Appomattox Court House
So I'm done with A Confederacy of Dunces.
In response to one of my previous blog posts, Himavath said something along the lines of "Since this takes place in the 1960s south, I'm guessing that this will have something to do with the issue of Civil Rights." For my initial reading, my response to that was basically "Not at all." However, upon closer inspection, it definitely seems like this book address racial issues, though not in a way you'd expect. Rather, this book addresses the idea of "Modern Slavery." The black citizens in Dunces are not legally slaves, they are forced to remain second class citizens through other methods. For example, the character of Burma Jones is arrested for stealing cashew nuts. Though it is heavily implied that he did nothing wrong, once he gets out of jail, he would have to get a job, or risk being arrested again. This would force him to the much worse jobs. This is featured again, with the fact that all of the workers in Levy Jeans are black. In fact, this theme is outright said by Ignatius, in a rare moment of brilliance.
"It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Fritz LAng's Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents the progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it. " (119)
In this quote, Ignatius out right says this theme, making it not that ambiguous.
There is also the nature of Ignatius himself. As I mentioned before, in many ways, he feels like a modern Don Quixote, with his incredibly out of place idealism. One of the things that he believes is that all of his sufferings are not because of him, but because fate is playing games with him. However, in an interesting twist, Ignatius is basically a walking karma deliverer. Because of him, Miss Trixie gets her retirement, Manusco gets a promotion, and Liz, betty, and Freida ens up in prison, among other things.
I enjoyed this book. Sure, the humor was, subtle, but it was there. However, I feel like I have to go back to what I said earlier, about how peopel consider this the funnist book ever written. So does it live up to that claim? Not really, as I still prefer the likes of Vonnegut and Catch-22. However, this was still an enjoyable book.
John,
ReplyDeleteI have heard the title of this book before, but I actually had no idea what the book was about. It sounds really interesting though, and based on your analysis I'd imagine it offers a fresh, unique take on an incredibly prevalent issue that still affects society. The idea that what happens to people does not just stem from their individual actions is familiar to something Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers (the book I just read). He said that nobody is "self-made," because the environment in which we live has a lot to do with what we do. Great job with this post!