44 pages • 1 hour read
Ishmael ReedMumbo Jumbo
Ishmael ReedFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 43-50Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 43 Summary
Von Vampton is increasingly concerned about the spread of Jes Grew. It is approaching New York, where it could gain control of radio stations. He is worried that he will fail to restore the honor of the Knights Templar. He is still searching for his Talking Android and considers Woodrow Wilson Jefferson, but dismisses this idea because he thinks W.W.’s skin is too dark for the job.
Chapter 44 Summary
While looking through a Race newspaper, Von Vampton sees an ad for skin-lightening cream and explains to Gould that this could make W.W. a usable Talking Android candidate.
Chapter 45 Summary
Von Vampton and Gould convince W.W. to try the cream. W.W.’s father, Reverend Jefferson, then bursts into the room. Reverend Jefferson and his men beat up Von Vampton and Gould and then throw W.W. in a big cotton sack, taking him back to their rural southern farm.
Chapter 46 Summary
An android reports to Hierophant 1 that Warren Harding is secretly listening to jazz. There is increasing concern that Harding has Black ancestry. The Wallflower Order thought that Harding was the perfect bland, generic white candidate for president. Now that he is affiliating himself with Black culture, the Order decides that he must be killed. Hierophant 1 decides to slowly poison the president.
Chapter 47 Summary
Harding is methodically poisoned during his train journey to the West Coast. He succumbs to the poisoning in San Francisco.
Chapter 48 Summary
LaBas reflects on the deaths of Charlotte, Berbelang, and Abdul. He figures Abdul’s death must have had something to do with the sacred text and that the text must be somewhere in New York. T Malice enters and says he is going to the Cotton Club to watch a show by the Dancing Bales. LaBas remembers the poem that was in Abdul’s dead hand and hurriedly leaves for the show with T Malice.
Chapter 49 Summary
Aboard the Black Plume, Battraville interviews the men that Von Vampton has approached in hope that they’d become his Talking Android. Battraville tells them that LaBas has identified Von Vampton as the man behind this plot. Young poet Nathan Brown asks Battraville how he can contract Jes Grew. Battraville explains that this is a question to ask America’s Black artists.
Chapter 50 Summary
With Jes Grew seeming unstoppable, Hierophant 1 lifts a glass of poison to his lips. On his Jes Grew board, he sees that cases are suddenly plummeting. He talks on the phone with his friend, a tycoon who suggests several ways they could pull economic and governmental strings to eradicate Jes Grew—including triggering the Great Depression.
Chapters 43-50 Analysis
Each of these chapters is short, but collectively they work to build tension for the book’s nearing climax. Both Von Vampton and the Hierophant are growing increasingly desperate in their attempts to eradicate Jes Grew and maintain the Atonists’ global dominance. The covert assassination of the president shows that the Atonists still hold great power, but this desperate act also reveals how concerned they are about their waning influence.
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