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Part 1, Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Satanic Verses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Fallibility of Prophets
Immigration and Identity
Religion and Blasphemy
Racial Prejudice and Xenophobia
Metamorphosis and Identity
Summary
Analysis
For 15 years, Gibreel is the most famous actor in India. However, just before his 40th birthday, Gibreel disappears, and no one knows what happened to him. The first people to notice Gibreel’s absence are members of his wheelchair team. Because Gibreel was making so many movies at once, he hired a group of people to push him around in a wheelchair from set to set. When the wheelchair team reports Gibreel’s absence, the movie executives begin panicking. In recent years, much of their audience has switched over to television, and Gibreel’s presence is the only thing that has kept people invested in the movies.
Although the chronology of the novel eventually becomes clear, the narration does not explicitly signal when he is jumping forward and backward in time. Here, the story moves backward in time to explain Gibreel’s perspective leading up to the explosion on Flight 420. In India, Gibreel is treated as a sort of god, with people attending to his every need because he is singlehandedly keeping the movie industry afloat.
Themes
One of Gibreel’s co-stars, Miss Pimple Billimoria, is also upset that Gibreel has not arrived on set, as the movie they are working on is supposed to be her big break. When she realizes Gibreel is not coming, she storms off the set, saying she is glad that he did not show up because they were supposed to shoot a love scene, and she did not want to deal with his horrible breath. Although Miss Pimple Billimoria is being spiteful, the narrator acknowledges that what she says is true: Gibreel’s breath is exceedingly foul.
The novel is packed full of minor characters, often with eccentric names, that are loosely based on real life figures. For instance, there are multiple famous Indian actors with the last name Bilimoria and there is also an actress named Dimple Kapadia. Rushdie has punned on Kapadia’s first name and added an ‘l’ to Bilimoria to create Pimple Billimoria. Additionally, this is the first time the novel introduces Gibreel’s bad breath, which suggests that, despite how he might look on the outside, he is somehow rotten on the inside.
Themes
In Gibreel’s apartment—which is in Everest Vilas, the most luxurious complex in Bombay—the police find an enigmatic note that reads, “We are creatures of air. Our roots in dreams And clouds, reborn In flight. Goodbye.” Gibreel’s disappearance and the note are widely reported on because he is such a prominent figure. Meanwhile, Rekha lives in the apartment below Gibreel with her husband and two children. When she hears about Gibreel’s disappearance, she writes a suicide note, and then she throws herself and her two children off the roof of Everest Vilas. Before killing herself, Rekha circles the words from Gibreel’s note with a red pen in her copy of the newspaper, leading the public to speculate about the nature of their relationship.
Mount Everest is a motif that appears throughout the story. The height from which Gibreel and Saladin fall in the previous chapter (29,002 feet) is the same height as Mount Everest. Here, Gibreel’s apartment complex—from which other characters fall—is named Everest Vilas. Other connections will pop up as the story continues. Although falling from this great height symbolizes rebirth in the first chapter, here it becomes a gruesome death. To the extent Rekha is reborn afterward, it is only as a spiteful figure that haunts Gibreel’s imagination.
Themes
In part, Gibreel’s disappearance is so shocking to the public because he is like a god to them. Not only was he India’s biggest actor, but he also made a career out of playing various Gods in “theologicals,” a popular subgenre of Indian cinema. Despite the godlike status he achieved, Gibreel comes from humble beginnings. His birth name is Ismail Najmuddin, and he was born in the later years of British Imperialism in Mumbai (the Indian name for Bombay).
In the theologicals, Gibreel is acting as a mouthpiece for Gods, making him a sort of prophet. This contrast between Gibreel’s humble beginning and the elevated status he has achieved as an actor underscores the public’s fascination with him, making his vanishing all the more unsettling and amplifying his mythic presence in both cinema and society.
Themes
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While on Flight 420, Gibreel talks to Saladin about his childhood. As a child, Gibreel works with his father, Najmuddin Senior, delivering food. It is a difficult job and Gibreel returns home exhausted every day. While Gibreel is still a child, his mother, Naima, is hit and killed by a bus. Later, when Gibreel is a young man, Najmuddin Senior dies from a stroke. After Najmuddin Senior’s death, a childless couple, Babasaheb Mhatre and his wife, Mrs. Mhatre, take him in.
Here, Rushdie jumps forward in time to when Gibreel is already on Flight 420, only to then go back in time once more. Despite the status in society Gibreel has achieved as an adult, his background is full of tragedy. These childhood events inform the rest of his life, though it is a part of him that he hides from the public.
Themes
Babasaheb Mhatre helps Gibreel secure a job at a movie studio, where he adopts the name Gibreel Farishta, inspired by his mother’s nickname for him, “personal angel.” Initially, Gibreel plays minor roles, but his career soars when he started portraying deities. The public, especially women, become smitten with Gibreel—he seems godlike. During this period, Gibreel begins his affair with Rekha, whom he meets after moving into Everest Vilas. Rekha’s husband is an international businessman who is always gone. Lonely, Rekha immediately takes an interest in Gibreel and has sex with him the first day she meets him. Gibreel enjoys his time with Rekha, but he does not love her. Often, they fight.
In Islamic tradition, Gibreel is an archangel, one of the highest-ranking angels. He is considered the messenger of God who delivered divine revelations to the prophets. Gibreel is particularly significant for his role in transmitting the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad, conveying God’s words verbatim. However, Gibreel’s affair with Rekha shows that despite his angelic name and god-like status on the big screen, Gibreel’s behavior in his personal life is far from saintly.
Themes
One day, while on the set of a movie, Gibreel fails to get up after taking a fake punch in a fight scene. Gibreel is rushed to the hospital where he learns that he has a great deal of internal bleeding, and his doctors cannot figure out the cause. After falling ill, Gibreel prays to Allah for his recovery, but, over time, he loses his faith in the possibility of a divine being. Nonetheless, he miraculously gets better. Upon recovering, Gibreel goes to a hotel buffet and eats pork. At the hotel, he meets Alleluia Cone, a beautiful blonde woman, and falls in love. Immediately after, he ends his relationship with Rekha to focus on Alleluia. However, after seeing Alleluia for only a short time, their relationship starts to go downhill. Before long, Alleluia leaves Gibreel. Days later, Gibreel composes his mysterious note and boards Flight 420 to London.
Gibreel praying to Allah suggests that he comes from a Muslim background. Yet, in movies, he portrays Hindu deities. Although he engages in prayer, there is a sense that his belief in a God of any kind was never very deep to begin with. Notably, eating pork is forbidden in Islam, so Gibreel eating it immediately following his recovery is a deliberately blasphemous act. Alleluia—whose name is an alternative spelling of “hallelujah”—also has a divinely inspired name. Yet, despite how special she seems at the time, she is out of Gibreel’s life almost as soon as she comes into it.
Themes
