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5. The Journey Home James Lee Burke’s Parable of Cajun Assimilation “Change comes even to the bayou. But in our mind’s eye, we still see New Iberia the way Dave Robicheaux does. . . .” —Tutwiler, “ James Lee Burke’s Acadiana: On the Trail of Detective Dave Robicheaux” James Lee Burke has created a fictional character with international appeal who also reminds a regional people of a unique cultural past. Dave Robicheaux searches for resolution with his Cajun past in the corrupt world of south Louisiana where economic and industrial progress inevitably change what he considers a simpler Cajun way of life. What Dave must acknowledge and accept is that “[c]hange comes even to the bayou” (Tutwiler), but this fact remains Dave’s greatest obstacle. In many ways, his detective work acts as a metaphor for Cajun cultural loss, and his violent behavior stems from his own need to reconcile his double identity, as both Cajun and American. Underlining Burke’s detective series, a more provocative parable emerges: a revised version of the prodigal son story complete with a son who discovers that he simply cannot return to his father ’s figurative home, not because the father would not accept him but because such a “home,” the past, no longer exists. As is the case with most detective fiction, Dave’s search for justice refers not only to his professional impulse to capture criminals, but also to his personal struggle to locate meaning in his fractured life, a need reflecting the postmodern world in which he lives. Samuel Coale asserts that mysteries remain popular because they “creat[e] a rational world amid an irrational or at the very least a non-rational world” (1). Such fiction clarifies, solves, and resolves cultural and communal problems that cause anxiety and fear to develop in the first place. Readers are thus comforted by easy and efficient resolutions. What began with Edgar Allan Poe and ratiocination has become a more complex handling of not only national concerns, 102 James Lee Burke’s Parable of Cajun Assimilation / 103 but also ethnic insecurities and vulnerabilities because, as John Cawelti argues, “literary formulas assist in the process of assimilating changes in values to traditional and imaginative construct,” because they “ease the transition between old and new ways of expressing things and thus contribute to cultural continuity” (36). Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series depicts such changes and offers readers a more contemporary Cajun character to ease the transition between old and new ways. In his hard-boiled detective series, Burke continues to create stories in which the detective discovers and contains threats to society, thus protecting the community from violence and harm. Dave Robicheaux is not, however, the typical tough guy; his motivation to resolve criminal activity in south Louisiana stems from an ethnic and regional perspective that creates complex relations between the detective and his search for justice. Instead of focusing on national anxieties, Burke directs his audience’s attention to local geographical and political settings complete with fading ethnic traditions and cultural belief systems, thus placing the center of anxiety firmly within the ethnic community. Coale’s interest in minority detective figures as a means of examining cultural differences pertains to the function of Cajun identity in Burke’s work because “with all of these writers there remains the continuing problem of relating a marginal group . . . to the center and including them in mainstream popular fiction” (33). To be included in and recognized by the mainstream signifies an acceptance, a sense of belonging. Such belonging points to assimilation ; after all, to become a popular author means that you must write to suit the needs of a national audience; however, this position can also be used as a point of power to distribute and perpetuate one’s own image of one’s ethnic community.1 As for formulaic structures, the same principles apply: the writer can subvert tradition by claiming it as his own and revising the formula to suit his specific literary needs. Burke’s Cajun detective series functions within this between position because it uses typical literary patterns to subvert the traditional meaning of such formula. Dave solves, often through violent means, the crimes that plague his hometown, but any complete sense of resolution is denied because Dave must continue battling personal crimes he has committed through assimilation. Dave Robicheaux may be a detective, but he is, first and foremost, a twentieth-century Cajun who has assimilated to mainstream American culture, which causes him guilt...

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