On Postmodernist Parody In Flight To Canada

Ishmael Reed (1938—) is a famous African-American postmodernist writer of great talent in the middle oflong-standing violent controversy. In most of his works, he proclaims multiculturalism. He challenges thetraditional white culture which dominates the whole cultural atmosphere in America. He pays a lot of attention tothe life, culture and ideas of the marginalized African-Americans, claiming that the black culture should get outof the control of the white culture. Through his works he ironizes the democracy of America, the hegemony bythe western culture, as well as the schemes against each other among the black. Reed, going against the tradition,never attempts to conceal that evil of the black.Parody is one of the postmodernist techniques that Reed is quite good at, through which, he subverts theliterary form of traditional slave narratives. In Flight to Canada, Reed adopts the technique parody with abandon.Though this book hasn’t received as much attention as his another famous book Mumbo Jumbo, yet it is in everysense a book with limited length but with unlimited contents. Uncle Tom’s Cabin being the original text of itsparody, the book parodies the traditional slave narrative’s cliché for which Uncle Tom’s Cabin ought to beresponsible to a certain degree. Through the shifts of narrative voices, blends of history and present, mingling offacts and fiction, collages of different genres as well as abundant anachronism, Reed experiments his neo-slavenarrative in Flight to Canada. Through the description that Harrier Beecher Stowe “steals” the black fugitiveJosiah Henson’s story to make her story and then buys Uncle Robin’s at low expense and even plans to puttogether an anthology of slave poetry, Reed discloses that the white have always been trying to touch the blackculture and wish to possess it as their own, which is completely a sort of cultural plunder. Reed portraysPresident Lincoln as a political player, subverting the honest and devoted image depicted in official historyrecorded by the white, and further disclosing that the black’s culture is enslaved by the white. Meanwhile,through intertextuality Reed brings readers to a wide spectrum of world, in which there are Uncle Tom’s Cabin,The Fall of the House of Usher, the Civil War, the Abolition Movement, the assassination of President Lincoln,Voodoo… Knowing more about the backgrounds of literature, culture, history, black Americans’ culture andbelief, we will better understand the theme of Flight to Canada.This thesis falls into five parts.The first part, the preface to this thesis, makes a brief introduction to Ishmael Reed’s life and works, andcarries out a brief analysis of his writing style and the themes of his works. Then, there is a brief introduction toand analysis of his novel Flight to Canada, followed by the explanation of the purpose and significance of the thesis.The second part is a general introduction to the studies on Ishmael Reed’s works and the postmodernisttechnique parody applied to his novel Flight to Canada. This part will give us a general idea what aspects of hisworks the studies pay attention to.The third part gives a specified definition to the postmodernist technique parody as well as a briefintroduction to its history, its characteristics and its artistic effect.The forth part carries out a specific analysis on the application of the postmodernist technique parody inFlight to Canada. This part discusses the parodies in respect of narrative voice, literary genre, and the unfoldingof plots of the traditional slave narratives. Then the part moves on to parody the intention of writing, the imageof the writer and that of the characters of its original text Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It also discusses Reed’s explorationof the neo-slave narrative, and his accusation against the slavery in terms of history, politics and literatureimposed on the African American culture by that of the white.The fifth part is the conclusion. Through the previous discussion, the theme of the novel begins to dawn onme. Harriet Beecher Stowe is the representative of the culture of the white, who, by twisting the facts, tries toweaken the evil of the slaveholders and acclaim the white. And she is a thief stealing the black’s culture. Theblack have lost their own voice in narrating their own stories, and then have lost their own culture. As forLincoln, he is a total political player and schemer, but his disguise has never been seen through since the writersof history and literature are white. These writers have exalted and sanctified him. Reed points out that thereneeds to be a multicultural background in which the black can have a louder voice to speak out the truth ofhistory.The protagonist Raven escapes to Canada for freedom, only to find that there is no freedom at all, andslavery is everywhere and more unnoticeable than ever, since it has taken other forms and has found its way intothe black’s culture, economy and spirit. Reed strongly declaims against the white’s invading and restraining theculture of the black. Reed claims that, for the black, the only way to free themselves is to make their own voiceheard, through developing a multicultural society.