Allegory used in Shalimar the Clown

Shalimar小丑一直是我最喜欢的一集。Salman Rushdie写这篇故事是在一个喀什米尔的小城镇。主要讲述一个走钢丝的演员因为妻子的背叛，变成了一个无情的杀手。作者从人类社会和心理角度来促使一个人成为一个刺客这个是非常精彩的。下面就来赏析一下吧！

Shalimar the Clown has been one of my favorite collections. This story written by Salman Rushdie is set in a small imaginary town of Kashmir. The leading role was once a performer of tightrope act but later after the betrayal of his wife, he turned into a ruthless assassin. What makes the story wonderful is the author Salman Rushdie’s ability to explore the social and psychological borderland of a human. I kept wonder at the question after reading Shalimar the Clown: what motivates a person to become an assassin, a murderer, a terrorist? Also, I kept thinking whether personal, emotional wounds can be enough to justify killing a person?

It is also meaningful to study the allegory used in Shalimar the Clown. The author has been trying to make the point that personal sorrowful experiences sometimes can bleed into political actions if what a person has experienced has exceeded one’s emotional and psychological boundaries. Clearly, he has turned the story into a political allegory that is filled with love and vengeance. Many other writers are also interested in using allegory because allegory is similar to extended metaphor, therefore, by using allegory, the author can put into the objects, persons and actions with the meaning that lies outside the narrative itself. Very often, the underlying meaning authors love to apply has moral, social, religious, or political significance. 

As the aforementioned analysis indicated, in Shalimar the Clown, Mr. Rushdie has well applied the political allegory in it, a political allegory for the American anti-terrorism and the terrorists’ ruthless rules over innocent lives. Besides, Shalimar the Clown directly replaces characters from the anti-terrorism actions and the September the 11th terrorist attack. It is mentioned in the novel that “they do not have a complete disregard for human life." By using such a writing technique, Mr. Rushdie is able to represent different with various personifications. For example, the protagonist who turned into an assassin in the story represents the abstract idea of bloodless, hatred, and extremist.

Besides, it should be noted that the key turnover for every protagonist is when the female protagonist’s affair was blown. Mr. Rushdie has turned this story about a toxic love triangle allegory. Like any classic love triangle story will go, the one who got betrayed felt extreme anger and decided to take vengeance, which leads to the extreme change of a person’s human nature. By applying such a writing technique, Mr. Rushdie has precisely depicted the characters with the abstract ideas of greed, controlling desire and pettiness.

To conclude, the story Shalimar the Clown has challenged us to think about how human beings can do their best to search for truth and meaning. It encouraged us to rethink the issue of terrorism although applying the accident of September the 11th attack has brought readers with too much emotional weight. In fact, I think this is a great story about a mix of counterterrorism hero, murder, betrayal, revenge and the sudden change of human nature.

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