Jadine's Quest of Black Self in Morrison's Tar Baby
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Department of English
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.