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
BetaPart 2, Pages 143-175Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Part 2, Pages 143-160 Summary
The third-person narrative skips to the day before Tan-Tan’s 16th birthday party. She is inviting Aislin and Quamina while Aislin shows her some faulty carpentry by a new arrival, Cudjoe. Tan-Tan recalls her abortion in Aislin’s back room two years prior; her friend Melonhead had been blamed instead of the actual rapist, Antonio.
While picking up Antonio’s arthritis medication, Tan-Tan struggles with hearing a “silent bad voice, like an insane eshu” (147) that provides snide commentary on Antonio’s abuse. The women discuss Quamina’s mental progress due to douen medicine.
Along her walk home, men flirt with Tan-Tan. She avoids the hanging tree and passes the iron shop. Douens make wooden crafts, working “obeah magic” (152) into objects like bowls, but humans Michael and Gladys run the iron shop. Tan-Tan flirts with Michael to try and find out their latest secret project (later revealed to be a car), and he gives her a present from Janisette: a knife with a handle of Jamaica mahogany.
Michael shows her how to throw it, and Gladys gets jealous. After the iron-working couple go inside their house, Tan-Tan walks away and flirts with Cudjoe. They start kissing behind his hut.
Part 2, Pages 160-175 Summary
Tan-Tan returns to find Antonio and Janisette physically fighting over his drinking. She intervenes on her father’s behalf but struggles with internal dialogue between the different sides of herself. Janisette goes to a friend’s home.
Melonhead stops by, and they plan their escape to another village called Sweet Pone. Tan-Tan wants to sneak out; Melonhead asks if she “might ever want to partner with” him, offering an open relationship, or being “freehand partners” (165-66). Tan-Tan agrees, but then Antonio interrupts them and attacks Melonhead with a rum bottle. Tan-Tan asks Melonhead to leave, and he says he will come back with the sheriff soon.
Antonio beats Tan-Tan with his belt and rapes her. She finds the knife that Michael made still tied to her waist and kills Antonio. Chichibud finds her under Antonio’s corpse, frees her, and convinces her to run away, fearing the sheriff will hang her for murder.
Benta, Chichibud’s packbird, carries them into the bush. Dogs pursue them, and Benta climbs a tree and hops between trees to escape. Chichibud invites Tan-Tan to hide with the douens if she swears to keep their secrets and “give back two” lives for the one she took (174). Tan-Tan agrees, and Benta, previously thought to be flightless, flies them over the bush.
Part 2, Pages 143-175 Analysis
While Tan-Tan’s maturation was accelerated by Antonio’s abuse, her 16th birthday is seen as the coming of age in her community. She is sexually desirable and, after struggling with an abortion at 14, sexually active with other men. The community will support actions, like partnering with Melonhead and moving to Sweet Pone, after she celebrates her birthday.
However, her identity has become bifurcated due to trauma; there is a “Bad Tan-Tan” and a “Good Tan-Tan” (150) in her head. Mental illness associated with identity splitting is compared to both technology and spirituality: Tan-Tan feels “like an insane eshu” (147) is speaking through her earbug. Technology has replaced magic; supernatural terminology has become technobabble.
Orisha, like eshu, traditionally possess followers. One ancient method for curing mental illness—often called a spiritual malady before modern psychology—was a trance dance to invite spirit possession. Tan-Tan allows the Robber Queen to possess her so she can finally protect herself from (and ultimately kill) Antonio.
Masquerade is the step between technology and magic, and the douens use both disguise and magic. Douen women, who turn out to be the “packbirds” (170) like Benta, use obeah magic when crafting wood or fabric. They also disguise themselves as flightless. The secret flight at the end of this section alludes to the myth of the Flying African, which is about escaping slavery and has been used in many pieces of literature, such as Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
An important piece of foreshadowing echoes of the local griot’s earlier preface to the myth: “the woman who had was to save two life for every one she take” (78). Chichibud says Tan-Tan must “give back two” lives for the one she took (174). In the end, the second life is her unborn child, fathered by Antonio, but this refrain runs throughout the novel after the first titled myth.
Unlock all 45 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
