Midnight's Children - Saleem

I thought that what was interesting and very central to Saleem's character was the fact that he defines himself as 'inextricably entwined with [his] world' - it is something that he cannot deny or escape from should he wish. Yet despite his apparent feelings that this connection is something beyond his control, something that he has no power to change - indeed, that it was his destiny and always had been - there remains a kind of uncomfortable separation from it in the way that he constantly interrupts his narrative with his thoughts. Padma's frequent insistence that he should not drift too far from the story again seems to show his wish to separate himself from the events of his past: '(And now we're here. Padma: this is it.)'; 'Padma is at my elbow, bullying me back into the world of linear narrative, of what-happened-next'. In narrating his story so carefully and in so much detail, he seems to almost be asserting the need for his own personal history and desire for a sense of self that is removed from him from the very moment of his birth: 'there's no getting away from the date'.