"Let Loose the Dogs": Messiness and Ethical Wrangling in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby

Abstract

As Toni Morrison's 1981 novel, Tar Baby, draws to a close and the tension between the central characters, Jadine and Son, reaches its peak, the omniscient narration voices the questions that Morrison's readers have been grappling with since the novel's opening pages: "One had a past, the other a future and each one bore the culture to save the race in his hands. Mama-spoiled black man, will you mature with me? Culture bearing black woman, whose culture are you bearing?" (269). Much of the initial critical conversation concerning Tar Baby revolves around efforts to determine where the reader's sentiments should lie. Are we to sympathize with Son, a sensitive man deeply attuned to his "ancient properties," whose concern with black folk values, community, and ancestral heritage are primary to his personal identity?1 Or, are we to invest in Jadine, the highly educated black model-the epitome of colonized beauty-who all but rejects her heritage and ancestry as incompatible with the fast-paced, modern, lifestyle that she associates with success? The conflicting forces at work within Tar Baby are, indeed, complex and frustrating. The novel's conclusion-in which Jadine returns to Paris, ostensibly to resume her glamorous lifestyle while Son runs, "lickety-split," away with the mythic blind and naked horsemen on the Isle des Chevaliers-provides no definitive answers (306). The fates of Son and Jadine do not satisfy the desire for a final statement about the possibility (or lack thereof) for reconciliation between modern expectations of Western "sophistication" and black cultural tradition. However, the call for a clear resolution to the novel is reductive. Toni Morrison's postmodern technique is such that it never resolves.2 Rather, she consistently pushes her reader toward further ethical wrangling, insisting upon the reader's obligation to struggle with the moral issues at hand.3 With this in mind, Jadine may not only be read as exemplary of the challenges to black identity in a post civil rights moment of racial "arrival"-in which civil rights such as equity and equality in the work force, education, etc. are advertised and celebrated as having been completely attained-but she also allows Morrison to confront notions of racial "selling out" that have been historically, and still remain, prominent within the African American community. It seems as though Jadine's final departure to Europe indicates a choice of selfishness and therein racial betrayal. However, selfishness is valenced throughout the novel in such a way that it requires Jadine and Morrison's readers to question whether selfishness in the name of autonomous selfhood is, in fact, synonymous with "selling out." This disorienting contradiction allows Morrison to direct both Jadine's and her reader's continued ethical examination toward issues of racial and cultural re-approachment as opposed to reading Jadine's departure to Europe as definitive racial betrayal.Randall Kennedy closely explores the notion of the "sellout" in contemporary Black America. He not only examines what it means to sell out, but also challenges common accusations of doing so in the name of achievement in the late twentieth century. Certain occupations, and certain requirements of some occupations, prompt accusations of selling out (64). Perhaps the greatest problem with the use of sellout rhetoric "involves determining what constitutes the best interest of blacks and the best means for achieving controversial goals" (72). Thus, in some situations, allegations of selling out are less than clearly defined. Taking care to note that "Sellout rhetoric and its concomitant attitudes, gestures, and strategies can prompt excessive self-censorship, truncate needed debate, and nurture demagoguery," Kennedy calls for the maintenance of a black solidarity that regulates sellout rhetoric in such a way that stimulates a certain thoughtful consideration of racial betrayal (84). In Tar Baby Morrison signals a similar ethical dilemma, refusing to position Jadine definitively as a sellout. …