacles that a character goes through to become a hero. By looking through the lens of allusion, we can see how the author of one story uses ideas from and references other stories. When we loom into allegory, we learn more about the history behind a book and lastly, when we look into satire, we can see a comedic version of the story. I probably got the most out of Haroun and the Sea of Stories when I looked through the lenses of allusion and the hero's journey simultaneously. By doing so, my group and I were able to connect each character Haroun met along his journey with a character from another story. Also, we represented Rashid the storyteller with Walt Disney. This deepened my understanding of the novel as a whole because I was able to further understand the plot and characters by connecting them to stories that I was already familiar with.
Annotations
One of my favorite parts from the ending of the book is when the Walrus says "Happy endings are much rarer in stories, and also in life, than most people think. You could almost say they are the exceptions, not the rule" (Rushdie 201). I found this part very interesting because it is what I have been thinking this whole time. As I explain later on in this blog, as I read I was continuously thinking about the question, "does 'morally lying' in stories lead to ignorance in the real world?" This quote becomes even more intriguing in the end when Rushdie chooses to end the novel with a very unexpected, happy ending. Another one of my favorite annotations in the last section of the book is when Haroun says, "People should just be happy when there's something to be happy about. not just when they get bottled happiness poured over them from the sky" (Rushdie 208). I really liked
this quote from Haroun because he seems to now realize what true happiness is all about. This is a very good way to think about life. We need to appreciate the good things and be happy whenever there is something to be happy about, which is hopefully a majority of the time.
This Week's Discussion
One of the main topics the class discussed this week was the statement, "stories are morally good lies." For many of us, it is difficult to figure out whether this is true or not. As I said in an earlier post, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, for a lie to really be a lie, someone must say something that they believe to be false and intend for the audience to believe that it is true. Based on this definition, to determine if a story is a lie, it really depends on what the author's intention is while writing the story. Another topic we discussed this week was the ending of the novel. In the end, it is said that the city Haroun lives in s named Kahani. People have many different interpretations of what really happened in the end. Some people wondered if Haroun never left Kahani and just believed he was home. I wonder if Haroun ever left his home town in the first place. I particularly enjoy how this ending is up for interpretation and you can tie the story together however you see fit.
Literary Analysis
While reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I thought a lot about what Rushdie was trying to teach us (I guess I have that habit drilled into my head after so many
years). At first, I couldn't think of anything. However, as I continued to think about it, I realized that Rushdie teaches us so many lessons in this novel. He teaches us that it is important to help others and put their needs before our own. This is taught when Haroun tries so hard to help his father get his ability to tell stories back. The author also teaches us to never give up. Haroun works continuously throughout the novel and faces so many obstacles, but he never gives up. This aspect put together with the happy ending shows us that if we work hard, anything is possible.
"Fictional Stories are Morally Good Lies"
Before we started reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories, we looked into the idea of "fictional stories are morally good lies" as well as the definition of a lie. As we read, I continued to think about a question I had, which is: does "morally lying" in stories lead to ignorance about the real world? For instance, we hear happy endings so often in children's stories and hear stereotypes about how life is supposed to be. When life turns out different than this, how do we know what to do. As said in Bedtime Stories, "happy endings don't happen in real life." Because of stories, people get the expectation of always having happy ending, making whatever happens seem to fall short.
Final Thoughts on Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Haroun and the Sea of Stories as a whole was a very interesting book. Throughout the story, there were times when I didn't want to continue reading
the book, but I am very glad that I did. After hearing the ending and how it tied
everything together, I realized that this story is a very good one. The characters, plot, and setting were put together in such a way that they all came together in the end to clarify what happened in the novel, while also leaving some things up to interpretation. The ending of Haroun and the Sea of Stories left me wondering, which I believe every good book should.
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