Brer Rabbit 169Brer Rabbit
Brer Rabbit (or Brother Rabbit) is one of the most famous
fi gures that appear in African American folktales. He em-
bodies a well-known trickster character. Usually, trickster
tales convey narratives of tricks played by a trickster at the
expense of one (or several) of his peers. Th e latter usually
outweigh him, but Brer Rabbit almost always outsmarts
his bigger counterparts anyway. Th ese stories constitute
mimetic transpositions of a search for hope and survival,
a will to fi nd one’s way out of a tricky situation or a quan-
dary. Brer Rabbit was made notorious through the collec-
tion of stories by Joel Chandler Harris titled Uncle Remus
and Other Stories. Th e fi rst tale that casts Brer Rabbit is
“Tar Baby.” Th e tar baby is a widespread fi gure in African
folklore. In folktales, it is known as an item made of some
sticky material with a carved face, which is used to literally
ensnare a person; this obviously echoes the metaphorical
representations of trapping Africans. Among other mean-
ings, the term “tar baby” has come to designate a situation
or a diffi culty from which it is virtually impossible to extri-
cate oneself.
More than the quest for spiritual and physical free-
dom, the stories in which Brer Rabbit appears convey three
types of impulse on the trickster’s part. First of all, Brer
Rabbit, who is lazy and whimsical, is eager to fulfi ll the
least of his most venal needs and envies (“Brer Rabbit and
the Mosquitoes?” and “Brer Rabbit Fools Sis Cow”). Sec-
ond, Brer Rabbit aims at getting out of a trap. It is interest-
ing to notice that this escaping process immutably implies
the trapping of another character. Th is pattern may lead
us to believe that Brer Rabbit, although cunning enough to
think out a plan to deceive his peers, is not smart enough
to avoid the ambush altogether. However, this preliminary
step is inevitable in order to complete the process through
which the trickster overwhelms the obstacle. Th ere exists
a correlation between the signifi cance of achievement and
the diffi culties to cope with before succeeding. Th ird, Brer
Rabbit sometimes plays tricks for the mere satisfaction of
having his “compairs” look foolish (“Th e Elephant and the
Whale”) or to demonstrate that his tiny appearance is in-
versely proportional to his cleverness and slyness.
Brer Rabbit is very oft en, with just cause, held responsi-
ble for any harm done. But in spite of this, he comes up with
tactics so as not to get caught. Th is pragmatic and proteanaccompanied the use of bottle trees, adherents believed that
evil spirits would become entranced by the spectrum of col-
ors and lights refl ected on and inside the bottles by the sun,
thus trapping the spirit for eternity. Th e howling noise the
bottles created in the wind were said to be from the tor-
mented and trapped spirits. Even the colors used for the
bottles conveyed symbolic meanings. Cobalt blue bottles
were noted as being particularly potent in repelling or trap-
ping spirits.
In some cases, bottles were eventually corked and
thrown into bodies of water to excise the evil spirit. In oth-
ers, the bottles were exposed to sunlight as a mechanism
of destroying the spirits. Th e very notions of “evil” spirits
and spirits that could be destroyed represent signifi cant
departures from Kongo conceptualizations of the aft erlife.
Th rough the 19th century, adherents of indigenous Kongo
religions in West-Central Africa believed that spirits were,
at best, neutral and that ancestral spirits were immortal.
Epitomized by the Kongo cosmogram and its various cog-
nate forms (e.g., the ring shout, Capoeira, Vodun iconog-
raphy), pre-colonial religions in Kongo and other regions
of West-Central Africa certainly embraced the notion that
spirits were invulnerable and eternal. Th us, the belief sys-
tems that undergird the creation and use of bottle trees
in the American South represent notable transformations
over time. However, what was once a ubiquitous practice in
the black South as recently as the mid-20th century in such
places as South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, and
Mississippi has largely disappeared with a handful of excep-
tions. As of the beginning of the 21st century, there is a lively
amount of Internet commerce in which metal bottle “trees”
using LED lights are craft ed and sold—though this mani-
festation is largely divorced from the diverse spiritual back-
grounds of this practice by slaves and their descendants.
See also: Africanisms; Slave Culture; Slave Religion
Walter C. RuckerBibliography
Th ompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit New York: Vintage
Books, 1983.
Th ompson, Robert Farris. “Kongo Infl uences on African-Ameri-
can Artistic Culture.” In Africanisms in American Culture, ed.
Joseph Holloway, 148–84. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1991.
Th ompson, Robert Farris, and Joseph Cornet. Th e Four Moments
of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds. Washington, D.C.: Na-
tional Gallery of Art, 1981.