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Midnight Robber Analysis

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The narrative of Midnight Robber chronicles the adventures and mythologizing actions of the protagonist, incorporating ideologies and myths from traditional African, Caribbean, and both North and South American cultures. The opening lines feature the voice of a narrator, much like in folktale tradition, inviting the reader into the story: “Oho. Like it starting, oui? Don't be frightened, sweetness; is for the best. I go be with you the whole time. Trust me and let me distract you little bit with one anansi story” (Hopkinson 1).The plot is then conveyed through conflicting accounts by multiple voices with narrative breaks and non-linear digressions. “The often overlooked or ignored oral transmissions produced by nonwestern populations are defining …show more content…

“By re-imagining Afro-Caribbean vernacular literary practices within the context of science fiction, Midnight Robber is able to dissolve the tensions between textual and oral culture and between creator and creature, ‘master’ and ‘slave’” (Boyle 181). Hopkinson performs the hybridization at the level of language as well, by mixing standard British and American English with Trinidadian and Jamaican creoles, thus “hacking” a language that recalls the histories of the middle passage, slavery, and imperialism. Placing these languages in dialogue, she fashions a unique language, which conveys the location of her characters’ historically and their present: “To speak in the hacked language is not just to speak in an accent or a creole; to say the words aloud is an act of referencing history and claiming space. The people ... in my novel have done that, have left Earth to a place where they can make their own society. Their speech, written and spoken, reflects the reasons they’ve made that journey” (“Code Sliding”). Thus this revised version of Caribbean oral practices has the potential to simultaneously encode and reformulate both the past and the future.
Jillana Enteen observes that Hopkinson further champions the oral performances of the Caribbean and African Diaspora by locating Granny Nanny’s communicative capabilities in the realm of the aural (272). The Nansi Web was written by a community of Afro-Caribbean programmers immediately before their escape from Earth. During her time on Earth, Granny Nanny became too complicated to understand until Marryshow, a calypsonian programmer ran the programming language through the interface of Afro-Caribbean

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