Comparing Midnight's Children And Her Children

Time, place, situations, and characters are all something that come together to make an interesting story. Each of these is necessary to communicate some type of message to the audience, which is then how the audience becomes invested in the tale being told, but often times the thing that keeps the audience invested the most is the characters. Two stories which provide good examples of this are Midnight’s Children and Mother Courage and Her Children. Each of these stories has all the aspects to make an interesting story, but they are by no means the same stories. This paper will give a brief snapshot of what each of these stories is about, then it will attempt to compare and contrast the characters within the stories in order to get a glimpse …show more content…
Midnight's Children at first glance appears to be a novel written in a biography style, with the main character narrating his life. But, the reality is this story is a fantasy world where certain characters have special powers given to them if they were born on a certain night at midnight. What adds another interesting twist to this story is the fact that it is supposed to be based around the time India gained its independence from British rule. This means much of the main characters story revolves around war and its effects, and he seems to hold an overall disdain for this war and what it did. In the end this story boils down to a recounting the main characters life and what led to the life he …show more content…
As stated before each of the main characters in these stories held lies that are heavily centered on the war, but while both lose family because of this their views on war are actually quite different. Saleem from Midnight’s Children says this about war, “…it is my firm conviction that the hidden purpose of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965 was nothing more nor less than the elimination of my benighted family from the face of the earth,” (_-------_). To Saleem, war is nothing more than a taker, it took his family and tried to eliminate his kind. Mother Courage on the other hand had a slightly different view, “I won’t let you spoil my war for me. Destroys the weak, does it? Well, what does peace do for’em, huh? War feeds its people better,” (_----_). Mother Courage clearly sees war as a provider more than anything else, which of course is the exact opposite of Saleem’s views. Another contrast in characters that can be found between these two is found in the characters Kattrin and Padma. Each of these characters are arguably second to the main character in many ways because of how often they are mentioned and how involved they are in the stories, but they each have very different characteristics to say the least. Kattrin plays Mother Courage’s dumb daughter who has to be taken care of by Mother Courage, and in the end she is seen as nothing really but foolish.