Haroun and his Genie

In attempting to connect Haroun and the Sea of Stories back to the themes of the class, I came upon a quote that was all too obvious a link to our first theme, the Myth of the Eternal Return. It follows: “Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet—no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old—it is the new combinations that make them new” pg(86). Everything is cyclical. Stories that seem new to us emerge, invariably, out of old stories, timeless themes, and ancient plots (i.e. boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy conquers humorous obstacles to win girl, and all ends well).

This falsity of “newness” then, the familiarity of it all—whether faint or overpowering—explains the quote on the following page where Haroun says “This new world, these new friends: I’ve just arrived, and already none of it seems very strange at all” pg(87). When we read these stories and act out these day-to-day recurrences, we are simply engaging in an act of remembering. Remembering something(s) we once knew, and have, for the time being, forgotten.

The theme of eternal return also popped out to me in discussing the speech of the Water Genie. Speech that some may call rambling and irritating, redundant and excessive, I find myself conditioned now to recognize as poetic and flowing, beginning and ending and beginning again, eternal in its manner. The speech repeats itself—with an endless variety of expression of the same idea—because life itself is never ending, either in it time or variation. The Water Genie is evoking this thought in every word that is uttered from his mouth, and on a small scale is mimicking the manner in which our world “progresses”. Thus:


nothing ends. The beginning is the end. The end is the beginning. Up is down. Inside is out. You are me, and I am the Water Genie! The blue-bearded, bird-riding, operator of the stream! It would seem, appear, reappear, disappear, and appear again! Only to be lost in my rammbly-mammbly, mumbo-jumbo, of a mis-matched magic-stashed turn of phrases. Forget what you know, leave it behind, abandon it, let it go. For I can tell you all that you need to know—as you are, as I am, and he and she and the stories in the seas. It never ends, finishes, ceases, abates. It never began. It cannot begin until it ends. But