Comparative Analysis Between Two Trickster Tales

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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN TWO TRICKSTER TALES
Two of literature’s complex pieces come together under scrutiny in this comparative literary analysis -- The Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight. In 1989, Maxine Hong Kingston published her third installment from her original fictions, The Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book. Set in the 1960s, the tale follows Chinese-American Wittman Ah Sing in his San Francisco escapades -- from his relationships to his cultural conflicts finding it difficult to accept his Chinese ancestry. Later on and almost throughout his adventures, he fixates on how he is so similar to that of Journey to the West’s Sun Wukong, a Monkey King. However, in the end, he comes into terms with his conflicts and accepts his culture and ancestry. On the other hand, Sherman Alexie published The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in 1993. Frequently identified as a short-story collection, this book contains twenty-two interconnecting tales, which have recurring characters. Two young male Native Americans, Victor and Thomas, occupy the protagonist roles, whose tales depict their history with their family and the people who live in the Spokane Indian Reservation, their desires, and their relationships. Noticing how both books comprise of cultural flair, there are certainly more similarities between the two yet are different from each other. In this essay, how these two tales relate to one another will be determined.
Among the focal points of their similarities, Tripsmaster Monkey: His Fake Book and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven centers around the trickster figure. He is often the main character of tales described by multiculturalism and postmodernism. In other words, a cultural paladin of indigenous myths. Exaggeration finds its way as a feature distinctive of such specified fiction. Although exaggerated, reality floats somewhere in the mainstream (Jacobs, 2006). Wittman Ah Sing rather unequivocally refers to a traditional trickster character, the Monkey King. Because he is of Asian physique, he experiences the stereotypical racial discrimination; however, this is self-inflicted as he does not accept that norms of his own ancestry. He appoints himself on the margins of social-cultural standing, setting his own platform for misdemeanor, which pinpoints the defects of both his ethnic community and the American society. The Monkey King inserts a scenario each time he could as a result of Wittman Ah Sing’s disruptive orchestrations. For instance, the scene where he reads to a Chinese-American woman a poetry he created in an attempt of seduction, the said woman tells him how it sounds “black”. He starts to imitate the Monkey King, angrily jumping around and dauntingly yelling at her. Another appearance of the Monkey imitation is depicts when he hears a racist trifle in a restaurant:
“You like jokes? I tell you joke. What’s ten inches long and white? Nothing, ha ha. Every gringo doesn’t have one. Why you not laughing? I funny, you not funny. You nauseating. You ruin my dinner. You slur all over my food with dirty not-funny joke.” (Kingston 214)
He ends up ranting to the jokers as he assumes the joker changed his punchline from “Chinese to Mexican” upon spotting Wittman. Having claimed the Monkey King role, Wittman sheds light on the military industrial complex’s oppressive nature and inconsistencies. In an attempt to form a society where people suffer the same plights as his (from army draft to unemployment to sexual stereotypes to capitalism), he writes and stages a magnificent Chinese play; and, only when he does is that he finally gains peace with his heritage. However, it is not until the last part where he celebrates, alluding to an:
“underground” where he “could hide” “until the war was over” (Kingston 340).
Third mode of critical mimicry, opposition, and conformity -- all of which Wittman considers as possibilities. However, as he changes his characters in portraying his plays, his views seem to change too. He decides to not hide anymore and ascertains he won’t draft for the army. In Wittman’s play, he stages heroism in the “War of the Three Kingdoms”:
“The three brothers and Cho Cho were masters of war; they had worked out strategies and justifications so brilliantly that their policies and their tactics are used even today, even by governments with nuclear-powered weapons. And they lost. The clanging and banging fooled us, but now we know – they lost. Studying the mightiest war epic of all time, Wittman changed – beeen! – into a pacifist. Dear American monkey, don’t be afraid.” (Kingston 340)
Since he decides to study strategies and tactics on losing, he ends up finding a new “ethics of identity” (Calhoun, 2009; Felfoldi, 2016). In this case, it is a new ethics to the Monkey King’s identity. The trickster’s dilemma, however, seems mostly manifested during Wittman’s closing monologue when someone gives him a banana:
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?’said Shakespearean Wittman. “No, it’s a banana. My pay? Thank you. Just like olden days-two streetcar tokens, two sandwiches, one dollar, and one banana-pay moviestar allthesame pay railroad man. Oh, I get it-top banana. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen of the Academy, I thank you. Hello. Hello. Nobody home in either ear. I feel like Krapp. I mean, the Krapp of Krapp’s Last Tape by Ah Bik Giht. He wears his banana sticking out of his waistcoat pocket. I’m going to wear mine down in my pants. Have you heard the one about these two oriental guys who saved enough money for a vacation at the seashore?... “If I were Black, would I be getting an Oreo? If I were a red man, a radish?” (Kingston 315)
Such scene signifies him being the Monkey King and at the same time allegorically implies him being American on the inside but Chinese on the outside. To be a playwright when one is of Chinese descent but lives in America (more so, that it is set in the 1960s) seems to be common situation wherein any trickster will and can flourish in (Felfoldi, 2016). Thus, Wittman do not intend anything else other than treasure his Monkey King role. Kingston writes his character as one who is complex yet it is what humans are made of. Meanwhile, in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight, the trickster figure, the Lone Ranger, is emphasized by Alexie as a means of coping with trials and tribulations since Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, is emphasized as a means of racial oppression. In “This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”, a short story from the book, Victor and Thomas talk about the death of the Victor’s father. Thomas responds to Victor when the latter asks him how did he know about it,
"I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. Also, your mother was just in here crying" (Alexie 61).
Another instance is seen in one of its short stories, "The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor", wherein James Many Horses says,
“...you have to realize that laughter saved Norma and me from pain..." (Alexie 164)
The trickster figure is both used significantly in these two books.
As mentioned above, the use of trickster and humor is accompanied by postmodernism. In Tripmaster Monkey, prejudicial and ethnic themes exhibits heavy influence from the Beat movement. The Beat movement refers to disrupting the Western self-dualism and rather favoring self-expressionism. It is distinctive of pop culture, which is a favorite allusion, particularly, the Journey to the West (Calhoun, 2009). A common feature of postmodern writing style takes in the form of disconnected plot line, which Kingston uses in the book. As its entirety is in conscious form, the difficulty in telling what is real apart from what is happening within the mind of Wittman exhibits pos...