anansialtar

[anansialtar]

Anansi

author: Traditional time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE Country or Culture:

Caribbean Genre: Folktale

OVERVIEW: West african tales of a  trickster  spider came to the New World along with slavery. This spider was a liminal fi gure whose dwelling in the rafters of homes symbolized his suspension between earth and heaven. He was also a shape-shifter, appearing sometimes as a man or a woman and sometimes as a god. even the spelling of his name changes throughout the tales: ananse, anansi, aunt Nancy, anancy, Hanansi, and annancy. This character became a means of subversive storytelling: slaves could relate anansi’s adventures, correlating them to their own lives and the ways in which they subverted the plantation order and triumphed over dull-witted masters. Ironically, many slave owners asked to hear these stories told, not realizing their import. Anansi’s primary goal is the fulfi lling of his own desires—for food, power, stories, or sex. To do so, he tricks other animals or eats his own children. like their protagonist, the tales shift in shape and emphasis, bearing more or less resemblance to other trickster tales found in african cultures, particularly among the akan people. Folklorist  martha Warren Beckwith gathered  Jamaica Anansi Stories, the collection of tales being examined here, during the 1920s in Jamaica. She had studied with the eminent ethnographer Franz Boas, who had encouraged Zora Neale Hurston’s groundbreaking work among afro-Caribbean people and who edited Beckwith’s collection. Beckwith also included musical notation, riddles, and cross-references to tales from other cultures. Beckwith took the unusual step of recording the stories in the Jamaican dialect, regarding the language worth saving as a testimony to the spirit of those who survived the middle Passage and slavery in the Caribbean. She also gave the names of more than sixty storytellers and the locations where the stories were recorded. The tales were gathered during two trips to Jamaica in 1919 and 1921. anansi and his wife  and children are major characters in the tales. (Tacoomah is sometimes the name of his wife, and in other tales, Tacoomah is Anansi’s son or neighbor.) Other animals appear as well: Tiger is Anansi’s natural enemy, and sheep are stolen and consumed. Various human characters, generally to be outwitted, also feature in the stories. To study these tales,  postcolonial theory is most appropriate. Postcolonial theory looks at the effects of Western colonialism and its aftermath, culturally and ideologically. Considered by most scholars to have begun with the 1952 publication of martinique-born Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, the theory studies the effect of colonialism on native peoples. Fanon, who was both a psychiatrist and a revolutionary, was interested in the language of Western colonizers and how it caused native peoples to internalize a sense of inferiority and a tendency to suppress their original culture. according to Fanon, three distinct phases exist in colonialism. First, the colonized people assimilate the cultural model. Next, there is an internal examining of the response and a search for more authentic national roots. Finally, there is a choice for liberation, through violence if need be. Fanon himself worked for the algerian National liberation Front from 1957 to 1961. although Fanon was focusing on the struggles for independence in algeria, India, and the middle east, his ideas have been applied to other areas, including the Caribbean. SUmmaRY The majority of tales collected by Beckwith feature the cunning trickster anansi, his family, and his enemies. Some of the tales are variants of others within the collection. a few include morals or explanations of natural phenomenon, such as why anansi lives in the rafters of “He [Anansi] saw a man giving a woman some money and telling her to put it up for ‘rainy day.’ After the man had left, Anansi went up to the woman and told her he was ‘Mr. Rainy Day.’ She said, ‘Well, it’s you, sah? My husband been putting up money for you for ten years now. He has quite a bag of it, and I’m so afraid of robbers I’m glad you come!’ So Anansi took the money and returned home and lived contentedly for the rest of his days.” “anansi Seeks His Fortune” a house. anansi is a shape-shifter as well as a trickster. Defining Anansi’s form is therefore a seemingly impossible task. he is sometimes a woman (aunt Nancy), sometimes a man, and sometimes a spider. He is noted for his cleverness, although he does not always succeed in his aims. In a few of the stories, he dies. anansi’s overriding concern is to have his own needs met and does not make an effort to provide for his family’s needs. Sometimes he eats all of the food or hides it, leaving his wife (named Tacoomah or Aso) and children (of varying numbers and names) hungry. Several tales highlight his use of cunning to obtain food. For example, in two versions of tale 11,  “Throwing Away Knives,” Anansi tells Tiger to toss away his knife, claiming to do the same. When they arrive at a pineapple field, however, anansi still has his knife but refuses to share it with Tiger, and thus he alone can eat the pineapples. In the second tale, the other character is a sheep with a spoon. anansi tricks the sheep into leaving his spoon behind. anansi then eats all the food before the sheep returns from retrieving the spoon. Some of the tales also explain why animals act a certain way, similar to the Just So Stories of rudyard Kipling. Tale 18, “Goat on the Hill-side,” for example, offers an explanation as to why goats remain on hilly ground: during a time of hunger, anansi and Tacoomah use the ruse of Tacoomah being ill to lure other animals to the house, one by one. Then they kill each animal and put it in a barrel to be preserved. Goat notices that many animals go into the small house but do not emerge. When Goat goes near the house to investigate, Tacoomah invites him in, but he runs back up the hillside, his now-preferred place. Other anansi tales offer explanations as to why crows are bald (tale 47, “Why John-crow Has a Bald Head”), why dogs watch people while they eat (tale 48, “Why Dog is always looking”), and why river rocks have moss (tale 49, “Why rocks at the river are Covered with moss”). Other tales in Beckwith’s collection that explain habits and characteristics of other animals do not feature anansi at all. For example, anansi does not appear in tale 51, “Why Hog is always Grunting,” or in tale 52, “Why Toad Croaks.” Some of the tales have also been told in other slaveholding regions. The story of Anansi and the Tar-baby (tales 21 and 59), for example, may be familiar to american readers who remember the Uncle remus stories, which were collected by Joel Chandler Harris in the late nineteenth century and were popularized by Walt Disney in the 1946 film Song of the South. In Beckwith’s collection, tale 21 includes three variants, one of which claims to explain that anansi lives under the rafters due to his shame at being caught by the Tar-baby. although anansi is known as a trickster, he does not always prove to be clever. In “The Yam-hills,” tale 31, monkey tricks anansi, which results in anansi’s death. It is forbidden to speak the word “nine” (which is the number of yam hills anansi has planted), and whoever says the number aloud dies. anansi tricks both Hog and Goat into counting all the hills. each counts to nine and dies, and anansi takes each animal home to eat. monkey observes this from a tree and when asked to count the yam hills, he angers anansi by counting one through eight and concluding with “an’ the one Br’er [Brother] anansi sit down upon.” after he repeats this, anansi grows impatient, tries to correct him, says the word “nine,” and instantly dies. The final sections of Beckwith’s collections deal less directly with Anansi. Tales 50 through 62 do not directly concern anansi, although they are stories of animals. In the section “Old Stories, Chiefly of Sorcery” (tales 63–99), a few of the tales feature Anansi. Tale 100, “Ali Baba and Kissem” begins the modern european stories, some of which do include anansi tales. For example, in tale 130, “Clever molly may,” someone else outwits anansi; his servant eats the turkey she has roasted and blames the guest, after warning him that anansi is sharpening his knives to cut off the guest’s hands. Some of the songs recorded in “Song and Dance” (which are sometimes given with musical notation) include anansi as well. aNaLYSIS The folktales featuring Anansi as a character have sometimes been read as illustrative of psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s trickster archetype. However, the use of postcolonial theory will provide a more useful analysis, as consideration is given to the effect of British colonization on the tales. although postcolonialism became a major theory only in the 1990s, it has influenced subsequent critics and readers of colonial literature. Postcolonial theory rejects the notion of a universal standard for judging literature, as though national, regional, social, or cultural differences do not affect narrative. Invariably, the supposed “universal” standard is found to be rooted in Eurocentric values. The first task of postcolonial criticism, therefore, is to become aware of depictions of non-europeans as Other. Frantz Fanon, originally from the French colony of martinique, published The Wretched of the Earth (1961), a critique of France’s empire in africa. In that work, often considered the beginning of postcolonial criticism, he posited that colonized people first had to reclaim their past to find their own identity and voice. european colonizers generally devalued the native past, refusing to recognize cultural or historical events of significance before the arrival of Europeans. Often, they refused to attribute remarkable achievements (such as the ruins of Great Zimbabwe) to native peoples, believing them incapable of such endeavors. according to Fanon, the second step in reclaiming identity called for the colonized peoples to reject this devaluation of their past and embrace the gifts of their past. Uncovering the truth of who they were before the colonial powers arrived is sometimes done by rejecting contemporary or modern society, which is seen as complicit in their colonization. an additional concern of postcolonial criticism involves the use of language. This is particularly evident in Jamaica, where the British attempted to replace the Creole patois with Standard english, forbidding the teaching of Creole and its use in schools. Postcolonial writers may go so far as to refuse to write in the language of the colonizer, which is deemed to be tainted and implies acquiescence to the colonial powers. The Anansi stories, written and told in the Creole of Jamaica, offer an example of this refusal to adopt Standard english. although English is Jamaica’s official language today, many people continue to communicate only in patois. anansi stories may include words from Twi, the African language spoken by slaves from the asante (ashanti) tribes of West Africa. This use of language provides a further linkage to an african past; not only do many of the stories originate from West africa, but some of the words do as well. In tale 23, “Cunnie-More-ThanFather,” anansi receives a rapidly growing yam: So one day a man give him a yam-plant; that yam name ‘yam foofoo.’ The same day plant the yam, it been bear a very big one same day. So nobody in the yard know the name of that yam save him, anansi, alone. So when he go home, he cook the yam an’ call the wife an’ chil’ren aroun’ to eat, an’ say, “Who know name, nyam; who no know name, don’ nyam!” So as no one know the name, they didn’t get none of it; anansi alone eat off that yam that night. (28) His son, here given the same name as the story itself, discovers the name of that special yam through trickery. He rubs a rock near the plant with okra, making it slippery, so that anansi falls on the yam. He then cries out, “lawd! all me yam foofoo mash up!” Unlike his selfish father, Cunnie-More-Than-Father races home to share the name of the yam with the rest of the family. “Yam foo-foo” is a term that comes from the Twi word e-fufu, which means “a white thing.” anansi, with his characteristic self-concern, says no one can eat of the plant unless he or she knows its name, but by gaining or retaining knowledge of the african language, the other members of his family can survive. In tale 14, “New Names,” anansi assigns new names to Parrot, Tiger, Tacoomah, and himself. This renaming reflects the custom of slaveholders who gave new, anglicized names to african slaves, denying their african heritage. In this story, however, if the four come to their respective mother’s home and she does not use the new name, she will be killed and eaten. anansi warns his mother and teaches her his new name; she alone of the mothers is not eaten. This violence may be a reflection of the sort of brutal punishments that awaited slaves who were not compliant under the plantation system. Names—and, by extension, languages—have power. even in contemporary Jamaica, it is common for people to have a nickname or a “street name” that they use, rather than revealing their given name. The real name is shared only when an acquaintance becomes a friend and can be trusted to use the power of the name wisely. Postcolonial theory maintains that the very identity of those formerly colonized is doubled or hybridized. This is certainly true in the Americas, where masters had sex with enslaved persons, creating a mixed race. Today, in Jamaica, there are many biracial descendents, creating a hierarchy built on skin color, with light-skinned persons considered most beautiful or desirable. For example, Anancy and the Yella Snake (1979), a more modern tale told by louise Bennett, a Jamaican woman wants to marry a “yella skin man.” She chooses a yellow snake, which plans to kill her and eat her, but anansi rescues her by appealing to the snake’s pride in his stature. anansi captures the snake, taking it to the home of the girl’s family, where her brother shoots it. The tale claims to explain why people shoot snakes, but it also demonstrates the preference for light-skinned partners and the presence of guns, a colonial import. This doubled identity was perpetuated in Jamaica through the school system during colonization. Children were taught to write and speak in the language of the colonizers; Creole was not valued. at school, children were taught to belong to the colonizing culture; at home, they lived in the colonized oral tradition and local culture. For contemporary writer Joyce Jonas (Anansi in the Great House, 1990), the “big house” of the plantation era represents the dualism of the colonial era: black versus white, slave versus free, First World versus Third World. anansi, the symbol of folk culture, is despised by the colonial landowners but nevertheless makes his way into their homes through the enslaved women who tell the anansi stories to the children under their care. a second major work in postcolonial criticism is edward Said’s 1978 work, Orientalism. Said noted the european tendency to attribute to the east and its inhabitants all of the unwanted aspects of Westerners, such as sensuality and laziness. at the same time, though, the East was viewed as magical and mystical. The people are regarded not as individuals but as members of a nonwhite race; their actions are thought to be motivated by their race rather than by their relationships or circumstances. Thus, in Jamaica, Anansi is noted for his limp, sometimes walking with a cane, and for his high-pitched falsetto voice and his lisp. Jamaicans refer to a lisp such as anansi’s, in which the r and l sounds are difficult to pronounce, as “Bungo talk.” The term alludes to the Twi language, which does not include an r sound. “Bungo” refers to the stereotype of an uneducated african or to a peasant of Jamaica, further evidence of the colonial pattern of undervaluing the native language. anansi tales were nevertheless popular with colonizers during the plantation era; in their journals, several plantation owners noted having listened to performances of the tales. although some of the tales remained essentially the same, new stories were added. Some of the African conventions were also retained. The stories were told after dark by elders to children and young people and were bracketed by the assurance that they were not true. Postcolonial critics also draw attention to the silence of literature on the subject of colonization and imperialism. The Anansi stories do not avoid this issue, although the language is coded. For example, in Beckwith’s retelling of tale 30, “Dry-Head and anansi,” the spider tries to avoid sharing the hog he has tricked his wife into giving him to eat, telling Dry-Head that the meat belongs to buckra and that he is cooking it for him. “Buckra” was one of the names for an overseer, sometimes called “massa.” Dry-Head, also called Brar Go-long-go, is an obeah man, one with magical powers that would enable him to kill Anansi. Threatened, Anansi gives the cooked meat to Dry-Head, who eats it all. at the conclusion of the tale, though, the spider sets fire to Dry-Head, who has eaten all the meat and has not shared it. This tale exemplifies the violence in Jamaican plantation life. It also, along with many of the anansi stories, highlights the continuing problem of hunger. The African versions of some of the anansi stories often begin by stating that there was a drought or a famine; for Jamaican slaves, the problem of hunger was rooted in the unwillingness of the colonizers to share food fairly. Instead, many slaves were given a small plot of land on which to grow their own food. This ploy backfired, however, as slaves wanted more land and began to plan ways to escape and claim some of the island’s land for their own use. Serious collecting of the folktales began in the late nineteenth century, primarily by white women of the middle class living on the island. In 1899, a local Jamaican paper publicly praised Pamela milne-Holme and Ada Wilson Trowbridge for publishing collections that attempted to approximate Creole. By 1900, about forty anansi stories of Jamaican origin were in print in pamphlets, journals, and books. Walter Jekyll, who spent more than three decades in Jamaica, published the first major collection of tales in 1904, Jamaican Song and Historical context The Spanish began to colonize Jamaica during the sixteenth century after Christopher Columbus discovered the island in 1494. The Taino, who were indigenous to the island, were wiped out and replaced by slaves, primarily from West Africa. Control of the island went to England in 1655. Coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and sugar plantations flourished and were dependent on slavery. The European trade in human slaves centered in West Africa. “Slave castles” were built along the coast; captured slaves were housed there until the slave ships arrived. Human cargo was stored in the hold of ships, and overcrowding led to the spread of disease and death. Some believe that the cramped space was the site of the origin of the dance known as the limbo, as people tried to move about while shackled hand and foot. Presumably, the people of West Africa, many of whom shared a Twi dialect, also shared stories of the trickster spider known as Ananse. An estimated fifteen to twenty million Africans were enslaved and taken to the New World. Of that number, some 840,000 Africans were taken to Jamaica between 1702 and 1808, when Britain outlawed the slave trade. In the mid-eighteenth century, sugar production reached its peak, and sugar exports had doubled from their rate fifty years earlier. This achievement was in part due to cruel overseers and violence; beating, branding, burning, and sexual exploitation were not uncommon occurrences. The British abolished slavery in 1834. Not until 1958 did Jamaica, along with other British Caribbean countries, gain freedom as part of the Federation of the West Indies. Jamaica left the federation four years later. Recent census data indicates that more than 90 percent of the population of nearly three million is black. As the Anansi tales demonstrate, the language of Jamaica may officially be English, but an English patois is also widely used and accepted. MYTHHERO_Book.indb   276 9/20/2013   9:26:30 AM Anansi │ 277 language, which does not include an r sound. “Bungo” refers to the stereotype of an uneducated a frican or to a peasant of Jamaica, further evidence of the colonial pat tern of undervaluing the native language. a nansi tales were nevertheless popular with coloniz ers during the plantation era; in their journals, several plantation owners noted having listened to performanc es of the tales. a lthough some of the tales remained essentially the same, new stories were added. Some of the African conventions were also retained. The stories were told after dark by elders to children and young people and were bracketed by the assurance that they were not true. Postcolonial critics also draw attention to the silence of literature on the subject of colonization and imperial ism. The Anansi stories do not avoid this issue, although the language is coded. For example, in Beckwith’s retell ing of tale 30, “Dry-Head and a nansi,” the spider tries to avoid sharing the hog he has tricked his wife into giv ing him to eat, telling Dry-Head that the meat belongs to buckra and that he is cooking it for him. “Buckra” was one of the names for an overseer, sometimes called “ m assa.” Dry-Head, also called Brar Go-long-go, is an obeah man, one with magical powers that would enable him to kill Anansi. Threatened, Anansi gives the cooked meat to Dry-Head, who eats it all. a t the conclusion of the tale, though, the spider sets fire to Dry-Head, who has eaten all the meat and has not shared it. This tale exemplifies the violence in Jamaican plantation life. It also, along with many of the a nansi stories, highlights the continuing problem of hunger. The African versions of some of the a nansi stories often begin by stating that there was a drought or a famine; for Jamaican slaves, the problem of hunger was rooted in the unwillingness of the colonizers to share food fairly. Instead, many slaves were given a small plot of land on which to grow their own food. This ploy backfired, however, as slaves wanted more land and began to plan ways to escape and claim some of the island’s land for their own use. Serious collecting of the folktales began in the late nineteenth century, primarily by white women of the middle class living on the island. In 1899, a local Jamai can paper publicly praised Pamela m ilne-Holme and Ada Wilson Trowbridge for publishing collections that attempted to approximate Creole. By 1900, about forty a nansi stories of Jamaican origin were in print in pam phlets, journals, and books. Walter Jekyll, who spent more than three decades in Jamaica, published the first major collection of tales in 1904, Jamaican Song and Historical context The Spanish began to colonize Jamaica during the sixteenth century after Christopher Columbus discovered the island in 1494. The Taino, who were indigenous to the island, were wiped out and replaced by slaves, primarily from West Africa. Control of the island went to England in 1655. Coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and sugar plantations flourished and were dependent on slavery. The European trade in human slaves centered in West Africa. “Slave castles” were built along the coast; captured slaves were housed there until the slave ships arrived. Human cargo was stored in the hold of ships, and overcrowding led to the spread of disease and death. Some believe that the cramped space was the site of the origin of the dance known as the limbo, as people tried to move about while shackled hand and foot. Presumably, the people of West Africa, many of whom shared a Twi dialect, also shared stories of the trickster spider known as Ananse. An estimated fifteen to twenty million Africans were enslaved and taken to the New World. Of that number, some 840,000 Africans were taken to Jamaica between 1702 and 1808, when Britain outlawed the slave trade. In the mid-eighteenth century, sugar production reached its peak, and sugar exports had doubled from their rate fifty years earlier. This achievement was in part due to cruel overseers and violence; beating, branding, burning, and sexual exploitation were not uncommon occurrences. The British abolished slavery in 1834. Not until 1958 did Jamaica, along with other British Caribbean countries, gain freedom as part of the Federation of the West Indies. Jamaica left the federation four years later. Recent census data indicates that more than 90 percent of the population of nearly three million is black. As the Anansi tales demonstrate, the language of Jamaica may officially be English, but an English patois is also widely used and accepted Story. So popular was the work that it was reprinted in 1907 and 1966. anthropologists of the 1920s began collecting anansi tales. martha Beckwith’s major collection of stories was published in 1924. Beckwith offered the tales as oral performances and transcribed from Creole storytellers to whom she gave full credit. In Annancy Stories (1936), Philip m. Sherlock and a. J. Newman collected six Jamaican stories of anansi for elementary-age British children. It was, of course, written in Standard english, and in the preface, the authors explained that the children would not be able to understand the original Creole. The illustrations, done by Rhoda Jackson, portray anansi as a fat black man with eight thin legs, who wears a straw hat and is shoeless. This stereotype of a backward Jamaican peasant suited British thinking of the time. No further collections were published until the 1950s and 1960s when Sherlock published two works written in Standard English. The tendency to rewrite the stories continued during the 1970s, when the stories that featured violence were further toned down for children. language thus became a matter of conflict in colonial Jamaica; the everyday Creole patois in which the traditional anansi stories were told was held in low esteem. according to Fanon, colonized people may take on the judgments of the colonizers, and some older Jamaicans refused to tell anansi stories. When Jamaica won independence in 1962, a new appreciation of folk culture began. Folktales for children were collected and hailed as the start of a West Indian children’s literature. anansi tales have become accepted around the world; the spider has even been featured in Gargoyles, a Disney animated series. The resulting problem, however, is a dilution of the tales and a blandness to the stories that denies their subversive nature. encouraging native culture, a movement began to once again tell the anansi stories as performance literature. Anansi became a figure for resistance against Britain’s cultural colonialism. Jamaica has experienced a rebirth of interest in pantomime, and anansi stories were featured in ten productions in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital city, between 1949 and 2004. audiences laughed at every instance of anansi speaking in a Creole patois. One researcher attributed this laughter to embarrassment at his use of the “uneducated” manner of speaking that the British had tried to eradicate. at the same time, people were pleased that the language was being used, leading to ambiguity in their response. The only difficulty with these professional shows and with additional stage productions is the price of admission. By moving the stories from private homes to public spaces and charging for performances, anansi is commodified rather than being available to all. Additionally, pantomime and theater are viewing media rather than participatory storytelling. as emily Zobel Marshall puts it, “Through enabling a reflection on one’s moral, philosophical, and political outlook and providing scope for a critique of one’s sociopolitical situation, anansi tales can encourage the use of intelligent means to survive disempowerment” (167). Jamaicans themselves are ambivalent about the role of anansi and other aspects of their african heritage, however. Following independence, Jamaican leaders during the 1960s celebrated that heritage while at the same time attempting to modernize the nation by relying on foreign capital and moving away from agrarian society. These early postcolonial policies destroyed the rural way of life connected to the folkways of traditional stories. In the face of this official activity, other people focused on Creole folk practices that were thought to be a solid place to stand in the face of rapid postindependence changes. Jamaicans have made fruitful use of the anansi tradition, extending even into the twentieth century, when seven- to fourteen-year olds were asked to reinterpret or to create new anansi stories. From 1930 to 1931, Reverend Joseph Williams collected some five thousand written anansi tales. most of these were written in Creole, rather than in Standard english, despite the attempts of the British to wipe out Creole. edward Kamau Brathwaite highlights the similarities between jazz riffs and the language of anansi stories. He regards the tales as improvisation, with repeated beats and language. In tale 27, “anansi and Brother Dead,” for example, the phrase that appears multiple times is “man no ’peak.” Brathwaite asserts that the phrase becomes a thematic element in the story, creating a rhythm not unlike a drumbeat. extreme poverty and violence in Jamaica led to a call to ban Anansi, whose exploits do not reflect the values of civil engagement. Some Jamaicans fear that anansi’s laziness and self-centeredness have become a Jamaican stereotype. They argue that while Anansi was valuable in a plantation economy, he no longer has validity and is merely a sentimental relic. In contrast, anansi’s defenders regard him as representative of the human condition. They also suggest that he is valuable for his potential as a satiric force. marshall concludes, “In the postcolonial world, disadvantaged Jamaicans continue to live in a climate of conflict, fear, and unpredictability and in these circumstances anansi is still highly relevant” (179). It is clear that Anansi is a cultural figure that has not yet been superseded by any other Jamaican literary character. Beloved for his quick wit and use of language, as well as for his ability to get his own needs met, he remains an important part of island culture. anansi is as important in the postcolonial era as he was during the plantation economy, with new stories of his adventures coming to light. CROSS-CULtURaL INFLUENCE For centuries before anansi tales were told in the Caribbean and southern United States, they were part of West African culture. The Akan tribes told of Ananse, a liminal trickster figure with access to the high god Nyame, who bequeathed him all the stories in exchange for a series of tasks completed. Thus, all stories in West africa are known as anansesem, regardless whether the character ananse appears. a major difference in the tales from West africa, particularly present-day Ghana, and those told in the New World is the absence of a religious dimension in the latter. In the West african tales, ananse is involved with gods as well as men. He has dealings with Nyame and uses the (supposed) voice of asase Yaa, the queen mother deity who rules with Nyame, to avoid being put to death. By the time ananse had navigated the middle Passage, however, the gods had disappeared from the stories. It may be that the concept of tribal, localized deities made it impossible for enslaved West africans to include their names in the tales told in the Caribbean. Perhaps ananse survived at all because in the West african stories, he is the master of death. He returns from the land of the dead, a feat deemed impossible; he not only tricks Death out of rare gifts—a gold broom and gold sandals—but escapes with them. He fakes his own death in order to be buried near the ripening crops, of which he eats his fill. In another tale, he uses dead bodies, both animal and human, to gain increasingly more valuable gifts for Nyame. according to scholar Christopher Vecsey, ananse did not have the role of a cultural hero in West africa. although he is credited with bringing wisdom, the hoe, and weaving to the people, he is also the source of death, debt, and disharmony. Furthermore, he violates one of the major social mores in that he does not MYTHHERO_Book.indb   278 9/20/2013   9:26:30 AM Anansi │ 279 practice hospitality by sharing food. Instead, he makes sure that his own needs are met—in some cases even hiding the source of his meals from his own wife and children during famine. The tales functioned as safety valves for the community, Vecsey posits. When ananse fails in some venture, the tale concludes with a moral. even within the tales, villagers sometimes disbelieve ananse’s reports because he is known to be untruthful. By beginning each tale with the repeated assertion that it was not true, the storyteller permitted his audience to mock the authority of both gods and local leaders, as well as to break the rules of the akans. For, as the stories show, the rest of the events and characters in them all are acting in accordance with accepted behavior. The storyteller and the hearers are not being encouraged to be like ananse but to enjoy a rest from the rigid society around them. For roman Catholic priest robert Pelton, ananse’s most important function is that of trickster god: “The trickster speaks—and embodies—a vivid and subtle religious language, through which he links animality and ritual transformation, shapes culture by means of sex and laughter, ties cosmic process to personal history, empowers divination to change boundaries into horizons, and reveals the passages to the sacred embedded in daily life” (Trickster 3). The trickster represents the liminal state of those engaged in such events as coming-of-age rituals, which typically have a tripartite structure: leaving the known, enduring the ritual, and returning to the community. Without a clearly defined identity, living between cultural structures, the limen is dangerous. By living among the rafters, with access to both the god Nyame and humans, ananse symbolizes the human on a quest. “He is a living connection between the wild and the social, between the potentially and the actually human,” as Pelton puts it (Trickster 57). As a liminal figure, Ananse lives in the rafters, but within the house. He, too, is dangerous, with his often antisocial actions and his hungers. Despite the importance of ananse’s stories to West african peoples, none of his stories relate to actual religious practices of the clans. Thus, Pelton would seem to agree with Vecsey: these tales are significant because they permit acting out and hearing of acts outside the parameters of acceptable society, not because they have shaped belief. Tales were told only after dark, prefaced by and concluded with the assertion that they were not true. animal characters allowed mockery of humans without fear of reprisals. In 1672, the royal africa Company was established after the english took Jamaica and other islands from the Spanish in 1655. The ratio of blacks to whites on the island increased rapidly thereafter; by 1740, there were ten times more blacks than whites. By the end of the eighteenth century, 60 percent of blacks worked on approximately four hundred sugar plantations on the islands. life was harsh; many slaves did not live more than three or four years after arriving in the Caribbean. The stories of Ananse migrated with the enslaved africans during the heyday of plantation economy in the Caribbean. Slaves from the asante tribes were particularly prized for their strength and height; they were also dangerous because they were well-trained warriors. many of the asantes, particularly those among the akan tribe, were among those who resisted enslavement. Some scholars credit the akans with being instigators of every slave rebellion in Jamaica. Indeed, most of the slave rebellions in the Caribbean occurred in Jamaica. according to marshall, “anansi tales were mechanisms of survival and sources of wisdom or knowledge, which could, in certain contexts, translate into resources for resistance and play a part in fueling slave revolt” (92). Caribbean slaves who managed to escape into the mountains were known as maroons. Unsurprisingly, Jamaica had the largest maroon population, with descendants into the present day. although accurate historical data is scant, it may be that the first maroons were enslaved by the Spanish; British slaves later joined that group. maroons were said to have a “secret language,” which some believe was the akan dialect, Twi. This is a credible claim, given that many words in the Twi language have become loan words in Jamaican Creole. The Maroons, who, by 1739, had two established communities of about five hundred members each, signed a treaty with the British that year. They agreed to hunt and return runaway slaves in exchange for semi-autonomy. Taking their duties seriously, they ironically became a force that runaways feared. Borrowing from the anansi stories, they attacked the vulnerable to maintain their own lifestyle. anansi never minded subjecting others to a painful or difficult experience after his own brush with it. recognizing that the British treaty was not going to be upheld, the maroons used guerrilla techniques and psychological warfare to frighten British soldiers during two major wars before the treaty was signed. Unused to an enemy that did not follow the protocols of european warfare, the British forces were easily intimidated. Seven of these resistance fighters, including one woman, are still regarded as national heroes in Jamaica. as marshall argues, the anansi folktales offered practical guidance in the Maroon fight against oppression: anansi stories could provide a form of mental training, illustrating tactics that could be implemented in the field—the arts of cunning and disguise, spying and surveillance, hiding and subterfuge. among all the Caribbean islands to which enslaved africans were taken, Jamaica has proven a fertile soil for new and old tales of anansi. Some maroon communities take credit for the new stories, including more modern versions. During the late 1960s, Jamaican michael auld created a comic strip called Anansesem. It related the adventures of the maroons during their resistance and imagined a role for anansi. Various stories can be interpreted as including techniques valuable to the resistance and to rebellious enslaved persons. Significant differences occur, however, in the stories of the asantes and the Jamaicans. Names were given to the animal characters in african versions; in Jamaica, the characters are known by their species alone. Those species reflect the Jamaican, not the African, fauna. No elephants appear in Jamaican stories; Monkey and Tiger (who replaces Nyame as the keeper of the stories) are the only african animals. In addition, new Jamaican characters, such as Parrot and Cockroach, appear in the Jamaican stories. The animals engage in battles of wits with new characters such as massa, Buckra or Backra the white boss, and Preacher. Jamaican food also replaces african food in the tales. although the african spider stories might mock authority, they upheld the social fabric and reinforced community values. This is not the case in the Jamaican stories, which play out against violence and conflict. The stories attempt to subvert the plantation order rather than to approve it. another contrast is that in african tales, ananse withholds food from his own family, caring only for himself. In the Jamaica tales, anansi is still a trickster, but his wiles are practiced against the master, not against his own kind. The folktales from Jamaica often include music, which Helen roberts transcribed and Beckwith added to her collection of tales. By singing and by playing the fiddle (rather than African drums), Anansi courts women, hypnotizes other characters, and even kills some of them. Due to the violence and lewdness of most anansi tales, some Christians, particularly evangelicals, reject anansi. another factor in disregarding the stories is their association with the nine-night ceremony, an african import still popular in several Caribbean islands, including Jamaica. These events are part of an extended wake. The ninth night is the final watch; during this night, there is music and dancing, along with the telling of anansi stories, so that none of the mourners become overly saddened by the death of a family member or friend. many suggestions have been offered as to why anansi stories are included, but one popular idea is that they amuse the “duppy” (ghost) of the newly deceased. another interpretation is that they assist the duppy in making the transition to the other side. Several twentieth-century writers and authors made use of anansi in new ways. Jamaican poet and novelist andrew Salkey, for example, used the spider in two collections, Anancy’s Score (1973) and Anancy, Traveller (1992). The hero in the stories is placed in contemporary situations, as in “Vietnam anancy and the Black Tulip” and “Anancy and the Atomic Horse.” as Salkey writes him, anansi is still not a knight in shining armor, but rather a guide and problem solver through difficult times. For Jamaicans, a new pride in anansi and a willingness to write and reinterpret the old tales signifies a coming to terms with their heritage, which is apart from the Spanish and British overlay. Through various media, including comic strips and theatrical productions, anansi continues to shape Jamaican culture.

Judy A. Johnson, MLS, MTS BIBLIOGRaPHY Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. 3rd ed. manchester: manchester UP, 2009. Print. Beckwith, martha Warren. Jamaica Anansi Stories. 1924. Charleston: BiblioBazaar, 2007. Print. Brooker, Peter. A Glossary of Cultural Theory. 2nd ed. london: arnold, 2002. Print. marshall, emily Zobel. Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance. Kingston: U of West Indies P, 2012. Print. Pelton, robert D. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. Berkeley: U of California P, 1980. Print. ---. “West African Tricksters: Web of Purpose, Dance of Delight.” Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Con MYTHHERO_Book.indb   280 9/20/2013   9:26:30 AM Anansi │ 281 texts, and Criticisms. ed. William J. Hynes and William G. Doty. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1993, 122–40. Print. Van Duin, lieke. “anansi as Classical Hero.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures 5.1 (2007): 33–42. Print. Vecsey, Christopher. “The Exception Who Proves the rules.” Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms. ed. William J. Hynes and William G. Doty. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1993. 106–21. Print.