John Harsey's Too Far To Walk as a Postmodernist Historiographic Metafiction
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Department of English
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 .