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.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 2, Pages 78-119Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Part 2, Pages 78-90 Summary
This section returns to the A.I. narrator. The title “How Tan-Tan Learn to Thief” prefaces the section, which the narrator describes as “ a ‘nansi story” (78). The eshu includes the perspective of an older Tan-Tan recalling this as the first story she heard about herself.
Tan-Tan’s myth begins with her living on the moon as queen of the Taino people alongside King Antonio. Tan-Tan and Antonio notice Earth is dirty and decide to clean it. He sings to a cloud chariot, and they fly to Earth. However, their “obeah magic” (82) does not work on Earth, so they must clean by hand and cannot call the magic chariot.
Hungry, they call on the deity Kabo Tano to save them, who creates a magic tree filled with food halfway between the mountaintop and the river. A messenger pig is too greedy to deliver the message, so Tan-Tan and Antonio continue to starve. However, Tan-Tan notices the fat pig and follows it alongside a rat. After killing both animals and eating apples, she can hear Kabo Tano again. He tells her to cut down the tree, but she claims to be too weak.
After teaching her how to cook the animals’ meat to regain her strength, Kabo Tano again decrees she cut down the tree. She does so, but he is angry that she lied about needing to eat more than the apples, so he banishes her and Antonio to Earth, advising them to plant the half-way tree’s twigs for new food-bearing trees. Tan-Tan births a new population for the Earth.
The section ends with the narrator addressing the unborn Tubman, asking if she likes the story, and confiding that Tan-Tan does not.
Part 2, Pages 91-119 Summary
The third-person narrator returns, describing Tan-Tan and Antonio’s arrival on New Half-Way Tree, a forest world with wrong-colored light. They encounter a douen; Tan-Tan tries to ask eshu what it is, but her earbug just gives her a headache. The douen, named Chichibud, wants a trade for being their guide to the human village Junjuh, but they have nothing to offer him. He agrees to guide them anyway.
Chichibud, seeing that Tan-Tan is thirsty and cold, offers her water and a magic warming cloth made by his wife. He shows her a lizard as well as which plants are poisonous or edible. Antonio threatens Chichibud and tries to stop his lessons.
The trio makes camp. Chichibud tosses them fruit and freshly killed meat, and the latter lands in Antonio’s hands, causing another scrap. Again, Antonio interferes with lessons about “Bush Poopa” aka “Father Bush” (103). Chichibud teaches them how to pitch a tent and start a fire, warning them not to spit fruit seeds into the fire. Antonio ignores him, and his spit seed burns a hole in the tent.
While Tan-Tan is sleeping, Antonio falls asleep on his watch, drunk from rum he brought in a flask, and their fire goes out. This causes a monster—a “mako jumbie” (111)—to invade their campsite. They almost escape detection, but Antonio wakes up suddenly and alerts the monster to their presence. It breaks his arm and injures Chichibud’s leg before Chichibud kills it.
Chichibud gives Antonio a bark that puts him to sleep, sets his arm, and keeps watch over the fire. The next morning, Chichibud smokes meat from the dead monster and reprimands Antonio before giving him more of the painkiller bark.
Part 2, Pages 78-119 Analysis
By bouncing between narratives, Hopkinson uses an embedded narrative structure that emphasizes the mechanisms of oral tradition—telling, retelling, and overhearing. This technique adds an allegorical, fanciful quality to the story.
The myth about Tan-Tan learning to be a thief is a strong allusion to the Biblical story of Genesis: she is cast out of an exquisite moon kingdom for eating “custard apples” (88) and lying about the strength they give her. This is Eve’s Biblical transgression retold as a ‘nansi story, highlighting the Catholic influences on Afro-Caribbean spirituality.
This myth is also about the Taino, an indigenous people of the Caribbean who experienced genocide at the hands of Spanish conquistadors. Tan-Tan and Antonio call upon Kabo Tano, also known as Tamosi or the Ancient One, an indigenous deity.
Additionally, the myth mirrors some of the events that occur in the third-person narrative. For instance, Kabo Tano teaches Tan-Tan how to cook meat, similar to how Chichibud teaches Tan-Tan to cook meat after she arrives on New Half-Way Tree. This emphasizes how orality—the changes made in retelling and overhearing—can elevate a story to myth.
Chichibud is a douen, which is considered a jumbie or a creature separate from human. He says, “tallpeople quick to name what is people and what is beast” (92). Douen comes from the Caribbean folkloric name for the souls of dead unbaptized children with backwards feet and knees. This is a way to codify the backwards knees of Chichibud’s species indigenous to the planet humans have colonized. The larger monster that attacks their camp is called a “mako jumbie” (111). This name for a species indigenous to another planet comes from Caribbean stilts walkers/dancers, and it is a way of understanding the enormous size of the creature. Jumbie (or jumbi) more generally refers to spirits or ghosts and is used to refer to both douen and mako (or moko).
