45 pages • 1 hour read
Nalo HopkinsonMidnight Robber
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 1, Pages 1-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Part 1, Pages 1-3 Summary
Set apart from the main narrative in bold, san serif font, the first three pages are told by an unnamed first-person narrator who is addressing an unnamed “you” (1). At the end of the novel, it is revealed that this narrator is an A.I.—called a “house eshu” (327)—speaking to protagonist Tan-Tan’s unborn child, Tubman. The A.I. narrator describes Tan-Tan as “strong” with “skin like cocoa-tea” (1).
The narrator is on Toussaint, the mirror planet of New Half-Way Tree where the unborn child resides. New Half-Way Tree is the prison planet for Toussaint thieves and murderers. Tan-Tan’s story is about crossing between the “dimension veil” (2) between worlds.
Part 1, Pages 4-16 Summary
This section begins on Toussaint Planet, moving into third-person narration and following Tan-Tan’s father, Antonio. The Mayor of Cockpit County, he has just discovered his wife Ione’s alleged infidelity with his friend Quashee. A female pedicab runner chats with him during his journey home, and he calls the house eshu. The A.I. says his wife, Ione, is taking a nap.
The unnamed runner turns the conversation to taxes and compares the tech-run A.I. autocars with the pedicabs run by human labor. She then hums a bit of nannysong—the sound of connections between technology—to get Antonio’s earbug to stop working so she can tell him about the Sou-Sou Co-operative of pedicab runners meeting. She offers a private communication service. The Grande Anansi Nanotech Interface (or Granny Nanny) system is described as a “Web” of nanomites implanted in all “Marryshevites” (10), and Antonio agrees to meet secretly to discuss using the service external to this system.
When Antonio arrives home, he greets his daughter Tan-Tan who is playing the Carnival game Midnight Robber as the Robber Queen character. Antonio discovers that the rumors about his wife are true; he leaves to live in his office.
The first-person narrator interrupts to mention how the tale of Ione’s affair is being spread.
Part 1, Pages 16-32 Summary
The main third-person narrative resumes by describing Tan-Tan as being raised by technology—a “fretful minder”—and the house eshu while Ione ignored her to talk with “Obi Mami-Be, the witch woman” (17).
Soon, the celebration of Jonkanoo Season begins to mark the ancestors’ arrival on Toussaint. Tan-Tan is selected to sing a solo with the Mummers. As she prepares, her Nursie reveals she had a daughter who “climb[ed] the half-way tree” (19), a euphemism for an exiled criminal. The gardener, Ben, has used Garden, the nature technology, to grow a candle-laden hat in the shape of a Marryshow nation ship, like the ancestors used.
The Mummers travel around singing through the town, and people give Tan-Tan presents of sweets until the group reaches the town square. She sings her solo and cries seeing a father and daughter together in the crowd. Antonio gives his speech but ignores Tan-Tan and Ione, causing the former to cry again. Nursie gives her cocoa laced with a sleeping drug, and while Tan-Tan is asleep, Antonio brings her Jonkanoo present: a Robber Queen costume. Ione gives her a pair of alligator shoes.
While Tan-Tan plays in her costume, the house eshu tells her the history of the Robber King masque, which was only played by men until a woman named Belle Starr played the Midnight Robber. The eshu shows Tan-Tan images of Carnival on Earth, and Tan-Tan talks to it about Antonio leaving right before Old Year’s Night.
Part 1, Pages 1-32 Analysis
Midnight Robber is written in various degrees of Jamaican patois—spelled “patwa” (59) to designate one variation later in the novel. The first- and third-person narration, as well as the dialogue, includes Creole terms like “oui” (1) and “tout monde” (18), as well as slang.
Many of Hopkinson’s technological terms originate in the religion of Yoruba. Most importantly, an eshu is an Orisha—a Yorubian deity that possesses followers—that spread through diaspora. Hopkinson uses this name for the A.I. that is connected to a familial house—making it a sort of house deity—and rides, or possesses, people through earbugs. Additionally, the Caribbean folklore spider Anansi is part of the name for the technological web-like network: Grande Anansi Nanotech Interface.
The teaching quality of Tan-Tan’s house eshu is seen on two narrative levels. As a neglected child, Tan-Tan receives lessons and advice from the A.I., and her unborn child (a cipher for the reader in many cases) receives its own lessons in the first-person narrative sections. This is an analogy for how deities teach their followers through possession.
Some of these lessons revolve around Carnival, generally defined as the hedonistic celebration before Lent (in February or March) that developed from the Catholic influence on diasporic African religion in Caribbean nations. Jonkanoo is a similar street parade in December that focuses on emancipation of slaves rather than excess before sacrificing for Lent. Carnival masques, like the Midnight Robber, emphasize disguise and performativity, which are important themes in Hopkinson’s novel.
In this section, there is foreshadowing that Antonio is the father of Tan-Tan’s unborn child through an act of rape later in the book. The third-person narrator observes that Antonio feels like he could “never touch [Tan-Tan] too much” (13) and repeatedly mentions the resemblance between mother and daughter that Antonio later cites as motivation for his abuse.
