Tar Baby Themes

Tar Baby tells the love story of two Black Americans from vastly different backgrounds. Jadine is a beautiful, wealthy model who has received a prestigious education and other enormous privileges due to her patrons, Valerian and Margaret Street, the wealthy white couple that employs Jadine’s Aunt Ondine and Uncle Sydney as servants. Son, meanwhile, is an impoverished Black man with a criminal past. From the start, it’s clear that Son’s attitude toward race and…

At the end of the novel, Ondine tells Jadine that there’s only one way to be a woman. To be that kind of woman, Jadine first has to learn how to be a good daughter, which means taking care of the people who took care of her. Once Jadine learns that, she can learn how to be a good wife and a good mother, which will in turn earn her the respect of other women…

Son finds his way to Isle de Chevaliers after he flees his rural hometown after he kills his wife, Cheyenne, to retaliate against her infidelity. When Son and Jadine become involved later, he repeatedly abuses her and then rapes her, leading Jadine to leave. Son’s obsessive fixation on Jadine leads him to break into the Streets’ house in the first place to try and get close to her. It also spurs him to undertake…

At Christmas dinner at L’Arbe de la Croix, Ondine reveals that Margaret repeatedly abused her son, Michael, when he was a child. After that revelation, Valerian feels like he is innocent of Margaret’s crime (he did not abuse Michael) but that his innocence is “revolting.” He did not know what Margaret did, he thinks, because he did not want to know. And although feels like he must do something to right the wrong of…