Toni Morrison's Tar Baby

Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby
Begin: 05/20/07
End: 05/25/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: African-American Literature. Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1981.
Fog Index: 7.1/91% are harder.
Flesch Index: 78.4/94% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.0/93% are harder.
Complex Words: 7%/89% have more.
Number: Seventh.
Synopsis: The story begins with Son and his escape from his ship to a small Caribbean island. He eventually finds himself at the mansion of Valerian Street and creates all sorts of turmoil before starting a love affair with Jadine.
Thoughts: I am a complete idiot! Have I ever mentioned that? I have read this story before and I thought tar baby was a racial slur. I didn’t realize that it had a much deeper history. In the second of the Uncle Remus stories, Br’er Rabbit was entrapped by a doll made of tar and turpentine. The more he fought the tar-baby, the more entangled he became. It’s come to mean any sticky situation that is made worse by trying to solve it. The story stems from African myths involving Anasi. This puts a slightly different spin on the novel.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It did seem quite out of place in the Morrison canon. I can’t exactly pinpoint exactly why, perhaps the amount of dialogue or that it followed a more traditional or contemporary plot structure. I am not sure but I liked it.

I also thought quite a bit about what I was missing in reading this, and for that matter, any of Ms. Morrison’s novels. She writes novel geared towards African-Americans. She once said that “It seems to me that the novel is needed by African-Americans now in a way that it was not needed before... Parents do not sit around and tell their children those classical mythological, archetypal stories that we heard before. But new information has got to get out and there are several ways to do it. One is in the novel." I am aware, hyperaware oftentimes, that I am missing certain aspects of her work, that I am not quite digesting it all. And I got to thinking that is this due to some degree to the fact that I am a white male, despite the enormity of my faggotry. Or perhaps I am not old enough, wise enough, smart enough, or perhaps I’m just not supposed to get it all but that over time and multiple readings it will open up for me slowly and surely like other great works of literature. I mean if I can “get” every aspect when I read a book, why would I bother reading it again? Hell, why bother reading it the first time!




I often feel that if I could only fully understand Ms. Morrison’s works (or Fellini’s film, Blake poetry, Picasso’s painting, Faulkner’s Prose, ect) another world would open up to me like that Blake statement : ”if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

Anyway. I am getting away from the novel at hand, Tar Baby. Wow. A lot of talk about and really not that much time. I have read a few things on the internet about it and was amazed at the amount of things that people saw in the novel that I simply didn’t. Jadine as a race traitor. Oh, I could see it but I simply don’t.
Tar Baby as a Marxist story. Again, I can see it but I think that Ms. Morrison’s novels are far too complex for things to be that simple.

The specific charge that really stuck in my mind was that Jadine was a tar baby meant to entrap Son (the rabbit) by Valerian Street (the farmer).

Isn’t that far too simple a reading? Isn’t the tar baby the complex relationship between human beings? Or am I universalizing things too much? The relationship of mutual dependence and deep emotional ties which are not always pretty to examine and generally hidden away. The tar baby of human beings living and working with one another in complex hierarchal situation involving race and gender and class and a million and one other differences to be worked out and worked on.

I also would like to point out the one portion of the novel that really quirked me. (if I may use quirk in that context) What was up with that shower that Son took? He went from being this horrible hobo looking creature to a beautiful beautiful Adonis like creature. That’s some fucking shower! Can I get one?

I have some quotes but will save them for another day since I left my book at home.