Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Reading Questions

General Resources

Dedication Poem ~ Chapter 1 ~ Chapter 2 ~ Chapter 3
Chapter 4 ~ Chapter 5 ~ Chapter 6 ~ Chapter 7 ~ Chapter 8
Chapter 9 ~ Chapter 10 ~ Chapter 11 ~ Chapter 12 ~ Sequel Assignment

Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds may come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome too.
As I wander far from view
Read, and bring me home to you.

Haroun is dedicated to Rushdie’s son who was around ten when Rushdie wrote the book. The first letter of each line if read down the page spell out his son’s name. The “poem” touches on a number to the novel’s themes: “magical places” (Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu); the importance of “wishing” (All our dream-worlds may come true); The connection between the dream world and “reality” (Fairy lands are fearsome too); the power and importance of books (As I wander far from view/ Read, and bring me home to you). In some ways the book seems to serve not only as a link between the exiled Rushdie and his son, but between him and a more innocent time. It is also an affirmation of his craft.

Chapter 1 - The Shah of Blah
Places:
Alifbay (alphabet)
“In the north of the sad city stood mighty factories in which sadness was actually manufactured”

Characters:
Haroun (a happy young fellow)
Rashid Khalifa, Haroun’s father, “whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis.” “The Shah of Blah”; “the Ocean of Notions.”
Soroya his wife. (Everything changed “the day she stopped singing.”
Mr. Sengupta (stick thin, whiny voiced, and mangy…”

Events: Soroya runs off with Mr. Sengupta at 11 o’clock precisely.
“Some days later Rashid was invited to perform by politicos from the town of G and the nearby Valley of K.”
“The Unthinkable thing… ‘Ark,’ all that came out was, ‘Ark, ark, ark.'”

Important quotes.
Where do the stories come from?
"'From the great Story Sea,'he'd reply. 'I drink the warm Story Waters and then I feel full of steam . . . . It comes out of an invisible Tap installed by one of the Water Genies. You have to be a subscriber.'"
"What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?"
"After his Mother left home, Haroun found that he couldn’t keep his mind on anything for very long, or to be precise, for more than eleven minutes at a time."

Places:
The Bus depot
The Mail Coach
The Mountains of M
The Valley of K (“Now that is different. There are fields of gold and mountains of silver and in the middle of the Valley there is a beautiful Lake whose name, by the way, is Dull.”)

Characters:
Butt, driver of the Number One Super Express Mail Coach to the Valley of K”
Snooty Buttoo (The politico “permanently surrounded by exactly one hundred and one armed soldiers”

Words to remember.
"Meanwhile, in the courtyard of the busses, small dust-clouds were rushing back and forth like little desert whirlwinds. Haroun realized that these clouds were full of human beings."
"IF FROM SPEED YOU GET YOUR THRILL
TAKE PRECAUTION MAKE YOUR WILL"
"O, Need’s a funny fish; it makes people untruthful."
‘Crumbling road surface! Hairpin bends! Danger of avalanches! Full speed ahead!’
‘Rashid had come to the Valley because he remembered it as the most joyful of places, but it was plain that trouble had found its way up here now.’
“A floating garden”
‘There are plenty more fish in the sea’
‘Ah, but you must go a long, long way to find an Angel fish.’
"Khattam-shud!"

Character:
Iff, the Water Genie. (a small, ancient looking man, no bigger than himself (Haroun), wearing a huge purple turban on his head and baggy silk pajamas gathered at the ankles. This little fellow sported an impressive set of whiskers, of a most unusual color: the palest, most delicate shade of sky blue.)

Events:
The “Mist of Mercy” is replaced with a harsh, hot wind” after Snooty Buttoo speaks.
The Tale of the Moody Land (the story of a magical country that changed constantly, according to the moods of its inhabitants.
Haroun only calls the splendid houseboat ‘very pleasant’ and this angers Snooty.
Haroun and his father switch rooms.
Iff comes to ‘cancel his (Rashid’s) subscription’ with the Disconnecting tool which Haroun grabs.
Haroun learns about some of the things that exist in Iff’s homeland Kahani.

Kahani terms:
The Ocean of the Stream of Stories
P2C2E
Grand Controller (The Walrus, leader of the Eggheads)
Gup City

Words to remember.
‘Surely you don’t want me to tell just sugar and spice tales? People delight in the sob stuff as long as they find it beautiful.’
‘I regret to report the gentleman no longer required the service; has discontinued narrative activities, thrown in the towel, packed it in.’
‘Anybody can tell stories, liars and cheat, and crooks for example. But for stories with that Extra Ingredient, ah, for those, even the best storytellers need the Story Waters.
‘You must take me to Gup City to see the Walrus, so I can get this stupid blunder about my father’s Water supply reversed before it’s too late.’

Place:
Kahani, a heavenly body, like a large asteroid. The earth’s second Moon.’ ‘The surface of Kahani appeared, as far as Haroun could see, to be entirely liquid.

Characters:
Butt the Hoopoe (a tiny crested bird that was giving him a sidelong look through one highly intelligent eye… grown large as large as a double bed. . . The force of their acceleration pushed Haroun deep into the comfortable, thick and somehow hairy feathers on the Hoopoe’s back.’ ‘No bird could fly so fast. Is this a machine?’ He has “a large, booming voice that was somehow identical to the Mail Coach Driver’s.’

Events to remember.
The flight to Kahani ‘Soon the they were traveling so quickly that the Earth below them and the sky above both dissolved into a blur, which gave Haroun the feeling that they weren’t moving at all, but simply floating in that impossible, blurry space. . .”
‘We are here in search of Wishwater. . . . The Wishwater gave of a light so dazzling that Haroun had to look away.’
Haroun’s failed wish. (‘If he tried to concentrate on his father’s failed stories, then the image of his mother insisted on taking over, and he began to wish for her to return instead.’ ‘Just eleven minutes and his concentration goes.’)
Iff tells Haroun about the Ocean of the Streams of Stories.
Haroun’s “dream” (‘He found himself standing in a landscape that looked like a gigantic chessboard.’)

Words to remember.
‘You can read my mind.’
‘He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different color like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity.’
‘Eek my dearest, you have into a large spider turned.’
‘It’s pollution. . . Something or somebody has been putting filth in our ocean.’
War with whom?’
‘With the Land of Chup, on the Dark side of Kahani. . . .This looks like the doing of the Chupwalas, the Culmaster of Bezeban. His name is Khattam-Shud.’

Places:
‘The Land of Gup is bathed in Endless Sunshine, while over in Chup it’s always the middle of the night. In between lies the Twilight Strip. . . in which Guppies long ago constructed an unbreakable (and also invisible) Wall of Force.’
Gup City ‘built on an Archipelago of one thousand and one small islands just off the mainland.
The Mainland where a gigantic formal garden came down in terraces right to the water’s edge. In this pleasure gardens were fountains and pleasure domes, and ancient spreading trees, and around it were the three most important buildings in Gup.
The Palace of King Chattergy
The Parliament of Gup, also known as The Chatterbox
The towering edifice of the P2C2E

Characters:
Mali, the Floating Gardener (‘Floating Gardeners are like the hairdressers of the sea of stories. Brush, clean, wash, condition,’)
The Plentimaw Fishes – Bahga and Goopy (note pun “There really are plentimaw fishes in the sea.”) They are ‘hunger artists because when they are hungry they swallow stories through every mouth and in their innards miracles appear; a little bit of one story joins onto and idea from another, and hey presto, when they spew the stories out they are not old tales but new ones.’ They always go in twos.)
The Walrus (Called that because of his ‘thick, luxuriant walrus mustache.’ Which to Haroun looks like ‘a dead mouse.’ He seems to be the most powerful man in Gup. ‘He reminds me of Snooty Buttoo.’)
King Chattergy (he seems a figurehead – ‘’a frail, small white-haired gentleman wearing a circlet of gold and a tragic look’)
The Speaker of the House (plump fellow who talked unstoppably)
Prince Bolo, fiancé to Princess Batcheat, daughter of the king. (‘They have seized her, he cried in his dashing, foolish voice.’)
General Kitab (his name means book – ‘A weatherbeaten old gent with a rectangular uniform of finely tuned gold-inlay leather.)
The Chups
Kattham-Shud

Events to remember:
Meeting Mali
A trip quick to Gup City
The princess has been abducted.
A vile poison has been injected into the Ocean of Stories.
A state of War exists between the Lands of Gup and Chup.
The arrest of a highly suspicious person who turns out to be. . . .

Words to remember:
‘Any story worth its salt can handle a little shaking up!’
‘Hurry! Hurry! Don’t be late!’ bubbled the first fish.
‘Ocean’s ailing, cure can’t wait!’ the second went on.
Haroun sighed, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of this place.’ (He seems a bit like Alice was when she first came to Wonderland – except every one seems nicer to him.)
‘Things are worse than we’ve ever known!’
‘And the worst place is in our Old Zone.’
So the Old Zone had fallen into disuse; but it was believed that all the Streams of Story had originated long ago in one of the currents flowing north across the Ocean from the Wellspring, that was located, according to legend, near the Moon’s South Pole.

Note: The allusions to so many other stories and even to the Beatles. Especially 1001 Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Wizard of Oz.

Places:
The Throne room of the Palace.
Endless corridors (‘So we are lost in the Palace’)

Characters:
Blabbermouth (a Page. Pages are dressed in half familiar stories (Bolo and The Golden Fleece. They are all boys except for Blabbermouth. A master juggler. A poor sense of direction)

Events:
Rashid’s Tale: ‘In the Twilight Strip I have seen bad things, and heard worse. . . Such black tents wrapped in fanatical silence. . . the Land of Chup has fallen under the ‘Mystery of Bezeban”, a Cult of Dumbness or Muteness. . . . Some die slowly, sacrificing themselves for the love of Bezeban.’
‘Bezeban is a gigantic idol. . . a colossus carved out of black ice, and stands at . . .the Citadel of Chup. . . with teeth the size of houses.’
‘Chup is a place of shadows, of books that wear padlocks and tongues torn out.’
‘The Wall of Force is in bad repair.’
‘I witnessed the kidnapping of Batcheat with my own eyes’
‘A young woman . . .singing, please excuse, the ugliest sounding song I ever heard,’
‘The young people of Gup do go into the Twilight Strip just occasionally.”
The trip through the Palace to find a bedroom for Haroun.

Words to Remember:
“Living in the sunlight all the time, they wish to see the stars. . .”
Haroun sat on the flat roof of the palace in what was of course still dazzling sunshine, and gazed out at the view of the Land of Gup, and of the Pleasure Garden. . . and realized... that he had never felt more completely alive in his life.
“Don’t you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere? Some of us have to fight.’

Places:
The Twilight Zone
The coastline of Chup. (On those twilight shore no bird sang [note – this is an allusion to a famous poem by John Keats]. No wind blew. No voice spoke . . . . All was stillness and cold.

Characters:
The Shadow Warrior. (The warrior was a striking figure, too. His long sleek hair hung to his waist in a thick ponytail. His face was painted green with scarlet lips. Exaggerated black brows and eyes, and white stripes on his cheeks, . . . His athleticism and swordsmanship were beyond anything that Haroun had ever seen.)

Events:
The marshalling of the army. (There are plenty of Pages with the same numbers; so they have to work out which ‘Chapter’ they belong in, in which ‘Volume’, and so forth.)
The trip to the Twilight Strip.
Landing on the shores of Chup.

Words to Remember:
“It doesn’t seem like a very disciplined army to me.’
“The Guppee army or library.’
The dance of the shadow warrior had shown him that silence had its own grace and beauty. . . that action could be as noble as words.
‘If Guppees and Chupwalas didn’t hate each other so, they might actually find each other interesting. Opposites attract, as they say.”
‘He began, horror of horrors, to speak!”

Characters:
Mudra – The Shadow Warrior, number 2 to Khattam-Shud, a warrior in favor of peace.
General Kitab – who seems much more “with it” than Prince Bolo.
Rashid – he can “read” the language of gesture.

Concepts:
Abhinaya – the language of gesture. Curiously the only “words” Mudra speaks come out sounding like “Murder” (a version of his name which actually means gesture); “Spock” (a reference to Star Trek); “Obi” (a reference to Star Wars); and “New Year.”), but actually mean “Mudra speak Abhinaya;” Mudra is a master of the language of gesture the idea for which comes from Indian dance where the dancers can tell “stories” with hand and foot gestures.
Shadows – which have been “equals” in the land of Chup where they can have more grace and personality than their persons; the relationship between a shadow and its person can involve true partnership and mutual respect; sometimes the shadow is the leader and the person the follower.

Events to remember:
Mudra’s “story” which tells of his no longer being an ally of the Cultmaster who has separated himself from his shadow. “Khattam-Shud can be in two places cat once!” He said a consequence of this is that his people can no longer trust their own shadows.
Prince Bolo says, ‘How can we believe this traitor?’ He is reprimanded by General Kitab, something that delights Blabbermouth. An alliance between Mudra and the General is formed. Because Khattam-Shud s in two places it is agreed that the “forces” of the Gups need to be divided. Haroun volunteers to go to the Old Zone to spy upon that Khattam-Shud. Within an hour he goes with Iff, Goopy and Bahga, and Mali. There they discover an even more polluted ocean, “Neglected waters. . . Overgrown. Gone to weed. Nobody to keep the place in trim.” The make a channel but soon are prisoners in a ‘Web of Night.’

Words to remember:
‘He has become disgusted with the growing fanaticism of the Cult of the tongueless ice-idol Bezeban.’
‘The Warrior and his Shadow are a fine team,’ Haroun thought. ‘They put on opposite acts, so nobody knows what they really feel; which may of course be a third thing completely.’
‘I only just started in believing in the Ocean, but maybe it’s my turn to do my bit.’

Places:
the Old Zone
The Dark Ship – ‘pouring out of the portholes came darkness – darkness glowing in the twilight the way light does from a window in the evening. . . In that dim light it seemed that the deck was literally infinite. . . Arranged . . . on the deck were great numbers of gigantic black tanks or caldrons (what witches make their brews in) – the poison tanks.’

Characters:
Khattam-Shud – “skinny, scrawny, measly, weaselly, clerical type, exactly like all the others.’ . . .’Now came another surprise: the Cultmaster began to speak.’

Events to remember:
Haroun and all of his friends (except Mali who has vanished) are taken to the Dark Ship where Butt is to be dismantled and they get to meet Khattam-Shud or more likely his shadow who has not trouble speaking and sneering at Haroun, the spy, and his love of stories.

Words to remember:
The edges of the tanks, the crane, the ship itself. Don’t they look, well, fuzzy? That’s what shadows are like, even when they’re sharp, they’re never as sharp edged as real, substantial things.’
Khattam-Shud reminded him of someone . . . . I know you. You’re Mr. Sengupta and you stole my mother and left the fat lady behind.
The Cultmaster grew and grew before their astonished eyes until he was one hundred and one stories high, with one hundred and one heads, each of which had three eyes and a protruding tongue of flame. . . . . . ‘Showing off,’ he shrugged.

Places:
The Dark Ship
The Source of Stories (It looked like a huge underwater fountain of shining white light.)

Important “things”:
Darkbulbs
The plug
The generator.
The Bite-a-Lite
The diving suit
Wishwater!

Event to remember:
Mali’s reappearance (‘Switch on the darkness!’)
Clogging the generator with roots (‘You can’t chop me!’)
Haroun and the Bite-a-Lite. (The Chupwalas all around him were blinded, and they broke their vows of silence to shriek, and utter curses. . .’)
Haroun dives into the lifeless Ocean.
Fixing Butt the Hoopoe (I’ve connected it wrong and I’ve sent it insane.’)
Haroun’s wish.
The return to Chup.

Words to remember:
‘I personally have discovered that for every story there is an anti-story. I mean that every story. . . has a shadow-self and if you pour this story into the story, the two cancel each other out.”
‘The world, however, is not for fun,’ Khattam-Shud replied, ‘The world is for controlling.’
‘After eleven minutes of this, he stopped listening.’
‘If only the sun would come out. . . they’d all melt away.’
‘Whoever is doing this. . .possesses a force beyond our power to imagine, let alone control.’
‘From now on Kahani will be a sensible Moon.’

Important “things”:
Red nosewarmers and helmets with the hatband that lit up.

Events to remember:
The emissary from Khattam-Shud ('The guy’s got a live bomb.’)
Blabbermouth’s heroism.
Her new position.
The battle between the chattering Gups and the menacing Chupwalas.
The singing of the Princess (‘Let me tell you ‘bout a boy I know/He’s my Bolo and I love him so.’)
The sun rising over Chup City
The rescue of the Princess and the melting of the Citadel.
The reuniting of Haroun and Rashid and the return to Gup.

Words to Remember:
"Peace broke out"
‘That’s for you to argue and the Walrus to decide.’

Events to remember:
Haroun meets with the Walrus and is flabbergasted.
Rashid’s “new” story.
The exit of Snooty Buttoo.
The return home
The ‘miracle.’

Words to remember:
‘But the happy ending I’m thinking of isn’t something you can find in any Sea.’
‘Why make a fuss about this impossible thing?’
There was something else in the golden envelope: a tiny bird, perfect in every detail, cocking its head up at him.
‘But, but ,but . . . no money is nothing at all.’
‘Don’t you sing those tragedy songs around here!’
‘I promise. Mr. Sengupta is khttam-shud.’