Tar Baby

Son, whose given name is Franklin Green, is the other protagonist of Tar Baby and a foil to Jadine. Son is a fugitive, jumping ship in a fit of homesickness. Lost and starving, he stumbles upon and hides in L’Arbe de la Croix, where he falls in love with Jadine after seeing her asleep while he walks through the house during the nights. He is accepted into the house as a guest by Valerian, although his beliefs conflict with Valerian’s and eventually lead to his expulsion. Jadine’s and Son’s characters are opposed in many ways, including their values and opinions as well as their goals and dreams. One such opposition is the solidity of their identities. While Jadine is confident in herself and knows who she is and wants to be, Son is more malleable, often changing names and identities, though he considers Son to be his most true:

Son. It was the name that called forth the true him. The him that he never lied to, the one he tucked in at night and the one he did not want to die. The other selves were like the words he spoke—fabrications of the moment, misinformation required to protect Son from harm and to secure that one reality at least (139).

Son withholds himself from others in L’Arbe de la Croix, a habit he developed through his worldly travels. He often crafts an identity based on others’ expectations of him and his own desire to have them see him in a specific light. He keeps his name from the other residents and hesitates to share his life. Son, however, is the name he most identifies with, even if it is not his given name. Everything he does, each identity he crafts, is meant to protect his most true self.

When Son finally does open up, and tells Jadine about himself, he witnesses her fall in love just as he did with her. Their relationship is passionate and at times violent. Like Jadine, Son has expectations for his life and hopes to change Jadine. He is critical of her relationship with Valerian, and her tendency to defend Valerian and side with him during arguments. Son hopes to help her see a new light and bring her closer into his own life and worldview:

He thought he was rescuing her from Valerian, meaning them, the aliens, the people who in a mere three hundred years had killed a world millions of years old...And even when some of them built something nice and human, they grew vicious protecting it from their own predatory children, let alone an outsider (269).

Son believes that Jadine is too heavily influenced by white men, and he wants her to free herself of Valerian’s control. He sees her ambition and beliefs as a product of her education and relationship with Valerian. He believes that she should be more cognizant of her aunt and uncle, and more connected to a community like his own in Eloe. She refutes his hopes for her just as he refutes her hopes for him. Their inability to change each other or accept each other as they are dooms their relationship.

Valerian is the head of the L’Arbe de la Croix house and believes that everyone around him is indebted to him. He dislikes being questioned and focuses on pursuing his own happiness while he takes joy in antagonizing his wife, Margaret. He is a secondary character, but like his wife, goes through a significant change by the end of the novel. His primary point of contention with the Christmas holiday is that his son, Michael, though invited and saying he will come, will not come. His relationship with Michael is weak and was never truly strong. Valerian failed, even when Michael was a child under the control of his mother, to ever build a strong bond. Valerian tells Jadine of how he would try to bring his son out from under Margaret’s sway and only bring ire down upon himself:

She’d make up things, threats to herself, attacks, insults—anything to see him fly into a rage and show how willing he was to defend her. I watched, and tried to play it down or prove, prove she was making it up. I always checked, it was always nothing. All I ended up doing was making him angry with me (76-77).

Valerian’s failure to connect with Michael turns him away from the child and as Michael grows into an adult, Valerian disapproves of him. He does not agree with Michael’s political beliefs or actions, often describing his son as an irresponsible teenager. His detachment from Michael is in keeping with his general treatment of those around him. He sees everyone as owing him something, whether it is because he paid for them to go to school, employs them, or lets them stay in the house. His inability to truly involve himself in others’ lives makes the revelation of Margaret’s abuse severe.

When Margaret’s physical abuse of Michael as a child is exposed, Valerian concludes that in many ways, it is his fault, for not being more present and observant in his son’s life. He finds himself guilty of willful negligence: “He had not known because he had not taken the trouble to know. He was satisfied with what he did know. Knowing more was inconvenient and frightening” (242). With the realization that he is at fault for Michael’s abuse, Valerian crumbles. He is a dynamic character, undergoing a change after the revelation and realizing his mistakes in life concerning his son, but his physical and cognitive deterioration leave little ability for him to make up for his misdeeds. 

Despite being a secondary character, Margaret undergoes a significant change over the course of the novel. She sees her primary role in life as a mother to Michael, and she frequently contends with what it means to be his mother, and how to do it well. She feels immense pressure from an early age, when she marries Valerian, to fit into this new kind of society. With no heir to Valerian’s candy company, one of the most significant pressures on Margaret is to have a child, and that pressure is made more severe by others’ perception of her as a trophy. Margaret feels lost and alone in Valerian’s wealthy world until she has Michael. However, she is not prepared for the intense responsibility of being a mother and struggles with him and her emotions.

Margaret loves her son, but the pressure of providing for him weighs on her, and she comes to have mixed emotions towards him. She alternates between smothering him and distancing from him, often resulting in him hiding under the sink, humming to himself. Valerian doesn’t understand her relationship with Michael but rarely intervenes. Margaret struggles to accept Michael’s  dependence on her, and this leads her to physically abuse him: “She could not describe her loathing of its prodigious appetite for security—the criminal arrogance of an infant’s conviction that while he slept, someone is there” (236). She struggles with these sentiments throughout her life and wants to reconnect with Michael and live near him, believing that she is finally ready to be his mother completely. The knowledge of what she did to him hinders her throughout life, but she becomes dynamic after the revelation of her abuse: “Like the much-sought-after, finally captured strangler, she wore that look of harmony that in newspaper photos comes across as arrogance, or impotence at the least. The harmony that comes from the relieved discovery that the jig is up” (235). With her treatment of Michael revealed, Margaret finally feels free and out from under Valerian’s control, while Valerian begins to crumble. As Valerian falls ill, Margaret commits to staying on the island and caring for him, deciding that Michael does not need her. For the first time, she feels comfortable in her own home and as though she is in control of her life. 

Sydney and Ondine are Jadine's uncle and aunt and are static characters throughout the novel, facing the conflict of their employers with a similar attitude as they have with conflicts of the past. They devote their lives to supporting Jadine and do what they can to keep their jobs working for the Streets. Both understand the separation between themselves and the Streets, and struggle with the Streets’ treatment of them despite their work keeping the entire household afloat. When Son comes to apologize to Sydney and Ondine, Sydney expresses his anger over Valerian’s treatment while also communicating his own dislike of Son: “What [Valerian] wants is for people to do what he says do. Well, it may be his house, but I live here too and I don’t want you around!” (163). Sydney recognizes that Valerian does not actually care for him or Ondine, only wants them to do what he says and feels as though they owe him for their jobs and his financial support of Jadine. However, Sydney exerts some control of the house, living there just as long as the Streets and coordinating the everyday affairs. He struggles with Son’s status as a guest superseding his own.

Ondine encounters a similar, though more severe, relationship with Margaret. Though the two began as friends, their friendship soured and their relationship explodes when they fight after Ondine reveals Margaret’s abuse of Michael. In the aftermath of that revelation, when Margaret comes to apologize, Ondine realizes that her employer, with whom she has shared a house for decades, never knew her at all: “It was as though she saw Margaret for the first time. She shook her head back and forth back and forth in wonder. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t thirty-five. I was twenty-three. A girl. Just like you’” (241). Margaret never made a real attempt to know Ondine, and the fact that she doesn’t know Ondine’s age and blames Ondine to some degree for her own abuse of Michael shows Ondine that she and Sydney are not valued by the Streets.

Their ultimate disappointment, however, comes from Jadine’s final rebuke of them at the novel’s conclusion. When Jadine refuses to promise to care for them as they grow old, Ondine realizes that Jadine doesn’t truly know them either: “And she couldn’t think of nothing better to do than buy me some shoes I can’t wear, a dress I shouldn’t, and run off with the first pair of pants that steps in the door” (283). Jadine doesn’t connect with her aunt and uncle and refuses to feel a sense of responsibility for them after all they’ve done for her. Sydney and Ondine did not provide for her in order for her to owe them, as Jadine believes they did, but did so because they love her. Jadine gifts Ondine clothes for Christmas that are suited for Jadine’s style of living, showing a desire to overwhelm with status and wealth rather than giving a gift of thought and care. Sydney and Ondine are left with disappointment, clinging to each other as the people in their lives let them down.