Mumbo Jumbo Characteristics

Like the traditional detective fictions, there are many supporting roles in Mumbo Jumbo to help the plot development. In contrast to the sole assistant pattern in traditional detective fictions, there are all together 4 assistants, which includes Berbelang, Earline, Charlotte and Black Herman to help Labas finish his detective mission.
Not like the patterned image of traditional detective assistant, every assistants in Mumbo Jumbo have their own distinguish characteristics. Berbelang is the leader of Mu’tafikah, which is an organization of colored people aims to “ship Westerners’ plunder back to where is came from”(Reed, Mumbo Jumbo 15). Berbelang and his gang snatched important pieces of ethnic art from famous Museums around the world and deliver them to the countries of origin. For the Mu’tafikah, the exhibition of the arts from African, Asia, and Amerindian

Reed firstly noted Muslewhite as, “hard-boiled Biff Musclewhite, the man who tamed the wilderness and much decorated combat officer of World War 1”(Reed, Mumbo Jumbo 107). Biff also has other bad traits of the so-called “hard-boiled hero” such as: battle-scarred, violent, cold-blooded and womanizing. But what he lacks is the most important characteristics of hard-boiled hero: an upright heart. He will do almost anything regardless of moral or legal discipline for his own interest. When he becomes a captive of Mu’tafikah he incited Thor, a young liberal white man to leave Mu’tafikah. His persuasion is inundated with racists’ thought. He accused Berbelang as “a nigger gone berserk. A nigger the planters kept from other niggers so they wouldn’t catch what he had”(Reed, Mumbo Jumbo 113). Those racists like Biff will infect other liberal whites like plague (so that the Jes Grew which does not emphasize the racial identity is called anti-plague) by means of arousing the white’s so-called sense of identity and