Tar Baby

Isle des Chevaliers earns its name from the fisherman’s tale of how a ship sank off its coast after hundreds of enslaved people on board go blind after seeing Dominique. When the ship sinks, the enslaved people and the horses aboard the ship wash up on the island and make a home. It is said that they still ride across the island in secret. Despite this being the official story behind the island, different characters have different expectations of les chevaliers. Les chevaliers become a motif that demonstrates how the intersection of social class and race can influence characters’ perception. During the contentious Christmas dinner, both Valerian and Son think of les chevaliers in opposing ways. Son, who knows the story, sees the blind men and women in his mind:

Somewhere in the back of Son’s mind one hundred black men on one hundred unshod horses rode blind and naked through the hills and had done so for hundreds of years. They knew the rain forest when it was a rain forest, they knew where the river began, where the roots twisted above the ground; they knew all there was to know about the island (206).