Tar Baby: Allegory 3 key examples

The Tar Baby story plays an important role in Morrison's Tar Baby for multiple reasons. In a broad sense, the Brer Rabbit tale symbolizes how characters in Tar Baby become stuck in traps or cycles of colonialism, racial prejudice, and enslavement of both the mind and body. For example, Sydney and Ondine—Valerian and Margaret's Black servants—become trapped in cycles of racism and exploitative labor on the Isle de Chevaliers. In addition, throughout the novel Jadine finds herself in an abusive relationship with Son, who orates the Brer Rabbit story while he sexually assaults Jadine. Jadine falls into a trap of a relationship, which echoes the complex bond between Brer Rabbit and the figure of Tar Baby.

In Morrison's Foreword to the novel Tar Baby, she explains that the Brer Rabbit folktale—and perhaps the novel itself—may be "A love story, then. Difficult, unresponsive, but seducing woman and clever, anarchic male, each with definitions of independence and domesticity, of safety and danger in that clash." Morrison explores these themes heavily in Tar Baby, using the folktale as a vehicle through which to connect history and narrative fiction. 

Additionally, in a more specific sense, the Brer Rabbit allegory carries hidden meaning in terms of its own history with racial appropriation. As noted above, numerous White artists turned the character of Tar Baby (once commonly used as a racial slur to describe Black people) into a caricature of Black identity: much like the White settlers colonize the fictional Isle de Chevaliers in Tar Baby. Overall, Morrison utilizes the Brer Rabbit figure to create a complex, multi-faceted allegory that flows through Tar Baby from the beginning of the novel to its end.  

In the passage above, Morrison depicts a product made from leftover scraps, but sold to consumers as original. This process closely echoes themes of cultural and racial appropriation seen throughout the novel. The fact that Valerians were "a real flop" but "not a painful one financially" reveals that Street Brothers Candy—in their search for more money and power—were willing to sacrifice product quality and originality. Much like White colonists on a Caribbean island originally settled by Black communities, Valerian's candy company both benefits and suffers from their careless appropriation.

Morrison's description of Valerian's business allows readers to imagine how White characters in Tar Baby benefit from the appropriation of goods, people, cultures, and even natural resources. After all, as Morrison later writes, Street Brothers Candy "held caucuses among themselves about whether to manufacture a nickel box of Valerians in Mississippi where beet sugar was almost free and the labor too." Valerian's self-named candy thus becomes an allegory for appropriation, which often requires those in power to exploit the labor, lives, and history of others.

The narrative hints at an allegorical connection between its depiction of female soldier ants and the nature of life for human women, illustrating how women—both historically and in modern times—work for life but are all too often subordinated by men. Work like childbearing and child-rearing, because it does not produce income or capital, is often not considered to be work in patriarchal societies. Soldier ants, like women, have "no time for dreaming," as Morrison writes.

Morrison's allegory speaks to the broader nature of misogynist society, which Jadine encounters heavily throughout Tar Baby—an experience made more complex by her Black female identity. As Morrison chronicles, female soldier ants are largely self-sustaining and do not consistently require male ants to survive and thrive. However, the echo of male domination remains, much like White and male domination remains on the Isle de Chevaliers.