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 figure 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 fulfilling 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 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.

“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’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.

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. TheTrickster 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, Contexts, 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.