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Chapter 6
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
Son and Jadine spend two days together after the Christmas dinner, and no one in the house notices. Then Jadine gives Son a plane ticket and $400, and Son uses Gideon’s passport to travel to New York City. Jadine is supposed to follow as soon as she finds out what Sydney and Ondine plan to do. Son wonders what he’ll do for money. He thinks of his departure from the island as a rescue mission—he’s rescuing Jadine from the false life she has been living. He considers it a “physical escape from the plantation.” But he’s concerned by her tendency to side with Valerian against him and against her own aunt and uncle.
Son argues that L’Arbe de la Croix represents a plantation, directly linking Valerian’s systemic exploitation of Black people to America’s legacy of enslavement. Son’s comparison points to the enduring power of that legacy to influence contemporary life. His concern about Jadine’s adoration of Valerian points to his view that Jadine is both a victim of the systemically racist power structures that grant Valerian authority—and also complicit in upholding those power structures, even if the power she gains is only relative to Valerian’s . Son’s “rescue” of Jadine then entails helping her to live an authentic and self-empowered life—not a life where her power and worth are dependent on the charity a wealthy white man has decided to give her.
Themes
The next day, Jadine gets in a taxi in New York City. She’s excited to be in the city. She thinks that she and Son could have a life there. Her friend Dawn is gone shooting a pilot episode for TV, so Jadine and Son move into her apartment for four months. Jadine works as a model. Son and Jadine become emotionally closer, too. Jadine tells Son about her mother’s funeral, and Son tells her about his time in the Vietnam War. Mostly, though, Son tells Jadine what he thinks she wants to hear. Jadine has written postcards to Sydney and Ondine, who were heartbroken when she left the island. Jadine didn’t tell them who was waiting for her in New York, but she promised to bring Sydney and Ondine to live with her whenever they wanted to. Son wants to leave and go to Eloe.
While Jadine and Son grow closer, cracks in their relationship also begin to appear. Jadine avoids telling Ondine and Sydney about Son, knowing that they would disapprove of the relationship. And while Jadine loves living in New York City, Son wants to return to Eloe, the small town in Florida where he's from. New York City then comes to represent Jadine’s cosmopolitan worldview, and the overarching power structures that govern society at large, Meanwhile Eloe represents the value that Son places on self-contained, self-governed communities, where people work for what they have and control their own destiny.
Themes
Son isn’t sympathetic to Sydney and Ondine’s struggles. He thinks it’s wrong that Ondine hid Margaret’s shameful secret and that Sydney should have beaten Valerian up years ago. In New York, Son and Jadine are happy, but they feel like time is moving too quickly. They can stay in Dawn’s apartment for two more months. They pass the two months in a haze, deeply in love with each other. Son figures out a way to get Gideon’s unemployment checks, but he only picks up one check before he and Jadine go to Eloe.
Son’s lack of sympathy toward Ondine and Sydney indicates the hard line he takes toward people who are complicit in unjust power structures. He thinks, essentially, that Ondine and Sydney have the power to empower themselves without Valerian’s help but simply choose not to. Their refusal to break free from Valerian upholds the status quo, making them complicit in the systemic oppression Valerian represents and benefits from most.
Themes
