808 Morrison, Toni
tions to racial heritage: Son appears to have come
from a swamp, carrying with him an animal stench
and unkempt hair. He is referred to by Jadine’s
uncle as a “stinking, ignorant swamp nigger” and
“a wild-eyed pervert who hides in women’s closets.”
By contrast, Jadine, with Valerian’s help, is a Euro-
pean model in high demand; her fair complexion
has earned her fame in Paris, as has her European
education. While the elegant, beautiful, well-spo-
ken Jadine seems to be the hero of the novel, it is
actually Son who emerges as the most sympathetic
character. As we see the city-raised Jadine lose
touch with her ancestors, indicated by her haunting,
guilt-provoking visions of the swamp women and
African women who bare their breasts during their
most private hours, Son remains faithful to his fam-
ily and friends of African descent who continue to
survive in the slow, southern town of Eloe, Florida.
Even at the end of the novel, when Son pursues
Jade to the Isle of Chevaliers after a violent argu-
ment in New York City, Morrison does not clearly
indicate whether Son and Jade will ever reunite. Led
by Thérèse, a former employee of the Street family
who is also aging and nearly blind, Son ends up figu-
ratively blind himself, climbing out of a boat in the
dark to take on the 10-mile walk to Jade’s aunt and
uncle with the intention of asking her whereabouts.
When she leaves him, groping and in the dark,
Thérèse says to Son, “The men. The men are wait-
ing for you. . . . You can choose now. They are naked
and they are blind too. . . . But they gallop; they race
horses like angels all over the hills.” While we do
not get confirmation of Son’s ultimate choice—Jade
and her Eurocentric views, or “the men” as symbol-
ized by the fraternity of Eloe and his experiences
in the Vietnam War—the novel ends with a fairly
strong indication that he chooses the men and their
horses by mimicking the sound of blind men on
horseback: “Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Lickety-
lickety-lickety-split.” After being celebrated for his
trophy girlfriend and wealthy connections, in the
end Son is reduced to blindness, surrounded by the
onomatopoetic sounds of galloping horses. But in
this reduction—to a primitive, more “pure” sense of
self over and against the Eurocentric vision of Jadine
that has caused her to lose all connection with her
African heritage, including her aunt and uncle—
Son comes out on top.
Just as the rabbits in the African folktale are
distracted from the white farmer’s produce by a
tar baby, Son is momentarily distracted by Jadine
Childs. But, with the help of a blind old woman,
Son himself becomes blind and, paradoxically, sees
the light: The way home is not toward Jadine, but
toward the men on horseback who represent his
heritage. When the mist lifts, and he realizes the
way “home,” he runs toward them: “lickety-lickety-
lickety-split,” toward a racial origin that has main-
tained its identity despite the technology of the city
and the values of a white, patriarchal economy.
Aimee PozorskiSucceSS in Tar Baby
Through the central figure of Jade, Tar Baby chal-
lenges key assumptions about what makes someone
a success. Jade is an internationally known model
whose face has graced the covers of Vogue and
Elle; she has been educated in Europe and lived
in France, and—when the novel opens—is being
pursued by a wealthy businessman who sends her
a seal-skin coat. Early in the novel, however, it
becomes clear that even this kind of success has
limitations. The signaled limitations take the form
of a woman in yellow who emerges on a day when
Jade goes to the market, knowing she is “intelligent
and lucky.” For Jade, “the vision itself was a woman
much too tall. Under her long canary yellow dress
Jadine knew there was too much hip, too much bust.
The agency would laugh her out of the lobby, so why
was she and everybody else in the store transfixed?”
(45). The reference to tar later in this scene echoes
the “tar baby” of the title, but also foreshadows a
scene several chapters into the novel, when Jade
gets stuck, alone, in a tar-like swamp, surrounded,
apparently, by women who “looked down from the
rafters of the trees [and] stopped murmuring. They
were delighted when first they saw her, thinking a
runaway child had been restored to them. But upon
looking closer they saw differently. This girl was
fighting to get away from them.”
This swamp, surrounded by phantom women,
is described as “slime,” “moss-covered jelly,” “oil,”
“mud,” “shit,” and “pitch.” Ultimately, however, we