45 pages • 1 hour read
Midnight Robber
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BetaPart 3, Pages 212-232Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3
Part 3, Pages 212-220 Summary
In the main narrative, Benta realizes that Tan-Tan’s urine is toxic to the food grubs that live in the outhouse and agrees to take her to the ground. Tan-Tan apologizes for the trouble, and Benta says they knew “trouble” is what they’d get for “picking [her] up” (212). Her first night in the daddy tree is filled with nightmares.
After Benta takes Tan-Tan to the forest floor the next day, the family scavenges for breakfast. Frustrated with the raw diet of the douens, Tan-Tan decides to climb down to the forest floor again by herself, and some community members gawk at her. When she flusters them with Robber Queen banter, they leave her alone.
On the forest floor, she examines the plants and gets bit by a “ground puppy” (217)—a 12-legged, yellow-haired animal. She finds some of the halwa fruit Chichibud introduced her to and some foreign mushrooms. After a moment of disorientation, she finds the daddy tree trunk, but is stopped by Kret, whom she initially mistakes for Chichibud. He complains about her noisemaking and food-roasting but eventually allows her to pass and climb the tree to Chichibud’s home.
Part 3, Pages 220-232 Summary
Benta notes that the mushrooms Tan-Tan found are poisonous and throws them out a window. After Tan-Tan expresses her frustrations with being unable to urinate or cook with fire, Benta suggests she go to the forest floor with Abitefa. The mother and daughter argue, but Abitefa relents and agrees.
During their first outing together, the “hinte” (223) Abitefa walks off, leaving Tan-Tan alone. Using her sense of smell, Tan-Tan finds Abitefa, and they fight. Tan-Tan is knocked out on a large rock, and they reconcile after Tan-Tan awakes. Tan-Tan offers the hinte a passionfruit, and Abitefa gives her a carry pouch in return.
In their explorations, Tan-Tan sees a giant beast called a “rolling calf” (229) and Abitefa shows her a douen metalworking foundry. When they later tell Benta and Chichibud about these adventures, Tan-Tan learns Abitefa was not supposed to show her the foundry. Benta and Chichibud are heading to a human village for trade and refuse to let Tan-Tan come with them.
During days of being in the bush together, Tan-Tan and Abitefa begin to bond. Tan-Tan tries to learn the hinte language, but her anatomy makes sound production difficult. However, Abitefa easily becomes fluent in the human patwa.
Part 3, Pages 212-232 Analysis
Benta’s dialogue about Tan-Tan being “trouble” she willingly picks up (212) echoes how Master Johncrow picks up the trouble of Dry Bone in the anansi story. This echoing emphasizes how myths reflect the world they seek to explain and vice versa.
One example of the crossover between folktales and the alien planet is the name “rolling calf” (229) for the giant animal in the bush. Tan-Tan recalls how the Mummers would tell duppy stories during Junkanoo Season, including one about a giant “duppy bull with eyes of red flame” and a “body wrapped in chains” that “left behind smoking tracks of burnt earth” (229). Again, humans use the language of ghosts and spirits from their home world to define alien beasts.
The interspecies code-switching seems to generally be one-directional. While the hinte and douens can speak human patwa, Tan-Tan struggles to speak their language. She feels like “she didn’t have a mouth to speak for people to hear her” (232). This inability to pronounce the indigenous names for beasts on the alternate planet adds to the human attribution of folkloric names.
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