On Postmodernism And Humor In Ishmael Reed’s Flight To Canada

Ishmael Reed (1938-) is one of the most controversial and the most widelyreviewed male authors in African-American literature. He is applauded by manycritics as a precursor of postmodern writing as well as a great satirist. His literary styleis best noted for its use of parody and satire with a view to creating new myths andchallenging the formal conventions of literary tradition. Reed is known to the worldprincipally for his novels, most of which pose a challenge to the American politicalculture, highlighting political, cultural and literary oppression.Flight to Canada is hailed as Reed’s most intelligent novel, which came out in1976, a time when black people’s social status has improved to some extent after aseries of struggles. It is a humorous book centering upon slavery in America, telling ofa story of several slaves’ struggles against their master Arthur Swille. The novel isquite unique in its portrayal of the concept of time, with remarkable leaps in time—jumping between the Civil War (1861-1865) and the twentieth century—scatteredthroughout the novel. This use of anachronism subverts the linear narration typical oftraditional slave narratives, thus bringing to life the historical truth of slavery.The novel has gained much critical attention, but is often explored as a text of the“neo-slave narrative”, of parody, of Reed’s Neo-Hoodoo way of writing, etc., whilepostmodernism, and worse still, humor, are often relegated to the secondary to servethese purposes. In addition, the overlap between postmodernism and humor in thenovel also remains unresolved. This thesis is intended to probe into the postmodernist and humorous elements and the functions these elements perform in the novel.The thesis, starting from the Introduction, is divided into three chapters,followed by the Conclusion. The Introduction, namely Chapter One, is a literaturereview on the author and his novels, and an introduction to some theories essential tothe argumentation of the thesis.The general process of argumentation will follow the line given by HenriBergson in his Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, in which he makesan elaborate classification of the comic elements. He thoroughly explains five aspectswhere the comic resides, namely forms, movements, situations, words andcharacterization. The thesis focuses its attention on two more distinct aspects amongthe five in the novel: humorous situations and humorous characterization.Chapter Two analyzes humorous situations by concentrating on the invertedrelationship between Uncle Robin and Arthur Swille, Raven Quickskill and HarrietBeecher Stowe, and the reciprocal interference mainly presented throughNeo-Hoodooism and anachronism. Chapter Three explores humorouscharacterization arising out of the incongruity of the characters by laying emphasisupon two great tricksters, Quickskill and Robin, and some other comic types.Chapter Four discusses Reed’s use of parody in the novel by mainly dependingon Linda Hutcheon’s model of postmodernist parody, which regards parody asdouble-coded paradox. Parody, simply put, is a kind of revision of the past that bothconfirms and overturns the authority of historical representations. The chapter isfurther developed from two perspectives: parody of two historical figures, AbrahamLincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and parody of Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.The analysis lastly concludes that with the assistance of postmodernism andhumor, Reed has achieved such purposes as proving himself to be an innovativepostmodernist writer and wielding humor as a weapon against an oppressive society.In a word, Flight to Canada subverts historical representations of slavery, especiallythe “official”, sentimental, historical accounts of slavery.