If there's anything I've noticed so far in Mumbo Jumbo, it's that it's a pretty confusing book. There's a lot of characters, and a whole lot of stuff going on. What should I focus on? Who should I focus on? There's the Wallflower Order, the Knight's Templar, the Mu'tafika...Warren G. Harding is a president planted by the Order. There's something going around as Jes Grew, and the Wallflowers are trying to stop it? But why? And why's the book called Mumbo Jumbo? Well, I think that it has to do with the book being so far, a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo.
Now what's mumbo jumbo, one might ask? According to Merriam-Webster, there are multiple definitions, but the most fitting ones here are "unnecessarily involved and incomprehensible language", as well as "language, behavior or beliefs based in superstition", which just like Mumbo Jumbo itself brnigs up originated with the Mandingo people of west Africa. There's a lot of relatively incomprehensible language, as well as superstition going on, so mumbo jumbo is most definitely involved, though indirectly. And this language is on both sides of the story.
For one, you have the "Jes Grew". What is this? The Wallflower Order treats it like an illness or disease, which must be eradicated. But it really doesn't seem to be a huge deal. It's just the new dance craze, coming in with jazz and merging with the ragtime era, which we discussed a lot with our last book, aptly named Ragtime. Jonah brought up a really interesting point, saying that "Jes Grew" sounded like a mispronunciation of "jazz groove", and represents not only jazz but the entrance of black culture into mainstream America. It's a really good point, considering "Jes Grew" is nonsensical on its own...it must mean something, after all! In fact, if you start saying "Jes Grew" over and over again quickly, it kinda morphs into jazz groove. It wouldn't surprise me either, that outsiders screw up and misunderstand whatever they're trying to figure out, and in this case, stop.
Then there's also the Mu'tafika? Who are they? I mean, I've heard of the Knight's Templar, the Masons, the Illuminati, and the affiliation of the Wallflower Order makes sense, but these guys aren't part of the established conspiracies running everything for years. Nick Cage hasn't gone up against these guys or found their treasure yet, after all. Unlike the Jes Grew, there name doesn't seem to be made up by the whites but is rather a name of some sort, and not a mispronunciation of a term for one who performs Oedipal actions.. Research shows up that "Mohammedan writers [wrote about] the mu'tafika, i.e. the Sodom of the Bible", so there seems to be a connection to real things, presumably Islamic in nature, which in turn fits with the ties it has with Abdul Sufi Hamid.
There's a whole lot of things which may at first seem like mumbo jumbo in Mumbo Jumbo, but with some interpretation and research, some of the confusing aspects of the novel can be cleaned up and become less unknown and more integrated into the complex, confusing plot of the novel.
On a side note...similarly to Ragtime, the novel seems to be starting with a lot of character introduction and setup, making it quite disorienting at first. There's also some plot similarities, especially in the Atonist plot, which hopes to bring in a figure similar to Booker T. Washington in Ragtime. I wonder what's gonna happen next...there's also, once again, the integration of fictional and real characters into a world which is both true and false at the same time. Love the whole "what is history" discussions we've had, so I can't wait to see how this plays in here.
Hope you enjoyed reading!
Jacob
...ha ha... planted... by the Wallflower
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I was kind of surprised that "jazz groove" was brought up in class before "just grew." After all, both instances of "jes' grew" in the gray page of quotes between chapters 1 and 2 feature an apostrophe -- terribly indicative of dialect spelling for "just grew." The association with jazz didn't even cross my mind, but I suppose it's nice to have multiple meanings. I don't have much else to say, though. I'm still reeling from the constant plot whiplash and awful number of characters I have to keep track of, and I'm really not the type to go for extra research, however useful it may be. I guess I can only wait and see if the confusion lets up any without outside help.
I agree that there seems to be a lot of different things going on in the book, and as such it is a confusing read. The idea that everything is so confusing and yet that there are patterns and ideas that are emerging that in many ways do reflect the time period. I think that this usage of the language represents the idea that any time period in history can't be represented by one clean narrative. Another key point is that, as you mentioned, this book is very open to different interpretations of ideas, and this is more evidence of the sentiment that no one narrative can give us an understanding of this period in history.
ReplyDeleteIt's absolutely essential to recognize the irony in Reed's title, and how this relates to the novel's themes. In common (Atonist) parlance, "mumbo jumbo" has come to mean something like gibberish, as you say. This is not the word's original meaning; it's the derisive meaning it took on in the West, as a way of marginalizing and delegitimizing African culture and religious practice. The *original* definition, given in part by Reed as an epigraph, refers to a sacred and serious part of Mandingo spiritual culture: so non-Western practices are turned into "superstition" and "hocus-pocus" in their translation to colloquial English, and Reed is suggesting that this is part of a much larger effort to not take such worldviews at all seriously.
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