The novel’s prevalent themes of the positive effects of storytelling and communication make Rushdie’s beliefs about the necessity of free speech obvious, but the ways in which the story promotes these beliefs is more subtle and operates on multiple levels, using wordplay and puns, references to other stories from both Indian and Western cultures, and heavy symbolism. Rushdie’s many sources of inspiration serve as an excellent example of one of the major points that he expounds in the novel, which is that the classic stories of all societies are important to the cultures that they come from both for preserving that culture’s traditions, and because they are the foundation of everything that has come after them.

He uses wordplay and puns that reference both Western and Hindustani words and cultural jokes, along with many references and allusions to other stories from Indian, European, and American traditions. As an Indian man living in Britain and writing in English, Rushdie faced the challenge of writing for audiences with a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, which at once allowed him access to a huge selection of inspiration in his writing, while also limiting the amount of understanding that individual readers may take from the novel because most people will not pick up on elements of the novel that come from other backgrounds than their own.

The novel is Rushdie’s first book intended for children, but it contains meanings on many levels that are accessible to different groups of readers depending on their varied experiences and ways of understanding the story. Salman Rushdie draws on both Indian and Western literary traditions in his novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories to emphasize the influential bearing that stories have on their authors and readers.

The novel haroun and the sea of stories