After I read the last few chapters of Mumbo Jumbo, everything seemed
to be coming to a nice simple conclusion, all of the ends of the story were
wrapping up in a (admittedly long-winded) convenient ending. But the epilogue
kinda threw me for a loop, with Jes Grew dying out and then the jump to the
future with PaPa LaBas' speech at the university (and the Jes Grew holiday).
I went back and re-read the epilogue and
the ending and after a bit of thought, it makes a little more sense to me now.
Jonah mentioned in his latest blog post some stuff about "cyclic"
history and I think that's what really made it click for me. The fact that Jes
Grew comes and goes in waves can be seen as a metaphor for a number of
different things throughout history. Think of the quote "those who do not
learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." While this doesn't deal with
social trends such as Jes Grew, it talks about how things seem to repeat
themselves throughout history.
Another aspect of this is the different
manifestations of Jes Grew. We are told in LaBas' ending narration that when
Hinkle Von Vampton first brought the text to America, Jew Grew appeared in the
manifestation of Ragtime music and culture. Then the main setting of the story
has Jes Grew appear during the birth of Jazz and the era of the Blues.
In class today we talked about modern
aspects of Jes Grew, and a big one that came up was Rap and Hip Hop culture. It
seemed to definitely follow the pattern of an "underground" origin
story in the "low brow" African American neighborhoods, before
breaking into the mainstream music scene. One thing that also came up in this
discussion was whether or not rap is "dead" (Dr. Dre is in his 60's
right now!). Although we saw the beginning of what seemed to be a
"takeover" of rap by white rappers with groups like the Beastie Boys
and Vanilla Ice, in the present day rap is still almost exclusively dominated
by African American artists and groups.
This cyclic "resurgence" of Jes
Grew throughout history helped me have a framework for the history that Ishmael
Reed is presenting in Mumbo
Jumbo. In addition to Jes
Grew, the cyclic view of history seems to be (as Jonah pointed) more
straightforward and seems to explain most things.
One of the things that bugs me the most about the ending of the novel is how "conveniently" Reed wraps everything up. The bad guys are caught, but the text is burned and Jes Grew fizzles out for a while and now is viewed as "history" (hence the holiday). After reading your blog post I think that what Reed really is going for in the epigraph is how Jes Grew never really dies but repeats itself in cycles, but maybe under a different "name". The ancient Egyptians didn't call it "Jes Grew," but it was the same concept: even though in the future "Jes Grew" has fizzled out with the burning of the text, it manifests itself into other aspects of our culture.
ReplyDeleteI think that the ending does refer to Jes Grew actually dying though. While it was under different names in the past, it was always the same core thing, which was directly related to the text that was created along with the movement. The fact that the text has been destroyed seems to imply that the movement as a whole, not just the Jes Grew epidemic, is going to die out, that the cycle may be over, which kind of gives the ending a pessimistic light.
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