The Satanic Verses

The characters in The Satanic Verses struggle constantly with feelings of guilt and sin. Saladin, for example, is ashamed of his ethnicity and strives to be accepted by white English culture. Gibreel struggles with the shame of the hurt he has caused other people, such as Rekha Merchant, but he insists that he does not feel affected by these memories. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the characters feel sullied by their actions and seek purification and absolution, and the competing elements of fire and water symbolize these ideas. In the fire scene, Gibreel and Saladin are thrown from a burning plane and plummet toward a large body of water. The fire above them obliterates their previous identities, and they begin anew once they plunge into the baptismal English Channel. The bomb on the plane and the English Channel cannot purify the two men, but they fixate on fire and water as symbols of purification and absolution for the remainder of the novel.

Gibreel craves absolution of his guilt without the need for admission and atonement. Gibreel's refusal to acknowledge his role in Rekha Merchant's death or the pain he has caused other people begins to fester inside him. He experiences vivid dreams in which he plays the role of the archangel Gibreel; these dreams eventually bleed into his waking life. Gibreel—under the effects of heavy medication—suffers from a mental breakdown. He wanders through London with a trumpet, breathing fire on to all the buildings he sees. This symbolic act of self-destruction is a quest for purification: Gibreel burns everything to the ground rather than take responsibility for his own mistakes.

In Gibreel’s visions, water is also a purifying force. The confrontation between the Imam and Al-Lat is framed as a fight between the forces of water and fire. The Imam orders Gibreel to kill Al-Lat and to purify the city of Desh with the water that is symbolically contained within him. Similarly, Ayesha leads a group of pilgrims to Mecca to atone for their sins and to save Mishal. At the end of the pilgrimage, however, Ayesha can only lead the pilgrims into the sea to drown. This act of purification is as destructive and deadly as Gibreel setting fire to the city of London. In Gibreel's mind, fire and water both symbolize purification, but this purification can only be reached through destruction. Gibreel’s failure to acknowledge the destructive qualities of fire and water symbolizes his own self-destructive nature.