How Does Salman Rushdie Use Allegory

The writers Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie both use allegory in their works. Nadine Gordimer wrote the short story, “Once Upon a Time”, which talks about racial segregation in South Africa. Salman Rushdie wrote the novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which talks about the importance of stories. Both “Once Upon a Time”, by Nadine Gordimer, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie use allegory to prove the danger of a governing body separating its citizens. In “Once Upon a Time”, Nadine Gordimer conveys that separating people by race causes people to fear, distrust, and be angry with each other. In the story, there is a white-only suburb, closed off from the non-whites. However, the suburb is not closed off completely from the …show more content…
This excerpt from the story proves the non-whites were living in an abysmal state. Furthermore, this passage proves that separating people by race causes anger because the non-whites rioted, and stole from the whites out of anger. Later in the story, it says that because of the many burglaries, the whites began to fear the non-whites, and began installing security devices. “When the man and wife, and little boy, took the pet dog for its walk round the neighborhood streets, they no longer paused to admire this show of roses or that perfect lawn; these were hidden behind an array of different varieties of security fences, walls, and devices” (Gordimer, 15). From this passage, the readers see that the whites wanted to isolate themselves from the non-whites. This action was taken because of the white’s fear and distrust of the non-whites. So this piece of text proves that separating people causes fear and …show more content…
“The husband and wife found themselves comparing the possible effectiveness of each style against its appearance.” (Gordimer, 15) From this passage, the readers see that even the family were beginning to get influenced by this fear of the non-whites, even though the story never says that family’s house was broken into. This proves that the separation causes fear.

In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie reveals that separation of citizens causes the separated groups to negatively view each other and cannot interact and get a better understanding of each other. Separation of citizens also causes the divided citizens to live different lifestyles of each other, and hinders interaction. In the novel, there is a sad city, whose inhabitants are so sad that they have forgotten the name of the city. In the sad city, there is one happy fellow named Haroun, whose father is the famous storyteller, Rashid Khalifa. However, Haroun’s happiness turns into sadness because Soraya, his mother, runs away, and Rashid lost his ability to tell stories. To set thing straight, Haroun convinces a water genie he ran into to take him to the source of stories. The source of stories is a sea