Eshu, do not undo me,
Do not falsify the words of my mouth,
Do not misguide the movements of my feet,
You who translates yesterday’s words,
Into novel utterances,
Do not undo me,
I bear you sacrifice.
1 Introduction
The scope of this work is to point out at the way how Ishmael Reed, a successful Afro
American writer, rewrites the trope of the trickster. Three novels written by him were chosen to illustrate how in each of these he changes the role of the trickster and uses him for achieving different purposes. The thesis of this work is that, gradually, in the scope of these three novels, the role of the trickster changes and the power he is able to exert, upon the face of the society in which he operates, rises. Thus his capability to affect or trick people is far greater in the third novel than it is in the first. Also, his interests has changed from caring solely for his personal needs, as it is presented in the first novel, to enacting attempts to positively change the whole society of North America, as it is depicted in the third book.
Where the first novel captures the trickster’s sole wish for revenge and the second describes the trickster’s elusive attempt to free the Afro American community, the last portraits the trickster doing his best in order to save the whole of North America.
In Yellow Back Radio Broke Down the trickster character has as his main goal the enactment of his own personal vendetta and he thus follows only the course of his intentions, and doesn’t take heed of any other person’s needs. In Mumbo Jumbo the role of the trickster has changed and the trickster character, Papa LaBas, tries to find the text of a mysterious plague, called Jes Grew, which if he were successful would free the Afro American community from oppression of the white part of the American society. In the The Terrible
Twos we can see the trickster as the saviour of environment and corrupted society. Where his predecessors had in mind either their own good or the good of their community, Black Peter, the trickster character of The Terrible Twos , is in his actions not limited either by achieving results pleasurable for him or for his community: his jests are capable of influencing the whole society of North America, which is a target of such a scale that is undreamed of by both of his predecessors.
2 After the introductory chapter, three chapters are included in an attempt to sum up the theoretical approach concerning the trickster held by some of the most influential scholars of the 20 th century. These chapters present the opinions on the trickster of Claude Lévi Strauss,
Carl Gustav Jung and Joseph Campbell, as well as some of the critical reactions to these ideas by other prominent scholars. After this theoretical part, another three literary chapters are included; these are mainly concerned with the attempt to point out how has the trickster’s role changed during the course of the three novels.
The main idea of my thesis is based on the ideas of Robert Gates Jr. that are presented in his book The Signifying Monkey . He claims that Afro American writers, in writing their novels, are not mainly interested in producing new, unexpected plots and situations; rather, they base their originality on new and unexpected rewriting of ideas, or stories, already known to the reader, “It is as if a received structure or crucial elements provides a base for poeisis, and the narrator’s technique , his or her craft, is to be gauged by the creative
(re)placeme nt of these expected or anticipated formulaic phrases and formulaic events, rendered anew in unexpected ways” (61) (Italics added).
This idea of replacement of a received structure is of great importance to this work since I will prove that Reed takes the already too much conceptualized and rigid idea of the trickster and, drawing on Afro American literary tradition, creates new and unexpected possibilities with the trope of the mythical trickster form. As Gates furthermore states:
Writers Signify upon each other’s texts by rewriting the received textual tradition. This can be
accomplished by the revision of tropes. (…) The revising text is written in the language of the
tradition, employing its tropes, its rhetorical strategies, and its ostensible subject matter , the so
called Black Experience. This mode of revision, of Signifyin(g), is the most striking aspect of Afro-
American literary history . If black writers read each other, they also revise each other’s texts.
3 Thereby they become fluent in the language of tradition. Signifyin(g) is the figure of Afro-American
literary history, and revision proceeds by riffing upon tropes. (124) (Italics added)
In this sense, this study aims to illustrate how Reed rewrites the trope of the trickster in each of the three novels differently, and that there is a pattern, comprising in the growing extent of influence that the trickster has on his environs.
For the sake of being closer to Ishmael Reed’s sources, I wrote the introductory chapter drawing more on the sources dealing with the trickster among various African tribes
(since in the books chosen for this study Reed draws more on these sources and background than on others) rather than on the more widely acknowledged phenomenon of the trickster among Native American tribes. The reason for this is the fact that in the books chosen for this study Reed relies more on his African heritage, which may not be true for his other books where he is inspired from other cultures (see Flight To Canada where the main character is formed on the example of the traditional trickster character of Haida Indians). This, however, is not the case in Mumbo Jumbo and Yellow Back Radio Broke Down , where Reed’s inspiration from African sources is evident, nor it is the case of The Terrible Twos where the main source of inspiration were the myths of Middle Europe.
4 1. What is the Trickster?
Every study concerning the trickster and his role in society faces this question in the beginning, for without answering it the consequent discourse would be withered and frail.
This short study will not be an exception. The online dictionary TheFreeDictionary provides two useful definitions: “(1) One that swindles or plays tricks, (2) A mischievous or roguish figure in myth or folklore, often an animal, who typically makes up for physical weakness with cunning and subversive humour.” The truth is somewhere in between of these two definitions as it so often is with the trickster.
There are various appearance forms the trickster may take; as Doty and Hynes notice:
Typical identification of the trickster include: Animal Person (particularly Blue Jay, Coyote, Crow,
Fox, Hare, Mink, Rabbit, Raven, Spider, Tortoise), Anti Hero, Boundary Figure, Bungling Host, Clever
Hero, Clown, Culture Hero, Confidence Person, Demiurge, Lord of the Animals, Numskull, Old Man,
Picaro, Selfish Buffoon, Selfish Deceiver, Swindler, Transformer. (24)
Bearing this in mind, I will focus rather on the meaning behind the figure of speech than on the unceasing list of possible appearances the trickster may please to appear in. The trickster is a boundary crosser, a mischievous figure who, in order to satiate his needs, crosses every boundary obstructing his way be it a social norm or vast divide between life and death
to capture his craved for prize and return to the point where his journey began. The emphasis on the return element in trickster story is essential because, usually, his prize flees him. If it is a piece of food then it is eaten by someone else, if it is a special, magical feature then usually by not heeding advice how to use the feature wisely the trickster looses the ability and harms himself.
This is aptly illustrated by the story which several Native American tribes of North
America share: a coyote envied geese their ability to fly; he begged them to teach him to fly and they, reluctantly, gave him a few feathers, saying that under some condition he will be able to fly. Of course, being unable to meet those conditions coyote is deprived of the feathers
5 in mid air and thus he looses the ability to fly and falls all the way down 1. This ending can be considered almost obligatory in the trickster stories and a pattern can be deduced here: the trickster uses his wits and cunning to gain something favourable, yet, subsequently, by being a fool, or by performing an act of foolishness, or simply by the fact that fortune wants his business to end this way, he looses his newly gained possession for the sake of others.
The story about Anansi, the trickster of the Ashanti tribe, and about the way he brought wisdom into the world is a example of this matter: Anansi is given all the wisdom in a pot and his wish is to hide it away from all the others, in order to be the wisest of all. His chosen hiding place is at the top of a tree but since the pot with wisdom is so big and his hands can’t reach the tree he gets more and more angry. His son, seeing this, advices him that perhaps it would be wiser to carry the pot on his back. Anansi realizes he can’t posses all the wisdom in the world since, obviously, his son already has some. Realizing this, he throws the pot angrily on the ground where it smashes in pieces and the content gets to all people 2.
In this way a lot of good things have been brought to the world by tricksters: Eshu brought the Ifa divination system 3, Legba, the trickster figure of the Fon tribe, introduced magic, and Anansi wisdom to name just a few examples. On the other hand, the trickster doesn’t bring only good things. If we look once again at the West African trickster tales, we are obliged to realize that the presence of death and debt is the consequence of Anansi’s work,
Eshu causes mischief among his people whenever he pleases and he is the reason why disease is able to appear in this world. Legba renders men impotent and on certain occasions even
1 See Ricketts 94 . 2 see Vecsey 117 3 The name of the Ifa divination system is derived from the god Ifa who is said to know the future of every human being on the planet. His knowledge is consulted by using the Ifa divination system which consists of a board for casting palm nuts, 16 palm nuts and set of 256 textual commentaries. The nuts ought to be cast 16 times and according to the cast a proper textual commentary is chosen, however, since the text is very ambiguous, a wise interpreter, called babalawo , is needed to shed light on the cast. He does so, but only with the help of Eshu, the trickster of Fon, who is said to bring the divination system to the world and without whose help the interpreter is bound to draw wrong conclusions. Eshu’s face is then usually depicted on the casting board in an attempt to flatter him and thus raise the possibility of him affecting the cast positively for the seeker. For more information, see Gates, especially chapter one.
6 kills. In this manner we can perceive that the trickster’s gifts are Janus like and, metaphorically speaking, in the same way as the trickster, their value lies somewhere in between of the two poles of good and bad.
Another interesting feature of the trickster is his position among the Gods of the pantheon he appears in and his position between the Gods and the people of his tribe. It should be noted that the trickster stands the same ground as his deeds do: in between. The story how Legba was born and how he acquired his position in the world is a good illustration of this point:
In the Fon cosmology, the high god bore seven sons at the beginning of time. The first of these six
reign over specific domains: the earth, the sky, the sea, the animals, the hunt, and the iron. Each son
speaks a different language, a tongue unique to his territory. They cannot speak to one another, nor,
it seems, can they remember how to communicate with the high god who is their mother. The
seventh and youngest son is the trickster Legba … who translates among the spheres. He is the
cosmic linguist: he knows each of the languages that his brothers speak, and he knows the language
of their mother as well. If any of these wishes to speak to another, he or she must go through
Legba . (Hydes 260)
In this context, and even though Legba is born as a god, we can note that even in the very beginning of the myth and even before Legba unveiled his true character by his deeds he had been given the mediating role. Later, when his scampish actions will force the androgynous high god of Fon, called Lisa Mawu, to depart from Earth, he will become a mediator not only between the Fon pantheon, but between the High God and the Fon people as well. His mediating position will thus become even more important, “Legba is a god of divination, the gate through which we must pass if we wish to contact with the gods. In
Haitian Vodoun, the petitioner ask, “Papa Legba, remove the barrier for me“ for only with
Legba’s help can the other deities manifest themselves” (Hydes 260).
It is not only on the example of Legba that we can demonstrate the trickster’s mediating role; being a mediator, or a messenger of Gods, holds true for most of the trickster
7 figures: Legba is the divine linguist of Fon, without Eshu no interpretation of the Ifa divination oracle would be possible, Hermes’s role as a messenger of Gods is almost identical with that of Legba, and Coyote’s trips to other worlds prove the same. In this way, we can think of the trickster as of a live channel of communication, making possible wide circulation of good and bad things among his people.
On the example of Legba we can see how the trickster’s action may bring an element of relief into his society. With his actions, Legba lessened the High God Mawu Lisa’s authoritative power of her people. The story where he faked an act of theft in order to spread the belief that Mawu Lisa was the thief tells us about this. She then, ashamed, departed from the Earth, but only ten feet into the air. However, Legba pressed the matter even further by convincing an old woman to throw splashes at Mawu each day. And so, each day, Mawu departed a bit further up in the sky, not willing to be hit by the splashes; until one day her presence was no more felt on the Earth and from that time on she resides in the sky 4.
Trickster thus presents an element of relief and lessens the seriousness of otherwise essential boundaries and norms, vital for preserving the tribe life as it is. As Vecsey states on the example of Anansi, the trickster of Ashante (or Akan) tribe:
He is contemptuous of Akan authority, just as he shows contempt for Nyame’s authority. Through
Ananse’s tales, the Akan individual experiences vicarious freedom from the societal boundaries
that bind so tightly … Ananse gives Akan society the opportunity to mock Nyame’s authority; he
gives the individual the opportunity to mock society’s authority. (118)
However, the trickster is not just a glorified ’mechanism’ designed for relieving social pressure and for celebration of potential disruption in the society. As Vecsay elaborates on this theme further, “The Akan individual may applaud his success, but he does not attempt to
4 See Pelton 79.
8 emulate his antisocial techniques; he enjoys Ananse’s illicit schemes but he does not approve of them.
It is when he fails that the Akan draw ethical conclusions” (118).
With this in mind, we can see that the trickster, most of the times, functions as a good example of how not to behave, thus he has an important educational role. As has already been discussed, the trickster’s ability to be a boundary crosser and at the same time a boundary creator (Hyde 7) can be interpreted in the way that while the trickster breaks the rules of a society, he helps to make the rules distinct, helps to identify them. Or as Pelton puts it,
“Ananse’s movement away from the order, in the end creates order” (36). The trickster stories then are not only important as a potential easement of daily hardships but, at the same time, as a codex of stories which by pointing out how not to behave on the example of the trickster eloquently and efficiently display what is the proper way to behave in a society 5.
It is essential to note that even the trickster himself is at times laughed at: when his schemes do not wind up the way he wishes and he makes a fool of himself, the trickster’s tribe will be merry at the trickster’s behalf. The trickster tales then present an invaluable tool for bringing up new members of the particular society and educating them in the ways of their own tribe, “In adition to presenting Ananse’s punishments and embarrassments, the tales offer a picture of a relatively well functioning society. While Ananse is stealing, his neighbors are cooperating; while Ananse is scheming, his neighbors are planting their crops, while Ananse is violating rules, his neighbours are obeying them” (Vecsey 119).
On the other hand, it might be argued that since so many of the trickster stories are connected with sexual thematic, leaching and lying, it is not wise to use them as an education tool for whomever concerned, and particularly not for children. But since the problem with sexual upbringing is partly solved by sets of initiations into the knowledge of sex with the
5 See Pelton 279.
9 information received being appropriate to the age of the recipient 6 and with the help of proper ‘schools’ maintained for this special reason, we may without doubt accept that:
The trickster does indeed train children to be adults – and adults to be children. They are not meant
to imitate the trickster by rebelling, lying, or cheating … but they are meant to learn from him what
a human really is: an imaginer of life. The purpose of the stories is to put an adult mind in a child’s
heart and a child’s eye in an adult head. (Pelton 279)
Hence, we can accept that such an upbringing leads only to an individual aware of the complex nature of his or her personality who being initiated into these problematic areas of life is predestined to encounter less trouble in life than a person who is not initated into this knowledge:
Certainly Fon, Ashanti, Dogon, and Yoruba children learn docility and obedience, but from the
trickster they learn that there is no question that cannot be asked because every answer, even “I
don’t know, “ produces a larger world. For adults the trickster remains a life long instructor in the
uses of language, reminding them that childhood – in its structurelessness and verbal naivité –is a
permanent symbol of liminality, where true wisdom and authentic speech come into being in the
amazing union of plain word and ordinary thing … The trickster and his tales, then, are an
education in wit. (Pelton 279)
We can thus see that the trickster is an important tool of communication, a jester who lessens the authorities of his society and who, at times, has an important role in life long education of people. All these features are then present in all the three instances of Ishmael
Reed’s trickster. To measure the different extent of his possession of these qualities is then the main aim of the subsequent literary chapters.
6 See Pelton 109 110
10 2. Theory of the Trickster
In subsequent subchapters, the theoretical approaches to the trickster are discussed.
The individual discourses are ordered on the time scale from the oldest approach to the youngest; and even though each of the three scholars thinks of the trickster distinctly there are certain points where their ideas overlap.
2.1 Carl Gustav Jung’s Ideas on the Trickster
During his lifetime C. G. Jung dedicated to the phenomenon of the trickster only one, single essay, On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure , published in Paul Radin’s study dealing with the Winnebago trickster cycle, The Trickster . He starts his commentary with an interesting comparison of the trickster phenomenon among various Native American tribes with the figure of the medieval trickster fool, so very much present in the life of the Middle
Ages. He claims that these events such as: episcopus puerorum (electing of a children’s bishop and dressing him in pontifical robes), festum stultorum (fool’s fest) along with fatuorum papam (electing the Fool’s Pope) and festum assinarum (the Ass’s festival), were hugely popular and presented a chance how to relieve of the pressure that their contemporary society put on them (197).
While these instances of institutionalized merriness are certainly noteworthy, Jung, moreover, presents more ‘radical’ ideas on the trickster relatedness with the figure of shaman,
“There is something of the trickster in the character of the shaman and medicine man, for he, too, often plays malicious jokes on people, only to fall victim in his turn to the vengeance of those whom he has injured” (196). Though, it is needful to say, that this approach has been undermined by many scholars who have criticised Jung’s heavy reliance on the Winnebago trickster cycle saying that other trickster cycles should also be taken into consideration before drawing any conclusions.
11 However, Jung’s main argument is that the trickster is, “a collective shadow figure, an epitome of all the inferior traits of character in individuals” (209). He believes that the character of the trickster functions as a “shadow,” a storage like figure collecting all the inappropriate modes of behaviour which were banned from the life of “civilised men.” Thus, he maintains, “In his clearest manifestation he is a faithful copy of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level” (199), and believes that the trickster is the fore runner of the civilized man: a stage from which humankind must evolve in order to be able to notice the difference between the trickster and them. For, if they were at the same mental level with the trickster and acted in the same way as he did they would not have the capacity to distinguish him as a character with different nature than their own; thus there would be no reason for them to develop and maintain any set of stories or special knowledge about the trickster. As Jung believes men is only able to distinguish the trickster as the trickster when he has surpassed the evolutionary stage of the trickster:
From this point of view we can see why the myth of the trickster was preserved and developed: like
many other myths, it was supposed to have a therapeutic effect. It holds the earlier low intelectual
and moral level before the eyes of the more highly developed individual, so that he shall not forget
how things looked yesterday. (207)
Jung elaborates on this interesting idea even further: as a psychotherapist, he claims that nothing from the human psyche can ever be lost; nor even the already surpassed stage in evolution: and the trickster, as an example of such a shadowy, still presents a considerable part of humankind’s psyche (206). He, therefore, thinks of the trickster as of, “a primitive
‘cosmic’ being of divine-animal nature, on the one hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, and on the other hand inferior to him because of his extraordinary clumsiness and lack of instinct” (204), yet, according to him, there is be a positive way out of this ‘trickster stuck deep in unconsciousness’ trap.
12 In this sense, he sees in the trickster a pre stage of the saviour figure because only when an individual is aware of the unconscious processes, or when he or she is aware of the preceding stage of the evolutionary process may the individual evolve further:
If, at the end of the [Winnebago] trickster myth, the saviour is hinted at, this comforting
premonition or hope means that some calamity or other has happened and been consciously
understood. Only out of disaster can the longing for the saviour arise—in other words, the
recognition and unavoidable integration of the shadow create such a harrowing situation that
nobody but a saviour can undo the tangled web of fate. (211)
Moreover, he elaborates on this by emphasizing the trickster’s activity of not only causing wounds but also on being wounded, thus, as Jung believes, he is a plus for his society because, “[The trickster’s] ‘approximation to the saviour’ is an obvious ... confirmation of the mythological truth that the wounded wounder is the agent of healing, and that the sufferer takes away suffering” (196), and while bearing this in mind, there can be no doubt that the trickster is rather proficient in this art of inflicting and receiving damage.
Jung ends his commentary by once more that only by being aware of some of the most troubling of unconscious processes of one’s own psyche can one proceed further; this he connects to the trickster – to the anthro/theriomorphic personification of one’s shadow – in his final statement:
In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the
development of consciousness. This gradually brings liberation from imprisonment in ...
unconsciousness and is therefore a bringer of light as well as of healing. As in its collective,
mythological form, so also the individual shadow contains within it the seed of an enantodromia, of
a conversion into its opposite. (206) where he puts great faith in believing that if one’s development is predestined by the necessity of noticing one’s own shadow, than it is surely very promising to project the role of the shadow into such a perceptible and flagrant figure as the trickster definitely is.
13 This positivistic approach has been lately undermined by many scholars 7, claiming that Jung relying too much on the Winnebago trickster cycle lost the touch with reality and underscored the importance of the trickster’s dwelling at crossroads (from which he begins his journeys and to which he always returns) which stands in opposition to Jung’s seeing the figure of the trickster as a process development to higher forms of consciousness. Much rather, the trickster realizes his traits in a circle like motion, going through various stages, yet always returning to the point where his journey began, to the crossroads. We can see this feature in many of the trickster stories: mainly in those where he aspires to gain something he craves for, yet, he ends up loosing this item or skill, and thus he returns to the position from which he began. In this way, we can say, along with Jung, that the trickster ‘moves’ forward by his actions; yet, it is essential to acknowledge that he after having moved forward moves immediately back (or is moved back) and thus the unceasing movement and action is more in the nature of the trickster rather than the craving for development to higher evolutional forms.
2.2 Claude Lévi Strauss’s Ideas on the Trickster
Claude Lévi Strauss, in his approach to the trickster figure, was mainly concerned with answering a sole question, “why is it that throughout North America his role is assigned practically everywhere either to coyote or raven?” (“Structural Anthropology” 224).
Believing that, “knowledge of the whole precedes knowledge of the parts” (“The
Savage Mind” 24), Lévi Strauss decided to answer this question with the help of binary opposites of life and death. However, given that between life and death exists no place or state of being in which the trickster would be able to operate (provided he can be either alive or dead), Strauss had to exchange this set of words for such one that would allow the existence of a mediatory position in between, “we need only assume that two opposite terms with no
7 See Pelton 228 236.
14 intermediary always tend to be replaced by two equivalent terms which admit of a third one as a mediator” (“Structural Anthropology” 224).
He, thus, proceeded to the set of opposing words consisting of agriculture and warfare which allows hunting in the mediating position. At this stage, he connected agriculture with herbivorous animals, warfare with carnivorous animals, and hunting with the carrion eating animals (such like coyote and raven) which can mediate between. Therefore, he believes that the role of the trickster is attributed either to coyote or raven from the reasons that they are both able to operate between two contradictionary poles and thus their ‘structural pattern’ matches with the trickster’s one: both patterns allow a mediating position between opposites and this position belongs (in mythology) to the trickster and (in real life) to the figures of raven and coyote. That is Strauss’s explanation of this phenomenon.
The parallel then is evident; he connotes life with agriculture and then with herbivorous animals, thus creating an axis where life is, supposedly, not taken by any of its participants. On the other hand is an axis comprising of death, warfare and beasts of prey where the members of it take the life of others in order to preserve their own. Between these two poles then operates the trickster; Lévi Strauss thus proves the trickster’s mediatory position, “Thus, ... the trickster is a mediator. Since his mediating function occupies a position halfway between two polar terms, he must retain something of that duality—namely an ambiguous and equivocal character“ (“Structural Anthropology” 226). Or, as Wilden interprets this idea:
Maintaining this logic, the mediators in the second triad—between herbivorous and carnivorous
animals—are, of course, scavengers, or eaters of carrion, animals who eat the flesh of others but do
not kill them. Therefore, while they are carnivorous and thus resemble beasts of prey, they also
resemble food producers ( sic ) in that they do not kill what they eat. We can now conclude that
“raven” and “coyote” mediate the binary opposition life death, and thus represent the image of the
Trickster, who, as is well known, is both good and evil, both creator and destroyer. (307)
15
Lévi Strauss then elaborates on this idea even further and, with the same logic applied, explains another crucial set of mythemes of the Pueblo (Zuni) Indians, such as: mist (between earth and sky), scalp (scalp being a result of war warcrop mediates between war and agriculture), ash (between floor and roof), clothing (mediator between culture and nature) and many others. Wilton believes that such an approach can:
illuminate the whole areas of North American mythology; it explains why scalps ... are mist
producing, why the Spirit of the Dew (between sky and earth) may be correlated with the Keeper of
Game (between hunting and agriculture) and may also be the Giver of Fine Garments (between
nature and culture). (308)
In this way, the structuralism of Lévi Strauss may undoubtedly be very handy conceptual tool with which one may arrive at interesting interpretations; yet, Elliade seems to have a point when he criticizes Lévi Strauss for underestimating important implications that the trickster connotes:
His “materialistic reductionism“ ... fails to seize the trickster’s meaning because it finds trivial just
that ”hum and buzz of implication” ... which is the project as well as his matrix. Thus Elliade
claims that Lévi Strauss has replaced “hermeneutical effort” with “demystification” and has failed
to respect the “specific mode of being” of the ”spiritual creations” he studies. (241) (Italics added)
Pelton then maintains that such an approach is imprecise and resembles the famous “When you have seen one slum, you’ve seen them all” (241).
Even though there is a great potential in Lévi Strauss’s structuralistic approach, to undervalue individual implications of particular tricksters would be a serious mistake, for one might thus rely too much on a single trickster story cycle, as Jung did, and draw inappropriate parallels. Moreover, as Reed puts it, there is a great power in individuality of the trickster, and it is a mistake to drop the personal traits distinguishing one trickster from another altogether.
In Reed’s ‘definition’ of PaPa LaBas, we can see that to underestimate the value of individual implications is not the right way how to interpret the trickster, “PaPa LaBas is a descendant of
16 a long line of people who made their pact with nature long ago. He would never say “If you have seen one redwood tree you’ve seen them all”; rather, he would reply with the African
Chieftain “I’m the elephant,’”(“Mumbo Jumbo” 45).
Moreover, the very basis for this theme can be considered dubious. For, the trickster is not only represented by the figures of coyote or raven, as Strauss claims. We already know that the list of possible appearances of the trickster is long and consists of many animals that do not match the pattern of an animal living on the edge between herbivorous and carnivorous animals (for example: hare, rabbit, turtoise, spider and many others); and thus, according to
Strauss, we wouldn’t be able to accept them in their trickster roles, even though they undoubtedly function as the tricksters in their societies. This presents a serious flaw in
Strauss’s discourse. Yet we have to bear in mind the fact that he was mainly inspired by
Indian cultures of South America where his pattern can be applied and is valid. In the same way, however, it is also important to remember that his approach is not simply valid everywhere.
2.3 Joseph Campbell’s Ideas on the Trickster
In the beginning of his study, The Hero With a Thousand Faces , Campbell states that,
“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those human constant fantasies who tend to tie it back” (10). This statement then, in my opinion, aptly describes the role of the trickster in the world, as well as Campbell’s own approach to the trickster itself. For, to Campbell, the trickster is the agent promoting one’s own development
It is important to note Campbell’s opinion on the duality of the trickster who can be
“both good and evil, both creator and destroyer” (Wilden 307). Campbell states that even though we might not tend to like the trickster’s shadowy capability to bring harm, it is very
17 often this (seemingly) dark, mythological pattern that is the agent of the forthcoming change or development, if one accepts the challenge he brings in, “The disgusting and rejected frog or dragon of the fairy tale brings up the sun ball in its mouth; for the frog, the serpent, the rejected one is the representative of that unconscious deep ... wherein are hoarded all of the rejected, unadmitted, unrecognized, unknown, or undeveloped factors, laws and elements of existence” (48) opening thus the passage leading to all hidden treasures of the world, passage to undiscovered and untapped possibilities of growth of human psyche.
Campbell believes that only by, “shattering of the [old] forms [of behaviour] and of our attachment to the forms” (26), is one able to evolve into another stage of being. According to Campbell, the trickster is a perfect tool for achieving exactly this. For is there any other figure so keen of challenging the norms of the society he inhabits?
“One had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet– it is only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destructive other aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, ether alive or in death, into a new zone of experience” (75). I believe there is not. This is, then, Campbell’s approach to the trickster, sharing a few similar features with Jung’s; he as well sees in him the potential that can occasionally transform the trickster into the, “bringer of light as well as of healing” (Jung 206).
In his other study, The Masks of God – The Primitive Mythology , he continues in retelling Jung’s ideas on those instances where the trickster motif appeared in Europe, and agrees with Jung in the sense that he also claims that, “in the carnival customs this figure survives in the numerous clowns, buffoons, devils, Pulcinellas and imps who play the roles, precisely, of the clowns in the rites in the Indian Pueblos and give character of topsy turvy day to the feast” (274).
In this study, however, he pays more attention to the creative powers of the trickster; throughout the limited space of the chapter he retells the stories of the earth diver motif (273
18 275) and that of the fire theft motif (276 278): these stories imply that only by the trickster’s actions the world is shaped in the form as we know it now pointing out that the trickster is a,
“creative force in its primary innocence” (275). At this point, he states his belief that the trickster, a figure capable of such positive changes in its societies, is a counterpart of shaman, if not even more, “It is hardly proper to call such a figure a god, or even to think of him as supernatural. He is a super shaman. And we find his counterparts in legend and myth throughout the world, wherever shamanism has left its mark” (275). In claiming this,
Campbell again stands the same ground as Jung. However, their similar opinions have a point where their ideas differ: Campbell polemizes with Jung’s idea of the trickster as, “a collective shadow figure, an epitome of all the inferior traits of character in individuals” (Jung 209), by saying that such an interpretation is only a result of our nowadays “bounded” style of thinking, whereas in, “in the paleolithic sphere from which this figure derives, he was the archetype of the hero, the giver of all great boons the fire bringer and the teacher of mankind” (274).
However, there are some scholars who disagree with Jung’s and Campbell’s belief that the trickster is a counterpart of the shaman. In his essay, The Shaman and the Trickster ,
Ricketts argues that where Campbell in retelling the fire theft motif believes that he is retelling a shamanistic story (273), Ricketts is of a different opinion (103). He starts by claiming that while, “shaman represents the religious experience of humility and awe before the Spirit” (88), the trickster is of a different nature, meaning that the trickster keeps on parodying the shamans work as such, in every chance he has, and mocks “priestly customs and sacred ceremonies” (98) as a free of charge bonus. In this sense, no duty of the shaman is spared his parody and irony: the trickster ridicules his spiritual journey into different realms, his healing session and the holy institution of the guardian spirit quest as well. Simply put, he
19 does so whenever he has the chance to sharpen his wits which occured quite often in primitive society (94 98).
Ricketts then bases his main thesis that shaman and trickster have different roles on the argument that while both protagonists go into another world and fight there for fire, they are distinct in that sense that while the shaman crosses the boundaries accompanied by his
“tutelatory spirits or spirits” (104), the trickster goes there alone or is accompanied by friends with no supernatural powers at all. He aptly elaborates on this idea by pointing out that the shaman, while in the other realm, opposes only certain spiritual beings while others help him in achieving his aim, the trickster, on the other hand, opposes the whole other realm, “looks to no higher power for aid” (104), has only enemies there and no helpful spirits at all, “the shaman has been accepted into that other world, and consequently he looks upon it as a potential source of help as well as harm for men. But by contrast the trickster is an outsider whose attitude toward that world of superhuman powers is a negative one” (91). In this sense, he is right in saying that the roles of the trickster and the shaman are different and proves the ideas of Jung and Campbell to be wrong.
Campbell, however, presents an interesting opinion concerning our time and the slowly changing role of the trickster in it. He introduces this idea with a comparison of the bounded, punished and proud Prometheus who has done a lot for his people, brought fire into this world, introduced arts and taught people the setting of stars as well as the mysteries of the calendar, and is not afraid to acknowledge this fact who with the humble and pious like Job:
These two traditions are mixed in the inheritance not only of the West but of all civilizations and
represent the poles of man spiritual tension: the priestly representation of the power that shaped the
universe as a force beyond human criticism or challenge, the power that made the sun and moon,
the seas, Leviathan, Behemoth, and the mountains, before whom man’s proper attitude is awe; and,
on the other hand, that of the intransigency of the self sufficient magician, the titan power of the
shaman, the builder of Babel, careless of God’s wrath, who knows that he is older, greater, and
20 stronger than the Gods. For indeed, it is man that has created the gods, whereas the power that
created the universe is none other than the will that operates in man himself and in man alone has
achieved the consciousness of its kingdom, power and glory. (279)
It is plain that Ricketss (in considering the shaman and the trickster not to be counterparts) was right: the difference between self reliant trickster and humble shaman (104) stays valid even if we change the figure of shaman for Job. In this way he introduces the idea that the trickster has started to take over the steering wheel of our society, “And yet, the punishment ... will end; for, as Prometheus knows, there is a prophecy that one day his chains will fall away of themselves, and the world eon of Zeus will dissolve” (281).
Moreover, by listing several profound differences, he suggests that the binding of
Prometheus may already be loosing its grip:
In this period of irreversible transition of society from an agricultural to industrial base, ... not the
piety of the planter, bowing humbly before the will of calendar and the gods of rain and sun [holds
the promise], but the magic of the laboratory, flying rocket ships where the gods once sat, holds the
promise of the boons of future. (281 )
To sum up Joseph Campbell’s opinions on the trickster it is needful to say that he sees in him the agent of change (capable of transcending humankind’s experience to another level) and a bringer of healing as well, if one accepts the trickster’s call for challenging the boundaries of the society which are no longer necessary. Campbell believes that the trickster is a counterpart of the shaman sharing similar traits and a mythological pattern which is slowly taking over control in current evolving stage of humankind, thus, diminishing the importance and the role of the old approach (standing in awe before the Spirit) that ruled the men’s society for quite some time.
Campbell ends his study, The Masks of God Primitive Mythology by saying that,
“The Promethean Trickster is now coming unbound within us—for the next world age. And
21 the priests of the chains of Zeus may well tremble; for the bonds are disintegrating of themselves” (281), which not only summarizes his approach to the trickster well but it also promotes this new perspective on the trickster coming unbound in these centuries which is a thought not common to his predecessors and, therefore, should be noted.
22
O Black Hawk American Indian houngan of Hoo-Doo
please do open some of these prissy orthodox minds so
that they will no longer call Black People’s American
experience “corrupt” “perverse” and “decadent.”
Please show them that Booker T and the MG’s, Etta
James, Johny Ace and Bojangle tapdancing is just as
beautiful as anything that happened anywhere else in
the world. Teach them that anywhere people go they
have experience and that all experience is art.
(“Yellow Back Radio Broke Down” 64)
23 3. The Rewriting of the Trickster Trope in the Fiction of Ishmael Reed
Having at least partially defined what the trickster is, we will now move on to studying the changing role Reed has attributed him in his novels. In spite of Reed’s rewriting of the trickster trope, we will see that some of the most general characteristics discussed in the previous chapter stay valid, whereas others have ceased to be of such importance. Thus we will see that Reed’s trickster is less liable to make a fool of himself; since, in most cases, he is used as a carrier of new ideas and opinions on what the society in which he lives should look like especially how the position of Afro Americans should be changed he is usually portrayed without having a peer. All the three trickster characters discussed here mediate this new attitude and operate among two societies: the white one and the black one. Thus, they retain the characteristic of being boundary crossers, bringers of new ideas and options, and given the fact that they have to struggle with almost the whole Caucasian society, Reed has given them a Legba like gift: they are masters of language who are not to be bested on the field of speech and on many similar levels as well.
24 3.1 The Trope of the Trickster in Yellow Back Radio Broke Down
Loop Garoo, the trickster character of Yellow Back Radio Broke Down , is the first of the three Reed’s trickster characters we will be discussing here. It is interesting to note that unlike the other two characters, in the beginning of the novel, Loop Garoo possesses no trickster like powers at all. He is a member of a circus and spends his time honing his acrobatic skills. It is no wonder that the transformation into a fully fledged trickster is triggered at crossroads. The circus arrives into the town called Yellow Back Radio, which is at the time under control of children who stupefied the grown ups and drove them away. The reasons for this being as follows:
We were tired of them, ordering us around. They worked us day and night in the mines, made us
herd animals harvest the crops and for three hours a day we went to school to hear teachers praise
the old … We decided to create our own fiction … They listened to this old woman on the talk
show who filled their heads with rot. She was against joy of life … and she put them in the same
mood. They always demanded we march and fight heathens. (16 17)
This is the classical setting for the trickster character, for he is standing between two possibilities; one presented by children, the other presented by grown ups. Creating such an opposition as a base for the whole storyline is undoubtedly one of hallmarks of Reed’s style.
Usually this opposition is constructed on the contrariness of the youth and the old where the former is connoted with joy of life and the latter with oppressive rules. Reed’s trickster character then operates in between of these two parts of society (at all times) promoting the interests of the youth.
Eventually, the circus members sympathize with the children and decide to perform a show for them thus they decide to stand on their side rather than on the side of the oppressive grown ups however, the owner of all the land, Drag, sends his men to the city and all but
25 Loop Garoo 8 and two kids are assassinated. Two very important things derive from this moment: Loop Garoo’s motive for revenge, and his transformation into a trickster which was started by the dying member of circus, “New Orleans Hoodoine Zozo Labrique”, who had initiated the process of his change before she died, “Flee boy, save yourself, I’m done for, the woman murmured pressing something into his hand. It’s a mad dog’s tooth it’ll bring you connoissance and don’t forget the gris gris, the mojo, the wangols old Zozo taught you and when you need more power play poker with the dead” (26).
All of the three survivors flee into desert where Loop Garoo meets Bo Shmo, a black quasi intellectual in league with the oppressing forces which killed Garoo’s companions.
Their meeting presents an important turn at which Loop Garoo identifies himself with the forces standing against the society:
The trouble with you Loop is that you are too abstract … Crazy dada nigger that’s what you are.
You are given to fantasy and are off in matters of detail. Far out esoteric bullshit is where you’re
at. Why in those suffering books that I write about my old neighborhood and how hard it was
every gumdrop machine is in place while your work is a blur and doodle. (36)
To which Loop responds by saying, “No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons” (36). This is an important theme of the Reed’s work; indeed, to attribute the trickster with powers of random behavior against any codex of oppressive rules seems to have great importance in his work and we can trace this feature in all the books chosen for this study. This approach resembles the structaralistic pattern of Strauss: the tension in the novel is based on the contrariness of opposites which allows a mediating position in between which is a domain of the trickster. In all of these novels, we can, thus, see the tricskter
8 For more information on how Reed is on the example of Loop Garoo and the register of words he uses rewriting texts of other Afro American authors, see Lindroth 192.
26 favouring the ‘younger’ side, opposing the other in much the same pattern as Strauss suggested.
It is my belief that up to this point the main intention of the author has been to create an environment of a crossroad: at one side there are the clearly defined forces of what life should look like, presented by the grown ups who had been in charge of Yellow Back Radio; at the other side, there is the undefined society of no rules, represented by children. And in between of these two possibilities operates the trickster, Loop Garoo, who with his personal motif of revenge decides to subverse and render the former in utter chaos. Untapping the forces from the mad dog’s tooth and boosting these powers with self initiatory Hoo Doo ritual
(61) he becomes a force to be reckoned with. Soon, he starts to overthrow the Yellow Back
Radio’s rigid society, based on the law of the corrupt sheriff and the mafia like syndicate ruled by Drag. First, he wittily subdues the corrupt sheriff and forces him to flee. Second, he undermines the authority of Drag and lessens his wealth important for the smooth bribing of the whole society (84).
Simply put, Loop Garoo undermines and ridicules all the forces which are in control of the society till the point where they posses no power over the society at all. In all instances he acts as a master linguist, unchallenged by anyone and his feats are done with his heavy reliance on Hoo Doo, on the forces opposing rules, heavily reliant on “arbitrarily scatting” with magical force:
Says he is practising some religion that is so old that man left caves with it. He said it’s magic. He
says he’s a sorcerer and that by making figures of his victims he entraps their spirits and is able to
manipulate them … Those expressions of his, Great Legba! and those chicken’s he’s always
sacrificing to crocodiles down at the marsh and the poems he’s always writing. He calls them
curses. (61)
In order to enact his personal vendetta, Loop Garoo challenges all the rigid forces opposing his tricksterish nature. Thus all which is stable, unmoving and dead is put into life as
27 Loop Garoo disrupts the bounding rules of Yellow Back Radio. In his acts, he stands on the side of the killed children and tries to make sure that no such thing will ever happen again, i.e. enacting his personal vendetta fluently leads to him irreversible changing the society in which he operates, “Never again will they burn carnivals and murder children. Loop Garoo had began his tailor made micro Hoo Doo mass to end 2000 years of bad news” (63).
In following this course he is so successful that the last possibility for the withering coon syndicate is to call upon the greatest personification of order and rules, upon the “pope of Atonists” in hope of eliminating Loop Garoo:
Thank a you citizens of Yellow Back Radio. I’m a come to cool things out and get rid of this
maleficiem what’s been making the cattle break out in sores, their milk to dry, that’s parching your
fields whith a plague in other words howdy pardners before I’m a adios everything will be really
really fine as wine in the summertime. (148)
When Loop Garoo is then subsequently caught and held in prison, this allowed by the treason of his companions, it surprisingly turns out that the Pope is not there to harm him,
“I didn’t come here to kill Loop Garoo Kid, I came to draw him out, to talk to him. If you think you can do away with him then you Americans are stupider meatheads than the rest of the world gives you credit” (166). We thus learn that, according to apocrypha (164), Loop
Garoo is the eldest son of the Prime Mover and thus has with his role of, “the fool vagabond with the rucksack on my shoulder always on the road. That’s me – the cosmic jester” (164), a stable and necessary place in the flow of the universe.
The novel ends in havoc when the only two surviving kids return to the city with the fascinating news of finding the place of “Seven Cities of Cibola 9”, “A place without gurus monarchs leaders cops tax collectors jails matriarchs patriarchs and all the other galoots who
9 Seven cities of Cibola were thought to be very rich cities located in North America, on the borders of North Mexico and Texas. Several Spanish expeditions were sent to seek their treasures, none of which was successful. The closest to success was the expedition which discovered the pueblos of Zuni Indians, yet, no riches were found.
28 in cavoots have made the earth a pile of human bones under the feet of wolves” (25). As everyone flees for the paradise like cities, Drag is accidentally eaten by hogs and Loop Garoo begins his way back to Heaven. In this sense, with all the evil characters gone or dead, everyone is freed of any oppressive elements whatsoever and the novel ends in the life giving chaos.
As we have seen, in Yellow Back Radio Broke Down , the role of Loop Garoo was to overthrow the corrupted environment through enacting his own personal vendetta. Thus he enabled the renewal of the flow of live, of everything that was earlier suppressed. This he had not done because of any charitable motifs to save the society. Rather, the final situation was a result of his craving for revenge intermingled with the wish to end the days of one, particular oppressor, and thus as I believe, he differs from the other trickster types of Ishmael Reed.
3.2 The Trope of the Trickster in Mumbo Jumbo
In Mumbo Jumbo , Reed’s second novel in our analysis, the first chapters introduce us into almost the same pattern of society as we have seen in the previous novel; there is one smaller part of it which is, metaphorically speaking, young at heart and alive (and is represented by Afro Americans) and then there is the other part, bigger, more powerful and rigid (which is presented by Caucasians).
However, there is a major change in the pattern; the role of the destroyer of the rigid is not carried out by the trickster character himself but by something vastly greater. We are told that there is a terrible plague which, “infects all that it touches” (13), it forces all the infected people to act spontaneously and it is so powerful that it can even influence whole cities in the beginning, “New Orleans is a mess … It sleeps after the night of howling, speaking in tongues, dancing to drums; watching strange lights streak across the sky” (17), but carried
29 abroad by European painters who had witnessed a jazz session it becomes pandemic (105) and it may as well sweep the whole world.
Given Reed’s literary tendencies we have witnessed in his previous novel, it is of no wonder that the ‘free’ minority, in which favour Jes Grew works, is of the Afro American origin; they are the minority struggling for greater freedom, whose tendencies are marred by white society, especially by its Christian members described by Reed as “Atonists” with their warring force called “Wallflower Order.” The tension between these two opposing parts of the same society is illustrated by the following quotation describing the viewpoint of the white society on the Afro Americans:
Look at them! Just look at them! Throwing their hips this way, that way while I, my muscles,
stone, the marrow of my spine plaster, my back supported by decorated paper, stand here as a
Goofy as a Dumb Dora. Lord, if I can’t dance, No one shall. (65)
In opposition to this and to everything presented by the Afro American minority as well, then, stands the society of Atonist with its main force, Wallflower Order:
The headquarters of the Wallflower Order. You have nothing real up here. Everything is
polyurethane, Polystyrene, Lucite, Plexiglas, acrylate, Mylar, Teflon, phenolic, polycarbonate. A
gallimaufry of synthetic materials. Wood you hate. Nothing to remind you of Human Seed. (62)
The Wallflower Order appointed the anti hero of the book, Hinkle von Vampton, the thousands years old librarian of long ago dissolved Templar Order, to battle Jes Grew. But given Jes Grew’s supernatural features it is not an easy task:
Jes Grew has no end and no beginning. It even precedes that little ball that exploded 1000000000s
of years ago and led to what we are now. Jes Grew may even have caused the ball to explode …
You see, life will never end; there is really no end to life, if anything goes it will be death. Jes
Grew is life. (204)
Yet, Jes Grew, even though he has the capacity to sweep the whole Earth, needs its text without which it will vanish soon and be merely a “flair up” (213).
30 Into this setting is then introduced PaPa LaBas, the trickster character of Mumbo
Jumbo , ‘a neo HooDoo detective’, who must find the text Jes Grew wants and oppose the actions of Hinkle von Vampton. Yet, unlike in the case of Loop Garoo, it is troublesome to establish PaPa LaBas as the trickster character; unlike the former, who rises to this rank by his subversive actions, PaPa LaBas does no such things. His tricksterish inactivity is particularly in contrast with the textual evidence proving his trickster status: he is a descendent of long line of people who brought African religion into America, and is capable of manifesting unusual powers, “people trust his powers. They’ve seen him knock a glass from a table by staring in its direction; and fill a room with the sound of forest animals: the panter’s ki ki ki , the elephant’s trumpet ” (24) 10 , his name being a Haitian name for the trickster Legba himself and this Legba like status being emphasized by several remarks of PaPa LaBas having two heads, which is a traditional way how to portrait Legba 11 ,
Evidence? Woman, I dream about it, I feel it, I use my 2 heads . My Knockings … are so accurate
they can chart the course of a hammerhead shark in an ocean 1000s of miles away … standing
here, I can open the basket of a cobra in an Indian Marketplace and charm the animal to sleep …
When the seasons change on Mars, I sympathize with them. (25 26) (Italics added)
Yet even though none of these powers are presented in the book, it is plain that PaPa
LaBas is a trickster. Looking at his position in his society, it is evident that he operates/mediates between two parts of it (the white and the Afro American part of society), by being a Hoo Doo detective (and by not doing any trickster like actions) he is a trickster per se .
PaPa LaBas can be regarded to be a trickster on the basis of two facts. First, he is a trickster because of his unceasing attempts, present through the whole course of the book, to liberate all the people he meets from the rigid and sterile parts of their personalities. Second,
10 For more information on PaPa LaBas and Read’s inspiration in the archetype of the wizard, see Hoffman 1247. 11 See Gates, chapters 1,2,3.
31 his actions to embed Jes Grew hard in the society i.e., to institutionalize an element of never ending chaos in sterile society renders the society in action, thus he changes the nature of the society from being ‘dead’ to being ‘alive’ which is precisely what the tricksters do.
By promoting all these things, he is an aspect of a greater cosmic trickster figure, i.e. of Jes
Grew (because J.G. evidently does all the things the trickster characters usually do; ponder the typical feature of the trickster ‘dupe and get duped’ with Jes Grew’s being able to affect half of the planet and then just vanish off, as it happens in the end of the book. The drawn parallel is evident) where Jes Grew is the part of the trickster persisting in carrying out all the traditional trickster actions and where PaPa LaBas is the more serious part of it, bringing the world the benefits of the realm of Gods (see Anansi bringing wisdom to the world and Legba the privacy of marriage bed), which in PaPa Legba’s case if he was successful would mean freeing the people of the world of their stiff behavioral habits.
In the course of the book then PaPa LaBas restricts himself only to carrying out his role of being a detective and his actions do follow this pattern: even though, since the very beginning of the book, he knows and feels what exactly the phenomenon of Jes Grew is (25), he has to trace its text and must undergo a thorough research concerning his topic. His actions, as depicted in the book, are more of the constant speaking sort rather than the constant acting sort (which is a surprising difference when compared with the character of
Loop Garoo, who, besides “arbitrarily scatting” through Yellow Back Radio Broke Down also keeps on carrying out many of his mischievous and subversive actions. PaPa LaBas, then, not only limits himself to a form of acting devoid of Loop Garoo’s ironic and satirical way of jesting, he also performs none of the mischievous art we would expect a trickster to enact).
Nonetheless, he eventually realizes who is obstructing Jes Grew’s way to success and when he has the chance, he and another occult character of the book, Black Herman, seize
Hinkcle von Vampton, and after a long speech on the topic of history of trickstery, illustrating
32 the real nature of Jes Grew and the role of the trickster in it (150 190), they escort von
Vampton to a group of Haitian Hoo Doo men, relying on them fixing his end.
In this way, it is essential to note that PaPa LaBas who, “carries Jes Grew in him like most other folks carry genes” (23), is the more serious part of the greater cosmic trickster,
“Jes Grew”, aimed at achieving results rather than on carrying out witty actions; and that he clearly demonstrates this by capturing the supposedly most obstructive element of Jes Grew,
Hincle von Vampton. In this sense, his role and importance as a trickster is evidently more evolved and important than that of Loop Garoo. Where Loop Garoo’s actions freed a small city, PaPa LaBas (with his Hoo Doo psychiatry 12 and his American Hoo Doo practising) presents a greater importance in lives of many people, and his actions would were they successful—would help the cosmic trickster to seize the whole society which would be an act of much greater importance and consequences than any of the actions of Loop Garoo.
3.3 The Trope of the Trickster in The Terrible Twos
If in both of the two preceding novels Reed used similar patterns in creating the basic setting and tension between two opposing parts of society; and if the stakes from the first novel doubled in the second, then (considering the threat which is in this novel capable of endangering the whole of North America) they are certainly at least three time as big in the third one. For while Reed uses exactly the same devices for building the story line (one joyful part of society against the bigger and joyless other, chaos contra control, life against sterility), he slowly raised the bets his trickster has in the game of life, and the danger and tension involved. His trickster started seeking revenge in the first book, in the second he strived for
12 In this sense, PaPa LaBas seems to function in accordance with the ideas of Jung and Campbell. Judging from his actions depicted in the novel, he is the agent of healing and the promoter of light for the place where he works, Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral, has all the features a normal psychiatric ward has.
33 freeing his community, but in the third rewriting of the trickster trope the trickster has much higher aims in mind than his predecessors.
For in this book we surely can find all the motifs of the preceding books, yet there are unexpected instances of new ones as well: namely, there is the danger of ecological crisis and the motif of the fight against huge, on consumption based society as well. The trickster is again mainly concerned with duping the rigid part the society which, of course, was present in the preceding books. Yet, where in the first book the small city of Yellow Back Radio was endangered, and where in the second book trickster fought for promoting of the Afro
American ethnic, in the third book the fate of the whole of North America is at stake. Where the trickster used to oppose a coon man or a society of crooks, now he has to oppose a syndicate of men holding control over the most influential posts in the American society: businessmen in control of supermarkets and general stores, men in charge of the church and men puppeteering the president of the United States. Moreover, the trickster has in mind even the fate of the planet which is a new element not to be found in the preceding books.
The basic tension is once again based on the contrariness of two opposites: in The
Terrible Twos the situation is modelled on the opposition between the poor and the rich. The rich are in control, the poor can do nothing and the middle class is urged to heighten their dependency on the consumer society style of life and thus, indirectly, support the rich. This scheme is based on the figure of Santa Claus which had been bought and copyrighted by one of the syndicate men who hired an actor whose main role is to push on children and families to buy more presents, spend more money, i.e. to force the people to intensify the differences between the two groups, “A charter flight would take him [Santa Claus] and his party to New
York. They would spend the rest of the day greeting department store executives, toy manufactures, before their grand welcome to New York City, marking the official beginning of the Christmas season” (36).
34 This society at crossroads (two poles of being poor or rich, of consumption or starving, of destroying life and environs vs. creating and preserving) is bound to attract the trickster.
And he comes in the character of Black Peter. Once again, as in Yellow Back Radio Broke
Down , the trickster character is an opponent of established faith. Where Loop Garoo opposed the character of Jesus (being, in fact, his older brother 164), Black Peter holds the same position; he belongs to a religious community outlawed by the Vatican, to the Nicolaites, comprising of from individuals dragged off the streets of New York, of criminals and prostitutes, led by a bishop who has too much faith in the Saint Nicholas, an opponent of
Christ as Vatican believes (76). Since Reed used very similar patterns to create the basic plotline in his preceding two novels, we may consider this as one of the typical hallmarks of his writing style:
The Church was always nervous that Nicholas’s reputation would outflank Christ’s. Not only had
he performed miracles and raised the dead as Christ had done, not only was he ubiquitous as Christ
was, but he could fly as well. Christ could ascend, but Nicolas could fly! The Vatican, as the years
passed, became more and more hostile to Nicholas. In 1969, the Pope declared Nicholas
“moribund.“ ... There was an illustration of Nicolas, the jolly old man, with a laurel wreath on his
head and a silver cup full of wine, naked from the waist up, surrounded by half clad women,
presiding over a decadent and voluptuous supper His waist was a pink Good year tire. Oral sex
was suggested. (120)
The name Black Peter is derived from a legend where the character bearing this name stands for a small, moorish boy whose aim was to help Saint Nicholas 13 , “He became Black
Peter, a small dark spanish page boy who traditionally serves Saint Nicholas. He was some sort of a porter. He carried Nicholas’s bags. But in some versions, Nicholas carries his bags.
There was always a question about who did what for whom” (81). In the novel, the character of Black Peter arrives to the community as a puppeteer who has lost his puppet, and for the time being, before he finds a new one, he is supposed to stay in the community. But Black
35 Peter finds a new puppet very soon: first, he gains a prestigious and controlling position in the community and second, by magic, he stupefies and puppeteers the main weapon of the opposing side, the character of Santa Claus which is revealed only at the end of the book and till that point Santa acts as Black Peter wishes and, of course, Black Peter, being a trickster, wishes different things than the previous ‘owners’ of Santa Claus.
In this way then, he forces Santa Claus to make a speech motivating everyone to boycott the comsumptionist face of Christmas, which is widely applauded and agreed on, and motivates people to stop “measure life in profit and loss” (31). It is exactly here, where he also shows how the concerns for the environmentally friendly life of America are important for to him:
I say we fight the people who destroyed the Adirondack lakes, the New Jersey shore, and Niagara
Falls. I say it’s time to fight the people who rob us in the supermarket and give our children, slow,
agonizing leukemia death. I say it’s about time to fight people who gave us acid rain, fight the
people who destroyed the ozone belt, and the carbon dioxide excreters whose wastes will soon
cause the oceans to rise twenty feet. (97)
Which is in the same way as is the multitude of enemies against which the trickster stands this time unprecedented in previous books. Black Peter not only opposes the coon men (as did Loop Garoo in much smaller extent) and clergy (as did PaPa LaBas), he opposes them both, at the same time, moreover, he has taken on evidently ecological ’guerrilla’ war as well.
This element is then more elaborated on in Reed’s retelling of the struggles of Native
Americans who wished to preserve their connection with nature and its symbols; namely on the example of the side story where a sacred tree ought to be cut down and only a tribal chief opposes this possibility by refusing to leave the vicinity of the tree, thus obstructing the actual cutting down of it (37).
13 See Lindroth 190.
36 However, it is important to note that the trickster works in The Terrible Twos in a similar way as it does in Mumbo Jumbo no longer it is a single person as is the case with
Loop Garoo in these books the trickster is more depicted as an organisation rather than a single person: in Mumbo Jumbo it consisted of two parts: of PaPa LaBas and of Jes Grew. In
The Terrible Twos the trickster can be seen as an organisation as well, yet, this time, the organisation is bigger than it was in Mumbo Jumbo; it consists of three parts: of Black Peter, of Saint Nicolas and of the Nicolaites.
In this sense, the figure of Saint Nicolas is very interesting: it operates independently and yet in with the plan of the Nicolaites. His position of being the trickster is then reaffirmed when, showing the puppeteered president the fate of previous presidents in hell, he takes him by an elevator to another sphere of reality, “Because it was the elevator that made the United
States, at one time, the most powerful capitalistic country in the world, because without elevators you couldn’t have skyscrapers. And so in the elevator we go from world to world, an elevator that never gets stuck between worlds” (109).
In describing his effortless ascending and descending between worlds, Reed shows us how easy it is for Saint Nicholas – and for Black Peter and his helpers as well – to be tricksters and proceed with their actions without any hindrance. Because, “Crossroads figures in Vodoun are associated with elevators because going from time to time is like riding in an elevator. The time elevator is such a smooth ride that you feel as if you’re standing still”
(126).
But, as the case usually is with the tricksters, their prize flees them and this stays true even for such capable examples of them as were discussed above. Yet, much good has arisen from their actions, and as is the trickster’s case in Fon tribe of West Africa, a lot of people were taught a lesson how to live their lives better. Even though the prize flees them at the end, for the trickster it does not mean much because the most important thing were those acts of
37 committing all the witty, boundary crossing actions, and practically no one can deny that there has been quite a few of these actions in The Terrible Twos , for example: the duping of the
Santa Claus, fooling of the coon men and effortlessly eloping the police at the end of the novel .
Moreover, as the textual evidence proves, Reed’s third trickster character is quite unique, since not only has the importance of his aims risen unexpectedly, also the strength of the forces he had to trick (and their cunning) is higher than the forces the other tricksters had to dupe in two preceding novels. Thus I perceive the character of Black Peter as a third evolutionary stage in the course of life of his rewriting of the trickster trope.
38
Zamir: But anyway, why this prominence of trickster?
Reed: I don’t know, maybe it’s just something in the air.
(Zamir 1145)
39
4. Conclusion
The main goal of this study was to closely examine the way how Ishmael Reed is rewriting the trope of the trickster, in his three books chosen for this study: Yellow Back
Radio Broke Down , Mumbo Jumbo and The Terrible twos . However, in order to be able to do so properly, the study covers some of the most important ideas concerning the trickster first.
Thus this study consists of two parts: a theoretical and a literary part. In the theoretical part the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, Claude Lévi Strauss and Joseph Campbell are interpreted in order to bring the psychoanalytical, structuralistic and mythological approach together and thus create balanced overview of the ideas concerning the phenomenon of the trickster.
In the literary part, after having defined what the word trickster denotes, the study focuses on the way in which Reed is rewriting the trope of the trickster. Thesis of this study is then based on the ideas of Robert Gates Jr. who claims that Afro American writers are much rather interested in creative rewriting of already known patterns than in invention of new plots and storylines. Bearing this mind, this study focuses on the process how Reed rewrites the trope of the trickster and considerably changes his role in each of the three novels. The thesis is then that the dynamics of the trickster (meaning the extent of influence he is capable of manifesting) gradually rises during the scope of the three novels. The aim of this work was then to prove that his actions have greater and greater impact on his surrounding and are capable of influencing more and more people.
The study covers this theme in the three literary chapters where the individual instances of the trickster Loop Garoo, PaPa LaBas and Black Peter are defined and compared with each other. From this comparison is then evident that the thesis is valid because it proves that the extent of the ability to influence people of PaPa LaBas is greater than that of Loop Garoo. And in the same way, Black Peter is able to manifest greater
40 influence than PaPa LaBas. With this ‘boosting’ of power goes along the rise in the difficulty that each instance of the trickster has to overcome in order to achieve his goals, and, thus, the character of Black Peter must be (and is) much more ‘trickier’ than Loop Garoo in order to achieve success.
Hence, the power and the hardships the instances of the trickster have to cope with rise gradually and even according to the dates when the novels were published: they are relatively small in Yellow Back Radio Broke Down (published in 1969), bigger in Mumbo Jumbo
(published in 1972) and they acquire their highest status in The Terrible Twos (published in
1982).
Both parts of this study displayed that the trickster has always played an important role in the course of the human evolution equally as important in real life as in humanities and this study hopes that it has emphasised his important role aptly.
41 5. Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo . New York: Scribner, 1996.
, The Terrible Twos . Normal: Dalkey, 1999.
, Yellow Back Radio Broke Down . New York: Atheneum, 1988.
Secondary Sources:
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces . New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2004.
Campbell, Joseph. The masks of God: Primitive Mythology . Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary
Criticism . New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art . New York: North Point
P, 1999.
Hynes, William, and William Doty. “Historical Overview of Theoretical Issues: the Problem
of the Trickster.” Hynes and Doty 13 32.
Hynes, William, and William Doty, eds. Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and
Criticisms . Tuscaloosa, Alabama: U of Alabama P, 1993.
42 Jung. “On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure.” The Trickster: A Study in American
Indian Mythology . Radin, Paul. New York: Schocken, 2002.
Lévi Strauss, Claude. Mythologica.[1], Syrové a vařené . Praha: Argo, 2006.
Lévi Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind . London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962.
Lévi Strauss, Claude. Structural anthropology . New York: Basic, 1963.
Pelton, Robert D. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred
Delight . Berkeley: U of California P, 1980.
Ricketts, Linscott M. “The Shaman and the Trickster.” Hynes and Doty 87 105.
Vecsey, Christopher. “The Exception Who Proves the Rules: Ananse the Akan Trickster.”
Hynes and Doty 106 121.
Wilden, Anthony. “Structuralism as Epistemology of Closed Systems.” The Unconscious in
culture: The structuralism of Claude Lévi Strauss in Perspective . Ed. Ino Rossi. New
York: Dutton, 1974. 306 310.
Electronical Articles:
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Introduction: Criticism in De Jungle.” Black American Literature
Forum 15.4 (1981):123 127. JSTOR . Masaryk U Lib., Brno, CR. 20 March 2007.
43
Hoffman, Donald L. “A Darker Shade of Grail: Questing at the Crossroads in Ishmael Reed's
‘Mumbo Jumbo.’” Callaloo 17.4 (1994):1245 1256. JSTOR . Masaryk U Lib., Brno, CR.
20 March 2007.
Lindroth, James. “Images of Subversion: Ishmael Reed and the Hoodoo Trickster.” African
American Review 30.2 (1996): 185 196. JSTOR . Masaryk U Lib., Brno, CR. 20 March
2007.
Swope, Richard. “Crossing Western Space, or the HooDoo Detective on the Boundary in
Ishmael Reed’s ‘Mumbo Jumbo.’” African American Review 36.4 (2002): 611 628.
JSTOR . Masaryk U Lib., Brno, CR. 20 March 2007.
“The Trickster.” The Free Dictionary . Farlex. 20 March 2007.
Zamir, Shamoon. “An Interview with Ishmael Reed.” Callaloo 17.4 (1994): 1131 1157.
JSTOR . Masaryk U Lib., Brno, CR. 20 March 2007.
44