First Impressions of Haroun and the Sea of Stories

The first thing that really struck me while reading this book is something that we talked about in Sexson's Nabokov class last semester, that is the fact that everyone steals from everyone else. None of what we say is original because it has all been said before. But this does not seem like a bad thing to Rushdie. In fact, he seems to applaud the works of those authors who borrow from other stories, keeping older stories alive while injecting them with new twists and turns.

The image that he uses to convey this message is especially effective. First you have this enormous sea. Anyone who thinks of a sea will at first think of the ocean, or at least I did, and how vast it seems once you're out there. But the next thing I thought of was the fact that the ocean is always in a constant state of flux, constantly changing. It is not stagnant like an inland lake or a small pond.

But Rushdie does not stop there. Instead he immediately shows us the contents of this vast ocean, the thousands upon thousands of stories that make it. Each is of course a different color, and we, as good readers, instantly try to picture this vast swirling sea of infinite colors. I though of the world's biggest crayon box and tried to imagine all the colors I could in one ocean. It's a lot.

Now I am left with an image of an enormous swirling sea of color, each a story in and of itself, but each story mixing and mingling with other stories to create entirely new tales that can be told. On and on the cycle goes, and each time a story is retold it surfaces for one brief moment shining under the light of the moon which, if you think about it, is also a thief, but I think some guy already did.