45 pages • 1 hour read
Midnight Robber
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Storytelling and Mythmaking
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).
Masquerade and Identity
The role of the carnivalesque in identity formation is seen throughout the novel, including the title. Tan-Tan engages in a variety of Midnight Robber performances: pretending to be Robber Queen on Toussaint and on New Half-Way Tree with her half-sister; remembering playing “masque Robber Queen” (209) as a child in the myth of Dry Bone; making “masque ‘pon Chigger Bite!” (247) after coming of age; and a final adult performance as Robber Queen at Carnival at the end of the novel.
Carnival is celebrated at the beginning and end of the novel as well as on both planets. On Toussaint, people “wound their hips in the ecstatic license of Carnival,” and one person had “temporarily cell-sculpted her skin to be Afro on one side, Euro on the other” (55). The unlimited play space of masquerade allows for exploration and a release of energies and repressions. Coming before Lent—a time of sacrifice—Carnival allows the veil of Catholicism to be lifted so more pagan elements of colonized people can be celebrated.
Additionally, these pagan and exaggerated elements of Carnival define species that are unfamiliar to humans. After being exiled from Toussaint, people on New Half-Way Tree define the douens as making “bat masque” (92) or wearing “Old Masque bat costumes” (180). The douens themselves have many names for their home, like the daddy tree and Papa Bois, which speaks to the multiple identities of masquerade.
Slavery and Emancipation
Made most explicit in the name of Tan-Tan’s child, Tubman, the theme of escaping the horrors of slavery is prominent. In his escape after murdering Quashee, Antonio takes Tan-Tan through the dimension veils, where “They were trapped in a confining space, being taken away from home like the long time ago Africans” (74). This alludes to the slave ships taking Africans to the Caribbean.
The migration from Earth to Toussaint prior to the events of the novel was by a group called the Marryshevites. It is celebrated during Junkanoo Season with hats in the shape of spaceships that carried dark-skinned people to freedom, as well as songs that recall African spirituals, like “Sweet chariot” (24).
There are indentured servants in chains on New Half-Way Tree in a settlement that resembles a plantation. Even Tan-Tan runs from the “real evil” (286) experienced on cane fields. In other settlements, douens fill the role of slaves, calling humans masters. When first arriving in Junjuh, Tan-Tan says to Chichibud, “Master? Only machines were supposed to give anybody rank like that […] You must call he Compere” (121), emphasizing the role of technology in creating equality on Toussaint.
Unlock all 45 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
