Tar Baby

by Toni Morrison

The figure of tar, having done its work, falls out of the action of the tale, yet remains not only as its strange, silent center, but also as the sticky mediator between master and peasant, plantation owner and slave. Constructed by the farmer to foil and entrap, it moves beyond trickery to art. The principal relationship is not limited to the rabbit and the farmer; it is also between the rabbit and the tar figure. She snares him; he knows it, yet compounds his entanglement while demanding to be freed. A love story, then. Difficult, unresponsive, but seducing woman and clever, anarchic male, each with definitions of independence and domesticity, of safety and danger that clash.

All of the characters are themselves masks. And like African masks, the novel merged the primal and the contemporary, lore and reality. It was a blend that proved heady, even dizzying, but I believed the plotline solid and familiar enough to withhold or contain a reader’s sense of vertigo.

Then the rain changed and was no longer equal. Now it rained not just for an hour every day at the same time, but in seasons, abusing the river even more.

Where rInforest cleared

he turned the switch that brought the “Goldberg” Variations into the greenhouse. At first he’d experimented with Chopin and some of the Russians, but the Magnum Rex peonies, overwhelmed by all that passion, whined and curled their lips. He settled finally on Bach for germination, Haydn and Liszt for strong sprouting. After that all of the plants seemed content with Rampal’s Rondo in D.

Music for plants

all the baptized black women on the island had Mary among their names.

“Oh, I’m fine, I guess,” but her voice was flat, like a wide river without any undertow at all.

With white people the rules were even simpler. She needed only to be stunning, and to convince them she was not as smart as they were. Say the obvious, ask stupid questions, laugh with abandon, look interested, and light up at any display of their humanity if they showed it. Most of it required only charm—occasionally panache.

The unending problem of growing old was not how he changed, but how things did. A condition bearable only so long as there were others like him to share that knowledge.

Disappointment nudging contempt for the outrage Jade and Sydney and Ondine exhibited in defending property and personnel that did not belong to them from a black man who was one of their own.

One reason he invite son to stay

It was a silly age, twenty-five; too old for teenaged dreaming, too young for settling down. Every corner was a possibility and a dead end.

Mr. Street don’t know nothing about you, and don’t care nothing about you. White folks play with Negroes. It entertained him, that’s all, inviting you to dinner. He don’t give a damn what it does to anybody else.

My people owned drugstores and taught school while yours were still cutting their faces open so as to be able to tell one of you from the other.

Wa does sydney mean? Is be talkin about bramding of slaves?

in an expertly crushed white cotton halter and a wide, wide skirt that rich people called “peasant” and peasants called “wedding,”

“Call the harbor!” shouted Valerian, but again there was no one to do his bidding. He had played a silly game, and everyone was out of place.

AT SOME POINT in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don’t need someone to share it-with or tell it to. When that happens—that letting go—you let go because you can. The world will always be there—while you sleep it will be there—when you wake it will be there as well. So you can sleep and there is reason to wake. A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that. So the windows of the greenhouse can be opened and the weather let in. The latch on the door can be left unhooked, the muslin removed, for the soldier ants are beautiful too and whatever they do will be part of it.

All that Southern small-town country romanticism was a lie, a joke, kept secret by people who could not function elsewhere. An excuse to fish.

Seventeen-year-old girls were getting the jobs. In Europe they liked older-looking black models, but in the U.S. the look was twelve.

He watched her. There is the power, he thought, right there. That is all the power there is or ever will be and I don’t want any of it.

Interesting

She thought she was rescuing him from the night women who wanted him for themselves, wanted him feeling superior in a cradle, deferring to him; wanted her to settle for wifely competence when she could be almighty, to settle for fertility rather than originality, nurturing instead of building.

On florida zhe xreamed about all tr women in er lofe baring their breasts and tryin to vet ber to joon them and teir ways

One had a past, the other a future and each one bore the culture to save the race in his hands. Mama-spoiled black man, will you mature with me? Culture-bearing black woman, whose culture are you bearing?

You stay in that medieval slave basket if you want to. You will stay there by yourself. Don’t ask me to do it with you. I won’t. There is nothing any of us can do about the past but make our own lives better, that’s all I’ve been trying to help you do. That is the only revenge, for us to get over. Way over.

He gave her everything she ever wanted. Remember that little Triumph? And what about—” “He kept her stupid; kept her idle. That always spells danger.” “Now she’s the master, not him?” “Master, patient, baby—it don’t matter. He’s still the center of everything.”

He had it straight before: the pie ladies and the six-string banjo and then he was seduced, corrupted by cloisonné and raw silk the color of honey and he was willing to change,

Tar baby

he had not wanted to love her because he could not survive losing her.