Midnight Robber - Major Themes

Major Themes

Otherness: The douen, marginalized non-humans, are the “others” within New Halfway Tree. Their society acts a mirror for the gender inequalities and abuses within Tan-Tan’s world. First, the female douen are considered superior to the males. Not only do they have different speech patterns that are bolded and starred, they also can fly - a skill the males lose with age. The douen also cannot understand Tan-Tan’s rape, nor her desire to have an abortion, because their society does not have a framework for understanding these abuses. In addition, the douen’s otherness is constructed through their ability to either access human spaces or exclude human beings. Because the male douen can speak Tan-Tan’s language and can’t fly, they are able to access the human towns, while the females stay above in the nests. At the same time, both the female and male douen are able to reject Tan-Tan because she cannot learn their language nor understand their rituals. These layers of access and exclusion speak to the douen’s complicated status as the “others.”

Rape/Violation:

Marginalization:

Mythology: Hopkinson presents a few myths throughout Midnight Robber, separated from the rest of the text, set in boldfaced text and told in a different kind of voice than that of the novel’s usual narration. The voice of the mythology is more direct, and gives the impression of oral storytelling. The first myth is under the heading “How Tan-Tan Learn to Thief” and overall, tells the story of how Tan-Tan and her father, Antonio, come to Earth, discover New Half-Way Tree, and become stuck there. Eventually, the storyteller reveals, “is Tan-Tan who give birth to the race of people on Earth, for it never had none there before”. This myth has similarities to, but is also very different from, both the biblical creation myth in the Book of Genesis and the narrative of Midnight Robber. Just like in the story of Adam and Eve, there is a man and a woman, who are the first people on Earth, there is a tree that offers food but causes trouble later, and some great problem becomes the fault of the female in the story: in the myth in Midnight Robber, Tan-Tan lies to the god figure, Kabo Tano, and he punishes both her and Antonio by refusing to allow them to return to their native planet. The myth is similar to the plot of the rest of Midnight Robber because Tan-Tan and Antonio do become stuck in a place called New Half-Way Tree, though in the novel’s narrative, New Half-Way Tree is not necessarily on Earth. The myth also foreshadows Tan-Tan’s relationship with her father, who sexually abuses her and eventually makes her pregnant.

With the use of these myths, Hopkinson suggests that myths are both based in some truth and in other myths, but also contain added or changed details and fail to convey reality.

The Robber King is a mythological character that the protagonist Tan-Tan empathizes with. She eventually embodies this spirit and becomes the robber queen in order to cope with the distress she feels due to the rape and incest she combats with her father, the tumultuous world of New Halfway Tree and her station in life. In this way she is able to reinvent herself as a strong figure who is better able to navigate the world she is living in.