This paper concerns the comic holotropes in Gerald Vizenor?s Hiroshima Bugi
(2003) and seeks to study the link between Native American literature and comedy. Since
Aristotle, the position and the value of tragedy have been considered higher than comedy.
Comedy, however, is regarded as ?an imitation of characters of a lower type.? The
Western traditional points of view on differentiating tragedy from comedy cannot be
applied to native stories and especially to Gerald Vizenor?s novels. For Vizenor, the
pleasure of ?pity? and ?fear? is an imitation of tragic victimry which denies the humor
and wisdom in tribal culture and enhances the hegemony and dominance in history. To
resist the closure of tragedy, Vizenor utilizes comic holotropes to rebel against the formal
Western ideals of literary aesthetics as well as to defy notions of concrete form. Narrated
by two characters, Ronin Browne and Manidoo Envoy, Hiroshima Bugi is told in
alternating chapters. The stories move between Ronin?s Hiroshima- obsession and
Envoy?s points of view. By applying the experience of atomic destruction in Japan,
Vizenor aims to pinpoint that the destruction caused by atomic bomb is comparable to the
destruction of Native American culture which is as profound and devastating. With this
novel, Vizenor confronts the hypocrisy of war peace with humor and laughter and demonstrates that ?miseries can be overcome by humor and the honor of memorable
stories? by means of comic holotropes. Joseph Meeker suggests, ?The comic way is not
always funny. Humor is sometimes a part of the comic experience, but humor is not
essential to the meaning of comedy. Comedy is more an attitude toward life and the self,
and a strategy for dealing with problems and pain.? Vizenor?s oppositional comedy as
represented in Hiroshima Bugi mediates between worlds (past/present; Japan/Native
Americans) and liberates the tribal consciousness from the dominance of closure with his
use of comic holotropes.
