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To follow, still researching topic A. MORRISON AND JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS I. The Authors and the Narrators Considering our study of Joel Handler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, particularly the relationship between Harris as white author and Uncle Remus as his black narrator/character, one comes to Morrison's book as a retelling that is more than a new rendition (like the one Lester produced by Lester -- see study guide from last time), but that has some goals that resemble Lester's. Morrison, too, wants to restore Brer Rabbit/Wakaima to his place as a black cultural hero, and she too wants to replace Harris's narrator with a contemporary African-American voice that really speaks to a contemporary American audience. Morrison's narrator tells the story in a voice that is not stereotyped in any way; but whereas Lester speaks of his narrative voice as that of "a people," Morrison's voice seems even a bit more expansive than that. It seems to be the voice of an omniscient, god-like being who can see into people's dreams and tell what the trees and birds and rivers think and say. It is, moreover, a woman's voice: see my further discussion of the narrator below, in the section on Tempest parallels. II. The Characters Son is the Brer Rabbit figure; he is a trickster and a survivor; he was born in the US South, and he is endangered by the "Tar Baby," Jadine. As in Harris's account of the story, the Tar Baby is female and looks like a black child in a big floppy hat; but she is actually a trap, an attractive decoy constructed by white society (Brer Fox, as embodied in the person of Valerian Street). Son's attempt to establish a relationship with her leads to his extreme frustration; he even hits her once (as Brer Rabbit hits the Tar Baby). But the more entangled he gets with her, the more he risks being destroyed. III. Further details to consider The hats in Jadine's dreams seem connected with the hat the Tar Baby is wearing in the illustrations by A.B. Frost, which appeared in the second edition of Harris's first Uncle Remus book (1895). Jadine's connection with the white world of European haute couture is part of what makes her the tar baby. The word "tar" comes into the novel to describe the skin color of the African woman "who had run [Jadine] out of Paris" (48). She is the opposite of Jadine, a woman whose beauty is really the color of tar (rather than a tar-baby pretending to be black while really serving the interests of white culture).
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