Jadine's Quest of Black Self in Morrison's Tar Baby

Abstract

Some people of Afro-American origin become rootless due to their fascination with westerners' lifestyle and standard of beauty. They loose their ancestral heritage and adopt a pretentious life. Most of the time,they remain unknown about their authentic self. Sometimes, in course of their life, they are made to realize their original identity with the use of myths and other various characteristics of African American life such as an intimate description of nature and use of symbols. Morrison, in Tar Baby, attempts to reconstruct the original self of the major female protagonist Jadine who has adopted a fake life of westerners due to her reception of western education. She, aTar Baby for the Whites,is used to break the westerners' concept with the reconstruction of the myth of Tar Baby itself, which is primarily focused in this research.