Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

“Henry James’s last words were ‘So it has come at last, the distinguished thing.’ Death was coming at me, too, but it didn’t strike me as distinguished. It struck me as anachronistic.”

Rushdie’s references to famous authors and thinkers—in this case Henry James—creates ethos, but the frequency of these references also creates a slightly pretentious tone. Rushdie contrasts his own experience of the approach of death with James’s here: He views it as a relic of the past for two reasons: because this kind of religiously motivated violence is out of place in modern times and because Matar is attempting to carry out a decades-old death edict from Rushdie’s own distant past.

“I had no idea, as I remembered the image of the spaceship wounding the moon’s right eye, of what the next morning had in store for my own right eye.”

This quote refers to the text’s only illustration, a reproduction of a still from the 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune, in which an anthropomorphized moon has a rocket lodged in its right eye. Like Rushdie’s seemingly prophetic dream about being stabbed, this memory seems to foreshadow what happens a day later on the Chautauqua stage.

“His name was Mark Perez. Or it might have been Matt Perez. He was the next of the many people who saved my life.”

Throughout Knife, Rushdie pointedly expresses gratitude for his family members, friends, and others who supported him in his recovery by being at his side or publicly condemning Matar’s actions. However, he is often less clear about expressing gratitude to those who helped save his life; he identifies the retired firefighter who rendered critical first aid in the immediate aftermath of the stabbing as either Mark or Matt Perez—the name’s accuracy does not seem to matter to Rushdie.

“Reader: that smile was hard to ignore.”

The diction and syntax of this sentence emulate the form of direct address to readers commonly used in 19th-century romances. This allusion specifically calls to mind Jane Eyre’s famous line “Reader: I married him.” Invoking the melodramatic sweep of this genre portrays Rushdie and Eliza’s meeting as a grand romance, injecting a kind of self-effacing humor into the description.

“I hit the glass door hard, and fell dramatically to the floor. It was such a goofy, uncool thing to do.”

Rushdie’s casual diction—”goofy,” “uncool”—and the image of his hitting the door and falling to the floor “dramatically” create a comical tone. This self-deprecating humor is an element of Rushdie’s narrative voice that recurs occasionally throughout Knife.

“But we went on, boats against the current.”

This allusion to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel The Great Gatsby describes how Rushdie and Eliza forged ahead, ignoring the concerns of friends and family that their relationship was progressing too quickly. This thematically emphasizes The Power of Love but contrasts sharply with the original line’s meaning. In Fitzgerald’s novel, the phrase describes the way people become trapped in the past, making it impossible to genuinely move forward despite their constant striving.

“Over the next twenty-four hours I became aware of how much love there was flowing in my direction, a world-wide avalanche of horror, support, and admiration.”

Even before it was clear that Rushdie would live, his friends and family made sure to let him know that people around the world had reacted with horror to the stabbing and that he was clearly a respected figure on the world stage. Their reassuring him in this way is both a testament to their love for him and an element of characterization: Public perception matters greatly to Rushdie. His portrayal of the outpouring of public support also supports his thematic assertions regarding The Power of Love.

“I would have to pass a number of tests, both physical and moral, like the heroes in all the world’s mythologies. My health—my life—was the Golden Fleece toward which I was trying to sail. The Argo, in this telling, was a bed, and the room was the sea, and the sea was the dangerous world.”

The conceit that Rushdie attempts here uses an allusion to compare Rushdie to the mythological hero Jason on his quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece. This comparison thematically emphasizes The Devastating Impact of Violence and contributes to the sometimes pretentious tone of Knife. The conceit becomes less clear as the passage continues, ending with a claim that Rushdie’s hospital room presents some kind of danger to him rather than being a place of protection and healing, and thus conveying his feeling of vulnerability, which people in critical care commonly experience.

“She showed neither grief nor fear, neither exhaustion nor stress, but only love and strength.”

Eliza’s unflagging support of Rushdie is a key part of the text’s thematic arguments for The Power of Love. The syntax of this sentence—its parallel structure, repetition, and rhythmic pairing of emotions—creates a lyrical and elevated tone that emphasizes the magnificence of Eliza’s behavior.

“Only then did one of the doctors, Dr. Genius, begin to wonder if something in the cocktail of pills and injections I was being given […] might be causing the problem.”

Rushdie’s sarcastic pseudonym for the doctor conveys his resentment of the staff’s struggle to manage complications during his treatment. Such complications often arise because of the complexity of treating serious injuries during long hospital stays. This motif recurs later in the text during his discussion of the urinary tract infection he experienced as a result of the bladder problem he refers to here.

“Language was my knife. If I had been unexpectedly caught in an unwanted knife fight, maybe this was the knife I could use to fight back.”

The metaphor of language as a knife conveys the idea that Rushdie might use writing as a way to “fight back” and thus recover from the psychological impact of the stabbing by wielding his own “knife.” His portrayal of language as a weapon supports the text’s thematic arguments about The Importance of Free Speech by demonstrating the real-world power of language; it also implies that Knife is an act of self-defense, revenge, or both.

“When I started writing that book, it never occurred to me that I wasn’t allowed to do it. I had these stories I wanted to tell and I was trying to work out how to tell them. That was all I was doing.”

In this scene, Rushdie recalls his words when Eliza videotaped him, asking him to talk about writing The Satanic Verses. As he does elsewhere in Knife, Rushdie claims that he had no sense that the book would offend anyone, although The Satanic Verses portrays the Quran as corrupted.

“Monica’s first business was to attend to the dried blood which was disfiguring my palm […] She chipped away at it every time she came.”

The image of Rushdie’s physical therapist chipping away at a coating of dried blood during each visit conveys clearly the long-lasting and serious aftereffects of the stabbing. This graphic detail supports the text’s thematic concern about The Devastating Impact of Violence.

“He said the thing every patient wants to hear: ‘The recovery of your hand is miraculous.’ Miraculous! Yes! Yes it is!”

The syntax and punctuation of this passage emphasize Rushdie’s extreme emotion. The repeated use of exclamation points, particularly in combination with very brief sentences and sentence fragments, creates a tone of excitement and glee. Repeating the specific word “miraculous” and, in the second iteration, making it its own sentence emphasizes the idea of miracles—a motif that runs throughout Knife.

“Until I dealt with the attack, I wouldn’t be able to write anything else.”

Once he was able to sit at his desk and think about writing again, Rushdie realized that he would have to put aside his plans for a new novel and instead write about the attack on his life. That the trauma of the attack prevented him from writing about anything else thematically demonstrates The Devastating Impact of Violence, and his faith that writing Knife will help him move on and recover supports his thematic emphasis on The Importance of Free Speech.

“You put on the mantle of Death itself, and I was Life. This is a profound conjoining.”

The capitalization of “Death” and “Life” and the diction “profound” convey the near-mythical terms in which Rushdie conceives of the knife attack. Reinforcing this elevation of the encounter’s significance is the formality of words like “mantle” and “conjoining,” as well as the phrase “mantle of Death itself,” which conjures an image personifying death as the Grim Reaper.

“I am not a scholar. Imam Yutubi is a scholar. He is many-headed and many-voiced. I follow him. I have learned everything from him.”

Rushdie uses the syntax of Matar’s imagined dialogue to characterize Matar as simple-minded and brainwashed. Matar’s short, simple sentences and his use of the phrase “many-headed and many-voiced,” a restatement of page 141’s “many faces, many voices,” reinforce the impression of a person of low intelligence who can only repeat what others have taught him. This supports Rushdie’s thematic arguments regarding The Role of Religion.

“Your favorite video game is Call of Duty, I imagine?”

Since the entire encounter between Rushdie and Matar is hypothetical, Rushdie freely imagines anything he wants to about Matar. He chooses to envision Matar’s favorite video game as a violent one that glorifies killing in the service of a larger ideal; he then imagines that Matar was surprised during the attack, that the reality of violence is not like the pretend violence in Call of Duty. This characterization of Matar as easily fooled by experiences with a popular game again portrays him as simple-minded, thematically supporting Rushdie’s beliefs about The Role of Religion and The Devastating Impact of Violence while illustrating his concerns about how modern technology disseminates “disinformation” (202). Given Rushdie’s staunch thematic arguments for The Importance of Free Speech, these concerns about online communication and violent video games are ironic.

“Is this it, am I finished, has the attack just taken too much out of me, and maybe it is killing me, slowly […] maybe the knife is still inside me, traveling toward my heart.”

Rushdie’s account of the negative thoughts he sometimes struggled with despite his generally optimistic nature thematically illustrates The Devastating Impact of Violence. The troubling image of the knife secretly still lodged inside him, making its way to his heart, emphasizes the seriousness of the psychological trauma he experienced. Of course, the “knife” he refers to here is merely figurative; it represents the lingering effects of trauma.

“[T]he powerful own the present, but writers own the future.”

Because the work of writers endures, Rushdie makes the case that a writer has the power to determine how future generations will judge the leaders of the writer’s day. This is an important piece in thematically underscoring The Importance of Free Speech, and Rushdie makes it memorable, turning it into an aphorism through antithesis.

“There was love on both sides of the camera. It was a photograph of love.”

Rushdie attributes the success of Eliza’s photograph of him to the love that the two felt for one another in the moment the picture was taken. This shows that Eliza and Rushdie’s love survived the trauma they experienced; the ordeal of the attack did not diminish their love and their capacity to share the ordinary joys of life with one another. This reinforces Rushdie’s thematic assertions about The Power of Love.

“Your intrusion into my life was violent and damaging, but now my life has resumed, and it is a life filled with love.”

Rushdie imagines confronting Matar in court and speaking these words to him. He mentions the damage to his life, thematically alluding to The Devastating Impact of Violence, and implies that love healed that damage, supporting his thematic assertions about The Power of Love.

“Who am I? Am I the same person I was on August 11, or am I now another?”

One of the psychological effects of the attack was that Rushdie had to grapple with his understanding of himself: At times he did not recognize himself and wondered if he would ever be the same person again. These questions are an example of hypophora; Rushdie follows them with an extended answer in which he concludes that he has not changed significantly.