Scrutinising the Moon: Randa Jarrar’s “The Lunatic’s Eclipse” Under a Postmodern Lens

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the short story “The Lunatic’s Eclipse” by the Arab-American Randa Jarrar and explain the postmodern techniques represented through the different functions of the moon. The study is qualitative research that employs postmodern strategies of magic realism, metafiction, carnivalesque, and intertextuality as the study's methodology. Through these strategies, the story blurs the boundaries between reality, magic, and fiction and unites them in one entity to highlight themes of freedom, happiness, and self-reliance. Therefore, the study relies on postmodern theorists' ideas and theories on these strategies, including Jean-Francois Lyotard, Linda Hutcheon, Franz Koh, Mikhail Bakhtin, Gerard Genette, and William Gass. The moon is also employed as a structure for the story and a theme that unites all the parts of the story together. The characters are also given names that mean different phases of the moon in Arabic. Jarrar uses the moon to resist stereotyping Arab women as weak and submissive.