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Chapter 8
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tar Baby, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Systemic Racism and Power
Expectations of Womanhood
Colonialism and Enslavement
Toxic Masculinity
Innocence and Guilt
Summary
Analysis
Eloe is even smaller than Jadine imagined it would be. She and Son first go to the house of Son’s friend Soldier, who fought in the Vietnam War with Son. Jadine stays at Soldier’s house while Son goes to see his father, whom he calls Old Man. When Son arrives, Old Man can’t believe he’s there. He tells Son that Sally Brown—the mother of Son’s former wife, Cheyenne, whom Son killed—has died. Son says that Sally had been more of a threat to him than the police. Old Man also says the boy who had been with Cheyenne when Son killed her has left town
The names used for Son and his father—“Son” and “Old Man”—point to the importance of family for both of them. At the same time, it also points to the influence of hierarchy in their worldview, signaling the prevailing reign of masculine power in their understanding of the world. The negative implications of such a view come through in Son and Old Man’s apparent indifference to Son’s murder of his wife.
Themes
Old Man tells Son that he’s grateful for the money orders he sent over the years; he didn’t mean to spend them, but he occasionally needed the extra money. Son says he should have spent him all—it was meant to help take care of Old Man while Son was gone. Old Man says he kept the envelopes, even from the money orders he spent, because he liked seeing Son’s handwriting. He just wishes Son would have included a note once in a while. He also says that Jadine will have to sleep at Aunt Rosa’s house because Son and Jadine aren’t married.
Son’s financial support of Old Man—and his dismay when he learns that Old Man only took some of the money, all of which Son meant for him to have—contrasts with Jadine’s relationship with Ondine and Sydney, whom she doesn’t seem to support, either financially or emotionally. Old Man’s wish that Son would have occasionally included a note with that money suggests that for him, emotional connection with his son is even more important than financial support.
Themes
At Soldier’s house, Jadine takes pictures of Soldier’s family and their neighbors. When Son returns, he grabs the camera from Jadine and then tells her that she’ll have to sleep at Aunt Rosa’s house. Jadine looks at him angrily. That night, they go to a place with live music in the nearby town of Poncie before Son drops Jadine off at Aunt Rosa’s. They’re planning to leave tomorrow, on Sunday, and Jadine can’t wait to get out of Eloe. When Jadine wakes up the next morning, on Sunday, she talks with Soldier, who asks her a series of questions about herself and her relationship with Son. He also tells her more about Cheyenne and says that Son should have never married her. Son’s a good judge of character, Soldier says, but makes poor decisions when it comes to relationships.
While Son finds the community in Eloe comforting, Jadine finds it stifling, illustrating their contrasting personalities and values. In essence, Jadine seems to think that Son’s reverence for his hometown betrays his lack of sophistication, while Son sees Jadine’s adulation of places like New York City as a sign that she incorrectly venerates wealth, materialism, and the systems of oppression that fuel them. Notably, Eloe and New York also have starkly opposite ideas about womanhood. In Eloe, people expect Jadine to conform to traditional gender norms that Jadine finds oppressive and retrogressive, whereas in New York, Jadine can pursue her interests and live life on her own terms.
Themes
Soldier also says that Jadine and Son can’t leave today because Ernie Paul, a childhood friend of Son’s, is coming from Montgomery to see him. He should arrive tomorrow. Jadine still wants to leave, but Son asks her to stay one more night. Jadine doesn’t want to spend the night alone, so Son says he’ll sneak into Aunt Rosa’s and spend the night with her. That night, while Jadine and Son are together, women parade through the back door of Aunt Rosa’s house. Thérèse, Cheyenne, Sally Brown, Ondine, Soldier’s wife, and her mother are all there. Jadine doesn’t understand what’s happening; it seems like a dream, but her eyes are open. The women begin revealing their breasts, and Jadine screams. Son wakes up and tries to comfort her before falling back asleep. Jadine is awake the whole night, and eventually the women leave the room.
Jadine has a vision, or dream, in which various women from her past appear before her. Those women represent the expectations of womanhood that are foisted on Jadine, and they seem particularly intent on pushing Jadine toward motherhood. Jadine understands their emphasis on motherhood as an assertion that first and foremost, a woman should be a devoted caregiver to others and carry forward the family line. Jadine screams in response to this vision of womanhood, signaling her rejection of it. She perceives the women’s presence as a kind of attack, showing how stultifying those expectations are and how stridently Jadine will attempt free herself from them.
Themes
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The “night women” make the rest of the time in Eloe intolerable for Jadine. Eloe seems boring and lifeless to her, and she’s sick of the judgment she feels from people like Aunt Rosa, who seems to demonize sex. Jadine is desperate to get back to the vibrancy of New York. Son takes her to the train station, and she travels to the airport and then flies back to New York. Son says he’ll follow the next day. But four days pass, and he still hasn’t arrived in the city. Another weekend goes by, and Son still hasn’t returned. Jadine keeps going over and over the dream she had of the night women. She can’t figure out what they all have in common or why they were out to get her, and she becomes increasingly angry.
Notably, Jadine had the dream of the “night women” in Eloe, a place that represents Son’s idealized version of Black identity and community. With that in mind, Jadine’s dream suggests that, from her perspective, Son’s idea of community is inextricably linked to traditional ideas of femininity in which women are expected to sacrifice their own desires to serve others. In Eloe, those ideas are upheld by strict social policing and castigation if one breaks those norms, as represented by Aunt Rosa’s judgment of Jadine.
Themes
When Son finally returns to New York, Jadine fights with him, but she knows that she’s really fighting the women from her dream. She says that Son needs to go back to school and find a job and suggests that they take money from Valerian to start a business. Son says that he doesn’t want anything to do with that white man. Jadine asks who cares about his race, and Son says he does—and Valerian does too. The fight escalates, and Jadine chokes Son and then bites him in the face. Son punches her and knocks her out.
Jadine’s idea that when she fights with Son, she is really fighting with the women from her dream, suggests that while her conflict seems to be with Son, she is really in conflict with the various systems of power that seek to oppress her. Son claims to want to free her from Valerian’s control, but it becomes increasingly clear to Jadine that Son doesn’t want to rescue her from Valerian so she can find freedom and self-empowerment—he (Son) wants to be the one to control her. The violent fight that breaks out between the couple reinforces this dynamic: Jadine can try to inflict harm on Son, but he easily subdues her.
Themes
Another day, Jadine tells Son that while he was wasting his time in hiding, she was getting an education. She says that he needs to stop being in love with his own ignorance. They struggle violently, and Son holds Jadine out the apartment window by her wrists 10 feet above the ground. He yells that if the schools Jadine went to didn’t teach her anything about him, then she doesn’t know anything about herself, her parents, or her children. He says that people like Sydney, Ondine, Thérèse, and Gideon are the ones who put her through school, not Valerian. Son lifts Jadine back in through the window. The two make up, and when the police arrive to investigate a call about someone being held out of a window, they think they’re at the wrong apartment.
When Son claims that Sydney, Ondine, Thérèse, and Gideon put Jadine through school, not Valerian, he’s suggesting that Jadine has only benefited from Valerian’s charity because other people have sacrificed their welfare and their dignity to put her in Valerian’s proximity. Without that sacrifice, Jadine would be no more empowered than Son, or like any of the people in Eloe, for that matter. Despite her fancy education, Jadine remains ignorant to how tenuous her hold on power really is. Son’s violence undermine his efforts to set Jadine right on matters of power and the abuse of power. Son’s violence toward Jadine is an abuse of power akin to Valerian’s exploitation of the island’s Black population.
Themes
Later, Son asks Jadine if she’ll marry him. When she says yes, he agrees to go to school. Jadine sends away for applications to colleges in New York. Son and Jadine each think they are rescuing the other. Jadine thinks she’s rescuing Son from the “night women” who want him to feel superior to her and to ensure that she sacrifices her ambitions to be his wife. Son thinks he’s rescuing Jadine from people like Valerian, who kill everything they touch. Jadine and Valerian’s arguments about who is right—about who is rescuing whom, and from what—seem like they’ll never stop.
This passage places race and gender at the center of Jadine and Son’s conflict. Jadine wants to liberate Son from restrictive gender norms that grant men power via the subjugation of women. Son, meanwhile, wants Jadine to embrace her Blackness, not deny it. She can empower herself by returning to her roots—proximity to people like Valerian isn’t the way to power and fulfillment. Each makes a valid point, but they each struggle to see eye to eye with the other.
Themes
During one of those fights, Son says that he’s going to tell Jadine a story. He says that once there was a white farmer who came up with a plan to trap a rabbit that stole his cabbages. As Son is telling the story, Jadine tells him not to touch her. He continues to touch her anyway, though. Jadine tells Son that if he doesn’t kill her by the time he’s through, then she’ll kill him. Son slams the bedroom door and leaves. When he returns four hours later, he’s repentant, thinking that he has gone too far. Jadine is naked from her waist down, and Son is ashamed that he “soiled” that nakedness. Jadine says that the only option for revenge they have against those who have oppressed them is to make their own lives better in the future.
Son rapes Jadine. Son implies that Valerian is akin to the white farmer in the story, but he makes that point while sexually assaulting Jadine himself. Son’s rape of Jadine shows that Son and Valerian have more in common than Son might think, as both aim to compel women’s subservience through force and abuse. Jadine’s argument that overcoming restrictive gender norms and misogyny by prioritizing her own financial independence counteracts the systemic racism that Son claims to want to subvert shows how Son’s misogyny contradicts his own stated goals.
Themes
Jadine takes a coin out of her wallet and throws it on the floor before telling Son to take it. She says that Son’s reverence for his “original dime” is stupid because it came from the same place as all the other money. Son takes the money and leaves the apartment. He comes back the next night and finds the apartment empty. He thinks he has to find Jadine. He aims to give her whatever she wants and to find a way to want those things himself.
Jadine argues that Son’s idea of his original dime—a source of wealth that originates and stays within the Black community—is naïve because that dime came from the same place as all the other dimes: from systemically racist power structures. As soon as Jadine leaves, Son becomes fixated on getting her back at any cost, thinking that being with her will solve the sense of emptiness that he feels.
Themes
