Tar Baby

Jadine feels alienated from her race and also feels at odds with the traditional roles for women. She longs to discover a way of living her life that ignores the constraints of race or gender, and this desire helps motivate her move to Europe from the island. But circumstances and other characters continually thwart her efforts to escape the constraints of being a black woman. Her upbringing and education have made her feel most comfortable around white, European culture. But even as she enjoys this white culture, she worries about whether she will betray her race if she stays in Europe, continues to pursue the largely white-run modeling industry, and marries her white boyfriend, Ryk. Early on in the novel, a black woman in a yellow dress spits on Jadine, because Jadine lacks an authentic black identity. This experience reflects Jadine's nervousness about her racial identity. Although Jadine is black, she is very different from the other black characters in the novel in terms of thoughts, passions, possessions, and family connections.

Jadine is also very different from the other women in the novel in that she rejects the maternal role. She does not want to be a mother, but she feels anxious and guilty about rejecting this role: In Eloe, she dreams that black women aggressively bare their breasts at her. Through her relationship with Son, Jadine tries to imagine what it would be like to be firmly connected to the black race and to other women. She fantasizes that she and Son form a family. But the trip to Eloe makes Jadine realize that a relationship with Son will not eradicate her concerns about what it means to be black or a woman. At the end of the novel, she returns to Europe, as if she has decided to forget her concerns about betraying her race or her gender.

Unlike Jadine, Son embraces the categories of race and gender, relishing the role of being a black man. He feels firmly connected to his hometown of Eloe, and he enjoys being defined by his blackness. Although Son sometimes acts like a chameleon, able to please a wide spectrum of people—from the white industrialist Valerian to the illiterate, black servant Thérèse—he feels most at home with people who share his traditional, “down home” background. He dislikes wandering, despite spending eight years traveling the world. Instead, he values a sense of place, home, and rootedness. His very nickname, Son, reflects his commitment to heritage and family.

Son literally sees the world in black and white terms. As far as he is concerned, blacks and whites can never mix, nor should they try to. Black people who assume white values, or who pursue relationships with white people (like Jadine), are ultimately traitors to their race. This view explains why Son sometimes has adversarial interactions with Sydney and Ondine, who work for Valerian, and why Son attacks Jadine after she defends Valerian. Morrison presents Son's views sympathetically, but she does not encourage readers to subscribe to them; she insists only that readers understand why Son might feel this way. At the end of the novel, Son seems ready to retreat from the hard line he has taken throughout the novel, but it is not known which choice he ultimately makes: whether he stays on Isle des Chaveliers, joining up with a race of black people whose pure lineage stretches back to Africa, or whether he goes to find Jadine in Europe, thereby not only accepting her participation in white culture but also participating in it himself.

Valerian dominates the other characters. A wealthy man, he employs most of the black characters, including Sydney, Ondine, Gideon, and Thérèse. He plays patron to Jadine, paying for her education in Paris, and also sometimes acts like a father figure to Son. Margaret's marriage to Valerian saved her from a hardscrabble life in Maine. Though she hates life on the island, Valerian refuses to return to the United States. These economic connections make the other characters subservient to Valerian: They must listen to what he says, because he controls the purse strings. Valerian's high degree of power is symbolized by his greenhouse: There, he controls which plants live and which plants die. He seems to have created the life he has always wanted on Isle des Chevaliers.

But as Tar Baby continues, Valerian loses power and control. By the end of the novel, he has weakened to the point of vulnerability and senility. The news about Margaret's abuse of their son totally incapacitates Valerian, in part because he realizes just how little control he ever exerted over people in his life. He was a powerful businessman, but he lacked the power to create a loving environment for his wife and son, and he was powerless to stop Margaret's horrible tendencies. Morrison reflects his weakened position through the novel's narrative structure. Whereas the first part of the novel explores Valerian's memories and present-day perspective, the final section barely touches on Valerian. He becomes almost invisible, a representation of his diminished stature.