Reference no: EM133320470

Question: Write a 4 paragraph essay (with a thesis statement, effective topic sentences, well-developed paragraphs, and at least two direct quotations from the poem - cite the line number) that describes how and why Harjo's poem, "A Map to the Next World" is postmodern literature. addresses/defines/describes how and why this text is quintessentially postmodern as a piece of literature. You will need to reference specific postmodern elements and characteristics of the text as part of your discussion.

A Map to the Next World - Joy Harjo

1 In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
2 those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

3 My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
4 from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

5 For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

6 The map must be of sand and can't be read by ordinary light. It
7 must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

8 In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
9 was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

10 Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
11 altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

12 Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our
13 children while we sleep.

14 Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born
15 there of nuclear anger.

16 Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to
17 disappear.

18 We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to
19 them by their personal names.

20 Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

21 What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
22 map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
23 ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

24 An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

25 The place of entry is the sea of your mother's blood, your father's
26 small death as he longs to know himself in another.

27 There is no exit.

28 The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine-a
29 spiral on the road of knowledge.

30 You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking
31 from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh
32 deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

33 They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

34 And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world
35 there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

36 You will have to navigate by your mother's voice, renew the song
37 she is singing.

38 Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

39 And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you
40 will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

41 When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they
42 entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

43 You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

44 A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the
45 destruction.

46 Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our
47 tribal grounds.

48 We were never perfect.

49 Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was
50 once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

51 We might make them again, she said.

52 Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

53 You must make your own map.

 

Elements of Postmodern American Literature
- Paradox
-Unrealistic narratives
-Unreliable narrator
-Parody
-Dark humor
-Paranoia
-Intertextuality
-Pastiche (pasting together multiple elements/genres)
-Multiple meanings or lack of meaning
-The use of irony
-Non-linear narratives
-Past is present.
-Faction (mix of historical events with fictional events without distinguishing which is which)
-Magical realism (a realistic narrative with an implausible supernatural or magical element tossed
in)
-Metafiction (call attention to the fact readers are reading fiction)
-Self-referential (it refers to the author's self or the writing is about itself)
-Rejection of modernism (for example, postmodernism also includes fragmentation but it
celebrates that fragmentation rather than treating the fragmentation as tragic, like modernism
does)
-Rejection of totalitarian thinking and/or regimentation
-A mix of low art and high art. It is not snobby or elite.
-There is no absolute truth and truth is relative (though postmodernists believe truth is a construct
of an individual's mind trying to make sense of their experiences)
-Information and image overload.
-Decenters Western values/civilizations as it recognizes that such values represent only a very
small fraction of world history and human experience
-The world is contradictory, ambiguous, indeterminate, "jagged," fragmented, and unfinished.