Mara Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards 03/03/11 No.

de Cuenta 30755014-1

THE PROPHETS HAIR CHARACTER BUILDING

Salman Rushdies short story, The Prophets Hair, has a very interesting character building. It happens because is not the typical description with adjectives. Rushdie, beside of using adjectives, uses dialogues and anecdotes to give the reader a background of the character. It helps to see how the character manages or acts in a situation. It also gaves the reader the opportunity to know the characters personality and fears in life.

Hashim is a moneylender who collects weird stuff. He was a loving father who cared about his family. He always pointed that he was not a religious man and that he was a man of the world. But everything changes when one day he founds a relic, the hair of the prophet Muhammad. As a citizen man he knew that his duty was to restore the heir to its shrine, but as a collector he decides to keep it with him. His personality changed a lot. From being a loving father and husband he became a violent person with his family. He has been cursed, he burns all the books from his house except for the Quoran. Hashim forces his family to pray, he punishes people that are not able to pay.

He becomes a fanatic man making his family afraid of him. At the end he kills his own daughter.

Huma, Hashims daughter is a beautiful young girl, she is very smart and brave. After his brothers attempt to disappear the relic fails she pulls her socks on and acts to solve their problem. So she goes to the most disreputable part of the city looking for a thief to steal the prophets hair from his father. We can tell she is really smart and brave because eventhough she is afraid she stays calm when she talks with the thief. Not only because of her accurate solution but also because of the way she introduces her self with the thief, we can know how smart she is.

And last but not least, the thief, the great Sheik, the thief of the thieves, he was a really famous thief. Sheik was an sick old man who sometimes was afraid of being killed by some young thief. He was a man that planned his family life. At the end he realises that his life plan failed.