Saleem, Shiva, and Status: Authentic and Hubristic Pride Personified in Midnight's Children

The emotion of pride has received complex and often opposing evaluations from scholars throughout history. On one hand, religious and philosophical thinkers have long decried the dangers of excessive pride, a view most famously put forth in the Biblical Proverb: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."' This negative view of pride was widespread among early Christian thinkers; both Augustine and Aquinas saw the emotion as the most ftindamental of all sins.^ Similarly, the sixth century Pope Gregory variously described pride as "the queen of sin," "the beginning of all sin," and even "the root of all evil."^ To Dante, of course, it was the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins, beating out more innocuous transgressions such as envy and wrath."* This intense disdain for pride is not limited to the Judeo-Christian tradition; in Buddhism pride is one of the 'ten fetters' that shackles an individual to samsara, an endless cycle of suffering.^ Likewise, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching (circa sixth century BCE) that, "those who glorify themselves have no merit, those who are proud of themselves do not last."'' Yet, despite this overwhelmingly negative characterization of pride in some of history's most canonical texts, a deeper analysis of the ancient philosophical literature reveals a different, more laudatory view. Aristotle admired the "proud man," and viewed pride as "the crowri of the virtues" (a stark contrast to Gregory's "queen of sin" metaphor).^ Aristotle saw virtue in claiming what one deserved, and, like Nietzsche, despised individuals too humble to recognize their own worth, calling them "little-souled."^ However, even these rare thinkers who advocated for the acceptability and even importance of pride chided those who displayed undue or excessive pride (hyperephanos, or over-appearing). These authors made a distinction between a