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Tar Baby Analysis

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Toni Morrison’s “Tar Baby” represents a new type of radical woman Jadine as a purely individual self. Jadine denies her own Black cultural heritage for the attainment of her individuality in White culture. At the same time Morrison describes the tragic consequences for African- American people when they blindly follow and embrace the ideals of white society. Jadine losses her parents at very early age and is adopted by her uncle Sydney and her aunt Ondine. They work for white family. Jadine is trained , educated and lived through the capitalistic white world, loves Son, who is the representative of African culture. Son fails in his attempt to imbue the black community values for which Jadine also belongs. Both Jadine and Son are incapable of accepting each other’s values and they break their relationship. Jadine feels safeguard and security in White culture than in Black culture. Her fear to lose her self-esteem in patriarchy results in her deprivation of black cultural heritage which suggests that her selfhood is only partial.
Key Words: Cultural Heritage, Equality, Literacy, Individuality.
Deprivation of Cultural Heritage in Toni Morrison’s “ Tar Baby”

Tar Baby is the first of Toni Morrison’s novels with white people as central characters. This novel sets on a Caribbean Island, the Isle des Chevaliers, the home of a retired American candy mogul, Valerian Street, a White man, who is a representative of capitalistic society. By setting her fiction in Caribbean,
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