The Significance of Charlotte and Pick’s Performance in Mumbo Jumbo
Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo has many characteristics that indicate its alignment with historical writing practices despite being a fictional novel, including the inclusion of imagery, citations, and a partial bibliography. Another one of these practices involves his use of parentheses to add further input to certain details and events he describes. One parenthesized instance I found particularly interesting was the explanation of Charlotte and Pick’s play. In the story, within a plantation house, Peter Pick, “impersonating a cunjah man”, summons Charlotte by reciting the words of a magic book and starts to make love with her, only to realize that this summoning has caused bloodhounds to start approaching (43). He tries “to send her back to where he conjured her” by asking the angel and devil, who just happen to be passing by, to read the words, but these attempts are unsuccessful (43-44). Ultimately, Charlotte reads the words and Pick disappears as the bloodhounds are...