Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

Uncle Remus 227
accused of a crime, how quickly and summarily accusers might impose
justice (or injustice), and how little hope the desperate victim of any
such accusation could realistically possess. Eventually, after the frog
does manage to escape the bear by outwitting him, he sings what
seems a nonsense song—a song the boy fi nds “mighty funny.” To this
comment, Remus replies: “Funny now, I speck, . . . but ’twern’t funny
in dem days, en ’twouldn’t be funny now ef folks know’d much ’bout de
Bull-frog langwidge ez dey useter” (119). Such comments are tantalizingly
suggestive, implying that there are more unsettling meanings
in Remus’s stories than might at fi rst be obvious. Th us, Remus later
lulls the little boy to sleep by singing a song of his own—a song set
right before the Civil War and one that clearly seems to imply the
longing of blacks for freedom:
Hit’s eighteen hunder’d, forty-en-eight,
Christ done made dat crooked way straight—
En I don’t wanter stay here no longer;
Hit’s eighteen hunder’d, forty-en-nine,
Christ done turn dat water inter wine—
En I don’t wanter stay here no longer. (156)
Perhaps the most intriguing of all the tales, however, at least for anyone
interested in the possibility of racially subversive innuendo in the
stories, is one of the last and one of the briefest—a tale simply titled
“Why the Negro is Black.” In this tale, Remus patiently explains to
the boy that “dey wuz a time w’en all de w’ite folks ’uz black—blacker
dan me” (163). “Niggers is niggers now,” Remus continues, “but de
time wuz w’en we ’uz all niggers tergedder” (163). “In dem times,”
Remus explains, “we ’uz all un us black; we ’uz all niggers tergedder,
en ’cordin’ ter all de ’counts w’at I years fokes ’uz gittin ’long ’bout ez
well in dem days es dey is now” (164).
Th at last comment—implying that “fokes” have never gotten
along very well together—is typical of the sly insinuations of which
both Remus and Harris, as trickster-narrators, are so often capable.
Remus explains how whites managed to wash off their blackness in
a special pond, but the really memorable message of the tale is the
one he emphatically repeats: “de time wuz w’en we ’uz all niggers
tergedder.” One implication of this statement—an implication borne
out by the undeniable emotional power of the tales themselves—is