John Harsey's Too Far To Walk as a Postmodernist Historiographic Metafiction

Abstract

This novel explores the personal history of John Fist, the male protagonist and national history of the then America showing the death of grand narratives like American dream, Enlightenment, capitalism, history, patriarchy. The story of John Hersey is the history of a youth who depicts 1970s in his fictional representation,he uses Postmodern philosophy as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in regarding culture, identity, history, or language as the 1970s are remembered as an era when the women's rights, gay rights and environmental movements competed with the Watergate scandal, the energy crisis and the ongoing Vietnam War for the world's attention. Hersey uses characters like John Fist,Wagner, Breed, Malcom, Fistand Mona,and Margaret to reveal his inner psyche about the changes in society using their personal thoughts. The 1960s were years of protest and reform. Young Americans demonstrated against the Vietnam War. African Americans demonstrated for civil rights through which Academia like Sheldon College of America was not deprived. Women demonstrated for equal treatment as Mona and Margaret reveal their status in society to get freedom of burden being bounded to patriarchal society. The period of change came during the 1970s. For a while, these years remained tied to the social experiments and struggles of the 1960s. This change appeared in many parts of American society. It affected popular culture, education, and politics. Hersey negates official history of American Dream of safety and freedom for ladies and depicts rape as occurred incident in university by the friends of Fist .Hersey by emphasizing the problem of the philosopher cleanly distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from submission, good from bad, and presence from absence in 1970s’ American society .