The Theme of Inner Conflict in Toni Morrisons Tar Baby Essay -- Tar B

Toni Morrisons Tar Baby, is a novel about contentions and conflicts based on learned biases and prejudices. These biases exist on a race level, gender level, and a single out level. The central conflict, however, is the conflict within the main character, Jadine. This conflict, as Andrew W. A. LaVallee has suggested, is the conflict of the race traitor.2 It is the conflict of a woman who has discarded her heritage and culture and adoptive another trying to reconcile herself to the night women who want to bring back the prodigal daughter. The first of the contentions is that of race. As New York Times Book Review pressman John Irving aptly puts it Miss Morrison uncovers all the stereotypical racial fears felt by whites and scorchs alike. Prejudice exists between the white and black people in the fellowship between the black people of the house the black people and the local populace. Sydney and Ondine Childs, the Cook and Butler in the house of Valerian Street, feel superior t o the local black populace. Sydney remarks twice on how he is A genuine Philadelphia Negro mentioned in the book of that name (284). Part of this feeling of superiority might be class-related. The Childs be very proud of their positions in the Street house-they are industrious and hardworking. The Dominique blacks are to them swamp women or horsemen--depersonalized figures. This is most apparent in their ignorance of their helps names--they dub Gideon, Thrse, and Alma Este Yardman and the Marys. At Christmas dinner Valerian adds epithets calling them Thrse the Thief and Gideon the Get Away Man. (201). But as Judylyn Ryan points out, Both the superordinate and the qualified exercise this prerogative of nam... ....38/.black/.bmorris.html LaVallee, Andrew W. A. Faces as Black as His But Smug-The Race Traitor in Morrisons Tar Baby. Online Internet. 1 May, 1997. Available http//ocaxp1.cc.oberlin.edu/alavalle/morrison.html Moon, Yonghee. Rootedness. Paraphrase. Online. Internet. 1 Ma y. 1997. Available http//www.acsu.buffalo.edu/yongmoon/root.html Morrison, Toni. An call into question with Toni Morrison. With Tom LeClair.Anything Can Happen Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists. Ed. Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery. Urbana U of Illinois P, 1983. 252-61. Ryan, Judylyn S. Contested Visions/Double-Vision in Tar Baby. Modern Fiction Studies Volume 39. N3&4. Fall/winter 1993. 597-621. Toni Morrison, Contemporary Authors, Gale Research, 1993. Online. Internet. Available http//www.en.utexas.edu/mmaynard/Morrison/tarbaby.html