In The Satanic Verses, Rushdie uses the concept of metamorphosis to explore the fluidity of identity. Metamorphosis in the novel is both a literal and symbolic process, reflecting the interplay between self-perception and societal expectations. Saladin Chamcha’s physical transformation into a devil-like creature is perhaps the most striking example of metamorphosis in the novel. After surviving a plane crash, Saladin finds himself sprouting horns, growing hooves, and developing other monstrous features. This grotesque change symbolizes the deep conflict within him; that is, his desire to assimilate into British society while rejecting his Indian heritage. Saladin’s metamorphosis can be seen as a manifestation of how society views him: despite his best efforts to conform, he is perceived as alien and other. The transformation forces Saladin to confront the parts of his identity he has tried to suppress, ultimately leading him to a painful but necessary reconciliation with his roots.
Gibreel Farishta’s transformation, while less physically dramatic, is equally significant. After the crash, Gibreel begins to believe he is the archangel Gabriel, experiencing visions that blur the line between reality and fantasy. This psychological metamorphosis represents Gibreel’s struggle with his own identity and the weight of his religious upbringing. His descent into madness reflects the overwhelming pressures that come with embodying multiple, often conflicting identities. Gibreel’s transformation illustrates how the human mind can distort reality when burdened by unresolved conflicts and guilt.
Metamorphosis in the novel is not limited to physical or mental changes—it also extends to the characters’ spiritual and moral transformations. Both Saladin and Gibreel undergo significant shifts in their understanding of themselves and their place in the world. These transformations challenge them to reassess their values, beliefs, and connections to their pasts. Through these changes, Rushdie suggests that identity is not fixed but is constantly evolving in response to life’s challenges and the shifting landscapes of culture and belief.
Metamorphosis and Identity ThemeTracker
Metamorphosis and Identity Quotes in The Satanic Verses
“Fly,” Chamcha shrieked at Gibreel. “Start flying, now.” And added, without knowing its source, the second command: “And sing.”
How does newness come into the world? How is it born?
Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?
How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine?
Is birth always a fall?
Do angels have wings? Can men fly?
These were the first words Gibreel Farishta said when he awoke on the snowbound English beach with the improbability of a starfish by his ear: “Born again, Spoono, you and me. Happy birthday, mister; happy birthday to you.”
Whereupon Saladin Chamcha coughed, spluttered, opened his eyes, and, as befitted a new-born babe, burst into foolish tears.
We are creatures of air, Our roots in dreams And clouds, reborn In flight. Goodbye. The enigmatic note discovered by the police in Gibreel Farishta’s penthouse, located on the top floor of the Everest Vilas skyscraper on Malabar Hill, the highest home in the highest building on the highest ground in the city, one of those double-vista apartments from which you could look this way across the evening necklace of Marine Drive or that way out to Scandal Point and the sea, permitted the newspaper headlines to prolong their cacophonies.
After he departed the ubiquitous images of his face began to rot. On the gigantic, luridly coloured hoardings from which he had watched over the populace, his lazy eyelids started flaking and crumbling, drooping further and further until his irises looked like two moons sliced by clouds, or by the soft knives of his long lashes. Finally the eyelids fell off, giving a wild, bulging look to his painted eyes. Outside the picture palaces of Bombay, mammoth cardboard effigies of Gibreel were seen to decay and list. Dangling limply on their sustaining scaffolds, they lost arms, withered, snapped at the neck. His portraits on the covers of movie magazines acquired the pallor of death, a nullity about the eye, a hollowness. At last his images simply faded off the printed page, so that the shiny covers of Celebrity and Society and Illustrated Weekly went blank at the bookstalls and their publishers fired the printers and blamed the quality of the ink.
One man’s breath was sweetened, while another’s, by an equal and opposite mystery, was soured. What did they expect? Falling like that out of the sky: did they imagine there would be no sideeffects? Higher Powers had taken an interest, it should have been obvious to them both, and such Powers (I am, of course, speaking of myself) have a mischievous, almost a wanton attitude to tumbling flies. And another thing, let’s be clear: great falls change people. You think they fell a long way? In the matter of tumbles, I yield pride of place to no personage, whether mortal or im—. From clouds to ashes, down the chimney you might say, from heavenlight to hellfire. . . under the stress of a long plunge, I was saying, mutations are to be expected, not all of them random. Unnatural selections. Not much of a price to pay for survival, for being reborn, for becoming new, and at their age at that.
I am the incarnation of evil, he thought. He had to face it. However it had happened, it could not be denied. I am no longer myself, or not only. I am the embodiment of wrong, of what-we-hate, of sin.
Why? Why me?
What evil had he done -- what vile thing could he, would he do?
For what was he—he couldn’t avoid the notion—being punished? And, come to that, by whom? (I held my tongue.)
He stood at the window of his childhood and looked out at the Arabian Sea. The moon was almost full; moonlight, stretching from the rocks of Scandal Point out to the far horizon, created the illusion of a silver pathway, like a parting in the water’s shining hair, like a road to miraculous lands. He shook his head; could no longer believe in fairy-tales. Childhood was over, and the view from this window was no more than an old and sentimental echo. To the devil with it! Let the bulldozers come. If the old refused to die, the new could not be born.
“Come along,” Zeenat Vakil’s voice said at his shoulder. It seemed that in spite of all his wrong-doing, weakness, guilt—in spite of his humanity—he was getting another chance. There was no accounting for one’s good fortune, that was plain. There it simply was, taking his elbow in its hand. “My place,” Zeeny offered. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I’m coming,” he answered her, and turned away from the view.