The Tar Babies of Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

Abstract

This article aims to analyse Tar Baby by Toni Morrison as a novel centred around the eponymous figure. The tar baby is a doll-like figure from Black American folklore, an object made of tar, rags, and buttons. In folklore sources, the function of the tar baby is difficult to understand or describe; it serves as a kind of decoy or trap, and its victims get attached to its sticky surface. As the novel draws close parallels between its two protagonists and the tar baby, Henry Louis Gates’s theory of Signifyin(g) is applied with a view to determine who is the eponymous thing. Although the characters represent two opposing outlooks on life, they exert almost inextricable attraction to one another. Each of them, just like tar baby, exhibits viscosity that glues, and, hence, traps the other in this stormy relation. The paper follows this trope focusing on the characters’ sticky properties, which resonate with the doll in the folktale. The tar baby is linked to the signifying monkey, a tempting trickster from Yoruba mythology, who attempts to manipulate signification, subvert dominant cultural codes, and bring on some kind of contact with other characters. As the theory focuses largely on the ambiguous and the symbolic functions of the object, the paper endeavours to discover what the discussed characters stand for and how they manifest their tar baby qualities. The conclusion that follows is that both Jadine and Son can be perceived as the tar babies of the story, especially tar babies to each other, trapping and sticking to one another.