Presenting all antagonists as one family mirrors the narrowness of dictatorial power.
Evidence
Far from being about ‘the East’ or even about ‘Pakistan’, the book is actually about a rather narrow social stratum – so narrow, in fact, that Rushdie himself is able to portray all the major characters as belonging to a single family. This plot device of turning all the antagonists into relatives is a wonderful technical resolution for reflecting the monopolistic structure of dictatorial power and the very narrow social spectrum within which this power in Pakistan circulates. It also helps him to bypass the easy liberal dichotomy between military villains and civilian innocents; they are all of the same stripe. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 241
Categorization
- DEFINE: Identifies the one-family plot as a deliberate formal technique for reflecting a monopolistic power structure — a useful critical tool.
- SEED: An essay angle: how a narrative device (everyone as relatives) can be read as a political argument about the circulation of power in an elite.