Evidence of Historiographic Metafiction: Middle Passage by Charles Johnson - Term Paper Example

Evidence of Historiographic Metafiction in "Middle Passage" By Charles Johnson Middle Passage is a novel written in 1990 by Charles Johnson about an American slave ship’s final voyage. Its setting is in 1830. It tells the story of Rutherford Calhoun, a slave who has been freed, and his unwitting boarding of an African bound slave ship, in New Orleans to run from a marriage that is forced to Isadora. He manages to stow away on the ship after meeting the ship’s cook while drinking. The ship is on a mission to collect slaves from a tribe called Allmuseri. As the voyage progresses, Rutherford’s earlier self-absorption makes way for a humbling lesson that imparts on him the importance of respecting and valuing humanity. Eventually, the ship sinks due mainly to the passengers’ sailing inexperience. Juno rescues most of the survivors, and Rutherford finds out that that Isadora is on board and is engaged to marry the sunken ship’s part owner, Papa. Rutherford uses his influence, due to his possession of the sunken ship’s log of which Papa wants to get Isadora back, whom he marries. This paper aims to discuss evidence of historiographic metafication in this novel. Historiographic metafication is a post-modern form of art which relies on parody, textual play, and historical re-conceptualization (Gilbert 1). Instead of projecting standards and beliefs of the present world to the past, it asserts the particularity and specificity of the past event in an individual form. It seeks to add information on past events onto classic narrative genres. Middle Passage is a slave story in the modern day that is written in the manner of classic narratives from that era (Gilbert 1). The novel expands on this genre and makes it a search for the individual self. The novel aims to expand the slave narrative, which forms the roots of literature of African Americans. The novel is written in a way that symbolizes the life of a slave in the 1800s without using present day traits of African Americans. Rather, it uses the opportunity to expand on this genre by introducing some new aspects that explain life in that era. The author discusses the genetic contamination of America during that time, where he insinuates that blacks and whites contaminated each other both genetically and culturally. Rutherford undergoes a transformation throughout the book to a white man like American from a social parasite (Gilbert 2). The author aims to make the reader disregard ideologies of race, which is clearly an expansion of this narrative since race is a crucial theme of this genre through history. Instead of being a narrative about breaking away from slavery, it deals with Rutherford’s discovery of higher order assimilation. While the author borrows from the classic slavery narrative, he expands on in order for Rutherford to assimilate an understanding of humanity that is greater than what he knew before. Rutherford has no desire to run away from slavery, as is common with most slave narratives, since he obtained a release freely (Gilbert 2). Rutherford admits to being as kleptomaniac. However, rather than face the monstrous beatings that characterize earlier slave narratives, he experiences, on every Saturday, two castor oil teaspoonfuls. His eloquence, unlike the classic slave, is super-eloquent, reflecting a caring former master. The author synthesizes this gentler environment for Rutherford in order to project a different side of pre-civil war times. He seems to propose that there existed slave masters who wanted nothing more than to free, at the first opportunity, all their slaves. These masters did not approve of slavery, but rather found it difficult to free the slaves due to the world that surrounded them. Rutherford is running away from the mafia of New Orleans and is assisted monetarily by Isadora, a woman. The novel is also striking in its expansion of this genre due to the lack of love in Rutherford’s life. Instead, we are regaled with Rutherford’s flight from marriage. He contends that “people fell in love as they might into a hole; it was something I thought a smart man avoided” (Little 15). By the end of the novel, this apparent diehard bachelor admits his growing love for Baleka, an orphaned slave girl that he adopted, and for Isadora. This shows how Rutherford has changed over time from his slave mentality. He also changes physically via his premature aging, while also going through a metamorphosis of a spiritual kind, via exposure to other cultures during the voyage. Middle Passage tasks us to reconsider notions that are preconceived about history, identity, and the accuracy of history (Steinberg 1490). Despite its context in the tradition of slavery, it raises in the mind of the reader the extent of Rutherford’s development and growth into a better person, and the premise of his commentary about freedom, slavery, and the status of contemporary African American women and men. He rewrites the slave narrative radically by inserting philosophical and interpersonal musings into the gaps glaring from earlier slave narratives. The author focuses on written history’s veracity, making distinctions, connections between what as experienced, and what was recorded via writing. He turns history into fiction by taking historical events and putting it into words. This fiction may or may not contain omissions and truths. The novel demonstrates that by taking historical events and fictionalizing them, the author can extend the power over these historical events. The author demonstrates that by fictionalizing the truth, it is possible to overwrite the classic narratives of slaves. He overwrites the slave narrative tradition just as Rutherford overwrote the Republic Captain’s logbook. His subsequent slavery historical writings claim to be true (Steinberg 1490). The novel revises the slave narrative tradition via the comprehension of historical text and oneself (Steinberg 1491). The novel shows interest in the debunking of cultural and racial differences myth. It shows that, in spite of any differences that are apparent, we are all connected to each other intimately and with each other’s ancestors. The novel relies on other historical, literary, and philosophical allusions not to write a narrative on the slavery era, but rather to make it a collection of all other narratives and to expand on them while giving its own view. There is also a difficulty in the reconciliation of the novel’s ideas on the connectedness of inter-subjective nature and the novel’s apparent chaos and randomness in its plot (Steinberg 1491). The novel aims to contradict its chaos by redefinition and imposition of home’s significance (Steinberg 2). The novel reflects slave narratives by its insistence on location of a home as an ownership and identity centre. Home remains, for Rutherford, a possibility of unity and stability but never fully realized. Rutherford is forced to call the un-homely ship, the Republic, his home for a, while. The novel attempts to describe how the Allmuseri and Europeans are different, but also how they resemble one another (Steinberg 1492). This is an attempt at re-writing history via fictionalizing of the same history. The Allmuseri, being a synthesis of tribes, encompass a conglomeration of cultures that existed in pre-modern times. They, however, represent a dissonance. Europeans were once members of the Allmuseri tribe, but committed what the Allmuseri considered the worst of sins. Their failure to achieve an experience of unity was to them hell’s vision. The tribe is a representation of the slave masters guilt, which is indicative of self-loathing. A fantasy encompasses wholesomeness. According to the novel, difference is then not meaningful, but rather external, assuming any meaning because of those who strive to rove the difference, and assume that it is in existence (Steinberg 1492-1493). The European/ Allmuseri connection is concluded at the end of the novel’s narrative (Storhoff 56). There has been coupling of the two cultures by the conclusion. Santos, after learning papa’s trade involves slaves claims that his grand father called himself by the name of the Allmuseri and that his grandfather’s side of the family was descended from that tribe. The remaining three members of the Allmuseri tribe will be taken care of by Papa himself, with Rutherford recognizing an interconnectedness that he referred to as intimate, with the young orphan girl, Baleka (Storhoff 56). He adopts the girl and insinuates that this girl may be related to Santos. The Allmuseri’s clan god stands out for his seeming ambiguity. It exists as a living contradiction as it is chained, needs to be fed, and has limited knowledge. We are required to question Rutherford’s reliability on this since he makes the exact existence of this god seem questionable (Storhoff 57). Middle passage is a classic example of historiographic metafication. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in the US in 1990 because, mainly of its expansion of knowledge into the slavery era via its fictionalization of historical facts. Its view of all men as interconnected, especially in the slavery era was a new and exciting addition to this classic slavery narrative genre. Works Cited Gilbert J. Charles Johnson and Toni Morrison: Expansion of the Slave Narratives. 10 March 1997. Print Little J. Charles Johnson's spiritual imagination. Columbia: University of Missouri press, 1997. Print Steinberg M. "Charles Johnson's middle passage: fictionalizing history and historicizing fictin." Greenwood encyclopedia of multiethnic American literature / ed. by Emmanuel S. Nelson, vol. 3. (2005): 1490-1510. Print Storhoff, Gary. Understanding Charles Johnson. Columbia: University of South Carolina press, 2004. Print Read More