On Alice Randall’s Art Of Parody In The Wind Done Gone

This paper is a tentative study of the parody in Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone related to Margaret Mitchell’s epic Gone With the Wind. Generally, it aims to explore the unique parodic strategies in The Wind Done Gone by Randall through the textual analysis guided by insights from the relevant theories of parody.The first part explores parody of characters in The Wind Done Gone. Randall has taken the main characters from Mitchell’s book, but changes their names and transforms their personality as well. In The Wind Done Gone, the names of the whites are either omitted or simplified while those of blacks are foregrounded or diversified, which signifies the deprivation of the supremacy of whites in Mitchell’s text and the reclaiming of the blacks with regard to their identity and history missing in Mitchell’s text. Besides, under Randall’s treatment, the whites are rendered lazy and stupid, while blacks are intelligent and hardworking which offers readers a satiric portrayal of Mitchell’s characters.The second part analyzes the parody of scenes and plots in The Wind Done Gone. Many scenes and plots in The Wind Done Gone allude to those in Gone With the Wind but are rewritten, based on what Randall perceived remained unsaid in Mitchell’s text. Through twist of the scenes and plots with Randall’s design of comic tricks and shocking secrets, the world created by Mitchell’s book is turned upside down.The third part is concerned with the parody of the fundamental frame and techniques of the novel. In The Wind Done Gone, the basic structure of the original ranging from the title to its ending has undergone a dramatic revision through which the stereotypes of blacks and the dominance of whites are dismantled. Therefore, by making a satiric commentary on the original in every respect, Randall explodes the Old South myth perpetrated by Mitchell’s epic.By a nuanced examiniation of the myriad aspects of Alice Randall’s art of parody, this thesis aims, hopefully, at providing the readers with a new perspective to read and interpret Randall’s debut fiction.