The Characters
Shame’s characters are all mythic, larger than life. Omar Khayyam Shakil, the most fully realized character, is followed from his fabulous conception to his grisly death. Not only his father but also his mother is unknown. He is the child of three once-wealthy recluse sisters (Chhunni, Munee, and Bunny). On the death of their father, who has never permitted them to leave the huge, ancient house, they have a party for the local British colonial administrators and once again seal off their home from the world. All undergo the symptoms of pregnancy and a child is born, to be nursed by all three. Omar grows up in the decaying mansion, crammed with glories of the past. Spoiled by his mothers, scorned by the town’s people, fat, unattractive, and lecherous, Omar is an unlikely hero. After he has left home to become a doctor, a second child, Babar, a future revolutionary, is even more mysteriously born.
General Raza Hyder is a more conventional protagonist. The product of a wealthy, traditionalist Muslim Pakistani family, he rescues his bride-to-be, Bilquis, and introduces her into his ultra-fundamentalist Muslim home, whose forty daughters and wives share a single sleeping room under the iron hand of the matriarch, his grandmother. (It is here that Bilquis becomes friends with Rani Humayun, Iskander Harrapa’s bride-to-be.) Salman Rushdie’s description of Hyder serves as an example of the novel’s wry technique of characterization: five-foot-eight, “no giant, you’ll agree”; fair skin, but “certainly darker than Bilquis’s adoring eyes were willing to concede.” Also to be noted is the gatta, the permanent bruise on the forehead of the devout that comes from vigorous bowing down toward mecca several times daily. His energy, impeccable manners, and humility are contrasted with his tendency to shed public tears, quick to flow down the dark pouches under his eyes: “These pouches would grow blacker and baggier as his power increased, until he no longer needed to wear sunglasses the way the other brass did, because he looked like he had a pair on anyway, all the time, even in bed.” His humility is undermined by his self-created sobriquet “Old Razor Guts.” The description mixes the mundane with the grotesque, and physical attributes are used as prognosticators of character.
Rushdie’s technique of characterization is often not far from caricature. “Little Mir” Harrapa, a primitive cousin of Iskander whose ascent to high office so enrages Iskander that he forsakes his playboy existence to focus his entire being on political power, is a good example. Little Mir takes vengeance upon Iskander for stealing his mistress by raiding and sacking the Harrapa estate. Most memorable, however, is his colorful language: “Who is the elder, me or that sucker of shit from the rectums of deceased donkeys?” Each has his revenge. Iskander encourages Little Mir’s son, Haroun, to kill his hated father but is eventually convicted and executed for it, having played into the hands of his enemies.
The characters are all described form the outside, and in terms of their actions. Beyond this, and perhaps more important, is what the author tells the reader about his characters and their motivations. Their interior psychological worlds are not explored, and they remain fairy-talelike Arabian Nights creatures with little human warmth or dimension. The violence that befalls them is not painful, because the reader is not tempted to identify with the characters. If there are sympathetic figures in the novel, they are the women, who, although not much more “real” than the men, attract sympathy because they are so much the victims of their men and of their society. They bear the...
(This entire section contains 611 words.)
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burden of shame.
Characters Discussed
Omar Khayyam Shakil
Omar Khayyam Shakil, a physician friend of Iskander Harappa and son-in-law of General Raza Hyder. Omar is an antihero who describes himself as peripheral to his own life. He grows up in a secluded, crumbling palace on what seems to him like the edge of the world, in an unnamed country that has all the attributes of Pakistan. His mother is one of three sisters who reveal to no one, including Omar, which of the three gave birth to him or who his father is. At the age of twelve, he leaves home for school. He becomes a physician and engages in a life of debauchery with Iskander Harappa. He becomes obsessed with and marries Sufiya Zinobia Hyder, the retarded daughter of General Hyder. His life is always shaped by other actors—by his three mothers and by Iskander, Raza, and Sufiya. He is finally executed when he is about sixty-five years old, accused, wrongly, of having killed General Hyder.
Chhunni
Chhunni (CHEW-nee),
Munnee
Munnee, and
Bunny Shakil
Bunny Shakil, Omar’s three mothers. They live walled off from the world, receiving supplies into their mansion through a dumbwaiter. After Omar leaves, they have another son, Babar. Babar is killed by General Raza Hyder. Years later, the three women execute General Hyder, an act that results in Omar’s death.
Iskander Harappa
Iskander Harappa, the prime minister, a character based on Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Iskander is a rich playboy until his friends and relatives begin to gain high positions in society. Out of competitive sense, not social concern, he becomes serious, giving up his playboy life. He uses his charm and a radical program of “Islamic socialism” to gain power, based on mass support. Cynical and ruthless, he becomes prime minister and places his friend and competitor, General Raza Hyder, in command of the army. Iskander rules for four years, is jailed for two, and is then executed after Raza takes over. He returns as a ghostly adviser to General Hyder, reading to him from Niccolo Machiavelli’s works.
Raza Hyder
Raza Hyder, a general and president. Raza, based on Pakistani president Zia-ul-Haq, is a short, mustachioed, proud man with impeccable manners and a deceiving air of humility. His forehead is marked by the gatta, a permanent bruise stemming from fervent praying with his forehead on the floor. After he overthrows Iskander, he rejects the prime minister’s social program and creates an Islamic theocratic state. When he loses power, he flees, dressed as a woman, with Omar. Omar’s mothers kill him.
Sufiya Zinobia Hyder
Sufiya Zinobia Hyder, the daughter of General Raza Hyder and wife of Omar Shakil. Sufiya, called Shame by her mother, is retarded, symbolizing purity and innocence. She is a saintly figure who absorbs the shame of those around her who commit brutal acts. Shame, internalized, emerges as rage and violence, in nations or individuals. At the age of twelve, the shy, quiet girl kills 218 turkeys, pulling their heads off and their entrails out. After Omar marries her, she erupts in violence again, killing several men, pulling their heads off after having sex with them. Omar keeps her sedated and chained for months before she breaks free and turns into a legendary white panther, killing people all over Pakistan, creating part of the uproar that leads to the overthrow of her father and, indirectly, leads to his and Omar’s deaths. The white panther then disappears, never to be heard from again; it is perhaps, the narrator says, a collective fantasy of an oppressed people.
Maulana Dawood
Maulana Dawood (mah-LAHN-ah), an Islamic divine, a serpent, the narrator says, who becomes a spiritual adviser to General Hyder. When Dawood dies, he joins Iskander as a ghostly presence sitting on General Hyder’s shoulders. He pours Islamic fundamentalism into the general’s right ear while Iskander reads Machiavelli into his left.
Bilquis Hyder
Bilquis Hyder and
Rani Harappa
Rani Harappa, the wives of Raza and Iskander. Both are publicly honored but privately ignored as their husbands begin their rise to power. Both accept their subordination quietly. Bilquis sinks into eccentricity and madness. Rani knits shawls, recording the memory of her husband, who achieves quasi-sainthood after his death. Her shawl shows him as he really was: a philandering, authoritarian, ruthless man, determined to obliterate his opponents rather than merely defeat them. The wives symbolize their husbands’ failures as statesmen. Men cannot create democratic societies, as Iskander wanted, or moral theocracies, as Raza wanted, if they cannot tolerate freedom and justice in their personal lives.
Characters
Much like in Midnight's Children, Shame features a cast of fantastical, even eccentric characters, with the most notable being Sufiya Zinobia. She is made to blush at birth due to her father's disappointment over having a daughter. At the age of two, she contracts brain fever, and later, she is married to a man who shows no affection for her. Confined to an attic to keep her from wandering the streets, she eventually transforms into a fiery, ravenous embodiment of shame. Despite her bizarre and troubled journey, Sufiya consistently earns our sympathy. Her husband, Shakil, represents shamelessness. He is portrayed as obese, drunk, opportunistic, and grotesquely believable.
In addition to characters inspired by historical figures, some are purely imaginative creations that underscore Rushdie's allegorical themes. For instance, Talver Ulhaq, the chief of secret police for Iskander Harappa, has such clairvoyance that he can read people's thoughts before they act on them. Other characters are memorable due to their unique traits. Harappa's wife, Rani, embroiders a shawl as a means of coping with the humiliation inflicted by her playboy husband. This shawl becomes her method of exacting revenge, documenting his political misdeeds. Rushdie's characterization in Shame spans from the intricately detailed to the symbolically representative, illustrating various forms of shame and shamelessness.
However, the most fascinating character in Shame is arguably the author-narrator. The novel weaves together the stories of the Shakils, the Harappas, and the Hyders, alongside the reflections, preferences, and aversions of a man compelled to write about a country to which he is bound by "elastic" ties. Indeed, much of Rushdie's personal life permeates the novel. For example, the first five pages of the second chapter read like an excerpt from Rushdie's personal diary. Rushdie's presence and his somber reflections on Pakistan are integral, guiding us through the complex events while maintaining our grasp on reality.
