Getting Close to the End...

The last part of “The Satanic Verses” is much easier to follow, since the book tells the story at the current point in time, which means that there is less historical reference. I can understand better now why the book was so controversial, since Rushdie basically implies that Mohammed wasn’t being spoken to by God, but instead pushed his own wishes through the archangel Gibreel. In the story, Mohammed essentially made up whatever rules were convenient to what he wanted and then enforced them as Islamic Law. Also many people in the book disagreed with Mohammed and didn’t want to give up their own gods. I am very interested to see where the story goes, especially since many tangents earlier in the story that I didn’t understand to be important at the time have been brought back into it.
Gibreels character is very interesting too because of his mannerisms in the book. He talks to Chamcha in a specific way: his speech becomes colloquial and full of nicknames for Chamcha. He doesn’t seem to speak to anyone else that way; I think it really shows their complicated connection, friends who got through the hijacking together, but who are then labelled as angel or devil. The book really has shown that Rushdie doesn't believe in pure good or evil-- we are all mixed.
p.s. there was a German word (verboten) used in the story which made me feel good, because Amrita had to translate most of the book… but I did get one word! ;)