Midnight Robber

Moving between the first-person narrator’s tales and the third-person narrative of Tan-Tan’s life explores the theme of mythmaking. The interruptions of the house eshu telling anansi stories (or Afro-Caribbean folktales) reflect, foreshadow, and stand in for what is happening in the main narrative.

Tan-Tan’s masque as Robber Queen becomes myth, and the first-person narrator comments on her hearing these stories. Prior to the first myth about how Tan-Tan learns to steal, the eshu says, “The first time Tan-Tan hear anybody tell a ‘nansi story about she, she was a big woman living on exile on New Half-Way Tree” (78). Near the end of the novel, Tan-Tan has heard many versions of these stories and “kept trying to discern truths about herself in the Tan-Tan tales [...] People loved them so, so there must be something to them, ain’t?” (299).

Another level of storytelling is the fireside ghost stories—“duppy stories by the fire, about all kinda dead spirits and thing” (138)—told by both douens and humans. These inform the names that humans give the indigenous species and are a way douens entertain humans. Also, the third-person narrator breaks the fourth wall, occasionally commenting on the main narrative; for instance, saying “And that is how the story starts” (50).