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Summary
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
A man on a ship stands at the railing. He believes the coast is clear. He jumps into the water and swims toward a nearby pier, but the current pushes him away from shore. He comes across a boat and swims toward it. He climbs up a rope ladder at the bow. He hears music below and two women talking. He tries to stay out of sight. The boat makes its way toward a smaller island than the one by the pier.
The novel opens without clarifying who the man is or why he jumps overboard, leaving the reader to try and fill in the gaps about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. Characters in the novel will later make their own guesses about the man and why he has come to the island, and the stories that they invent about him will reveal as much about them as the person they are ostensibly trying to understand.
Themes
The women tie the boat to a dock and then walk away with a flashlight. The man stays behind. He finds food in the fridge and eats it—he’s ravenous because he hasn’t eaten since the night before. He goes onto the deck, where he sees the stars. He can’t see the shore, which is just as well, as 300 years ago, the island shore struck enslaved people blind as soon as they saw it.
This passage introduces the novel’s theme of the legacy of enslavement and colonialism, pointing to how that legacy has impacted the island the man lands on as well as the current (and past) inhabitants of that island.
Themes
