How to Appreciate the Hidden Layers of a Book
Character details in fiction are rarely random. They often reveal important observations about the way people work.
It’s easy to wonder what the point of fiction is when enormous changes are taking place in the real world.
Well, when the world’s on fire, fiction is a great way to make sense of it.
Salman Rushdie’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories is one of his shortest. At 210 pages, anyone can read it in a day at a coffee shop. Written while he was in hiding during the fatwa calling for his assassination, Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a celebration of all kinds of stories.
Even though Rushdie wrote this book for his young son coping with the global call for his father’s death, Haroun and the Sea of Stories includes several practical insights about the best and worst parts of human beings.
Cloaking Criticism in Humor
Haroun is a young boy who must travel to the sea of stories to restore his father’s ability to weave spellbinding tales. On his way, he meets Mr. Buttoo, a mail coach driver who goes by Mr. Butt. (He also has a habit of leading his words with “but, but, but…!) Mr. Butt is notorious for his speedy but reckless driving. On the way to a lake that Haroun wants his father to see, Mr. Butt points out a disaster site:
“‘See here, this bend, what a tight one!’ Mr. Butt sang out. ‘Here, two weeks ago, occurred a major disaster. Bus plunged into gully, all persons killed, sixty-seventy lives minimum. God! Too sad! If you desire I can stop for taking of photographs.’”
At a glance, Mr. Butt is a quirky bus driver. He’s clearly done enough trips to know what the popular hotspots are for pictures. But even in this fictional world, how does Mr. Butt know that the site of a gruesome accident is a popular spot for pictures?
Small moments like these are recognizable to us, because we’re familiar with the urge to capture tragedy on our phones. How much raw footage was available from the woman who was set on fire on the New York subway? Isn’t it strangely easy to find raw footage of death and serious injury on X?
Even though this book was published in 1990, this observation of our bloodlust has aged quite well.
And it was hidden in an offhand remark from a funny character with a funny name.
Hiding Psychology in Character Descriptions
About halfway through the book, Haroun and an army of people he’s met travel to the shadowlands to rescue the kingdom’s princess. Haroun meets Mudra, a disaffected shadow warrior. The shadow warriors are unique. They and their shadows behave independently. After Prince Bolo had one of his immature outbursts, the shadow and the man showed how different they could be:
“…Mudra’s Shadow had responded to Bolo’s outburst by going into a positive frenzy of changes, growing enormous, scratching itself all over, turning into the silhouette of a flame-breathing dragon, and then into other creatures: a gryphon, a basilisk, a manticore, a troll. And while the Shadow behaved in this agitated fashion, Mudra himself retreated a few steps, leant on a tree-stump and pretended to have grown very bored indeed, examining his fingernails, yawning, twiddling his thumbs.”
So there’s a man who’s behaving nonchalantly and a shadow transforming into angry beasts. After watching this bizarre performance, Haroun does the analysis for the reader:
“Haroun thought. ‘They put on opposite acts, so nobody knows what they really feel; which may of course be a third thing completely.’”
Even without factoring in social media, this is a cutting observation. We often present a version of ourselves that’s shaped to appeal to others instead of voice our true feelings. Sometimes, this is a useful skill. Telling your boss what you really think of him may hurt your ability to make next month’s rent.
But when hiding yourself out of insecurity is a tragedy — one that’s probably recognizable to miserable social media users producing gleeful content.
It’s a powerful human feature to be reminded of in a princess rescue story.
Recognition in Surprising Places
Fiction is a great way to recognize the parts of ourselves that we don’t always have words for. That recognition is a useful way to understand friends who continually make bad choices or loved ones who quietly carry invisible burdens.
The profundity of these insights varies from book to book. High literature goes deeper into the human psyche than Lee Child thrillers. (Although, Lee Child has some surprisingly poignant moments between Jack Reacher beatdowns.)
Even in fantastical worlds like the one in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, there are many charcter quirks that are recognizable to us. Sometimes an absurd fantasy allows us to see our oddities with fresh eyes. It’s often a surprising joy to see what we have in common with strange characters in another world. Other times it’s a searing indictment of who we are. Both moments are important for reflection and growth.
Clearly, fiction has not become less important as the world has become more unstable. It’s as important as it was yesterday, and last year, and over the last 10,000 years.