Lost in the funhouse is a short story collection written by author John Barth. This book contains a short story named as Night sea Journey which represents a type of postmodern literature characterized by self conscious & self-reflexive nature & are considered to exemplify metafication.
Night sea journey describes the story narrated by a spermatozoan swimming towards an ovum. He declares about himself that he has two aims to "rehearse" the human condition & to disclose his "secret hope". As he considers his existence, he evaluates the various ontology's, or theories of being, that philosophers have conjured up; he also meditates on some common, & uncommon theories or explanations of why the world is the way it is. He first raises the metaphysical insoluble and confusing question that was represented in the epistemological idealism version. Because one can surely know the world only through one's senses does the external world really exist? As the swimmer places it, "Do the sea, the night, exist at all? Do I exist, or this is a dream?" His answer is only conditional and one more question raises: "Is he the "Heritage? And if I am, who am I?" - both cultural and genetic that he carries? He feels so drawn about the religious at times - humanistic faith where swimmers will have a "common maker" who created this great world with a master plan, but then the empirical absurdity of his undertaking strikes him as a witness the many who perish as he fails on, & he suspects "that our night sea journey is meaningless" He rejects the well-known thesis of Albert Camus at this point, in "The myth of Sisyphus," that humanity in its plight is like Sisyphus: throughout eternity just as he had to keep punishing the rock up the hill, always to have it roll back. In the solace of the life, the swimmer takes no solace. Swimming itself I find at best not actively unpleasant, more often and tiresome. The swimmer explains that the only purpose of his journey must be some kind of merging of identities with her, or so his friend had argued. There exists no such immortality that can fulfil anyone if the “issue of magical union” cannot memorize the journey. The whole cyclic process thus becomes unnoticeable. Young swimmers, though, can only swim toward onward the figure that whispers, "I am in love. Come."
This is a post modernistic example in literature as it expresses its meaning through the use of a fantastic premise that human sperm can talk & reason. This style of storytelling defies the convention of regular story telling. Postmodernism in literature changes the way the narrator is perceived in the story & presented to the reader& these features are clearly observed in this piece of John Barth "Night sea journey". So it can be called as a post modernistic approach of story writing.
John Barth, who has an awesome sense of both imaginative texture and structure, possess great reputation for playful, intricate, flawlessly written allegories, and imaginative. Barth provides us with a message in his book "Lost in the funhouse", we must not only read, but also think about what we are doing. We also see this in the story Night sea journey, here Barth begins with a metaphor for life - Finally everyone will be drowned. In a dangerous sea, it is a sea journey at night, in which human beings are swimming, forever. He claims to wonder, it is natural, if this journey has any purpose or meaning.
