Ah! Here comes someone now to break up my tedious monologue. Looks like it's a rabbit in overalls. If that's the case, I must be getting heatstroke. Here we go; he's walking straight towards me.
"Mawnin'! Nice wedder dis mawin'"
What in the world did he just say!? I cannot understand him to save my life. I'm struggling to form words, but I quickly remember my lack of a voice. My only response is the sound of the bubbling tar on my body.
"How you come on, den? Is you deaf? Kaze if you is, I kin holler louder."
I wish I could just tell him what the deal is. He seems to be a pretty gentle person.
"You er stuck up, dat's w'at you is, en I'm gwine ter kyore you, dat's w'at I'm a gwine ter do."
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| My encounter with Mr. Rabbit. Wikipedia Commons. |
SMACK!
Holy cow! He hit me! What in the world did I do to deserve this? To be honest, it was a really bad decision on his part. His fist sank deep into my molten jaw. Looks like we're hitched.
"Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you again"
Listen man, if I could speak, I explain everything. But still, I can't just 'unmelt' myself.
WHAM!
Well, there go his feet. I can tell where this is heading. At least I'll have company from now on.
Author's Note: I decided to write from the Tar-Baby's perspective in one of the first stories in the Brer Rabbit I unit. Though this, I wanted to also make a satirical comment on how well the dialect is written in the original story.
Bibliography:
Joel Chandler Harris
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings
1881
Jake, this was a fantastic read. I, too, read the Brer Rabbit unit this week and found the dialect to be challenging but fascinating. I loved the approach you took with the perspective of the story; getting into the tar-baby's thoughts definitely provided a lot of comic relief. I loved the juxtaposition of the tar-baby's proper English with Brer Rabbit's Southern gullah accent. Great job with this storytelling exercise!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! Jake! This story is incredible! I am flabbergasted, absolutely flabbergasted! While reading these stories I too found the dialect to be incredibly frustrating, but you turned that into your whole story! The way you chose to not only highlight the difficulty in understanding their speech, but made it from the tar's perspective was incredible. I can tell you have a very creative mind. Looking forward to reading more of your work!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, I love this. I get the feeling you might be a fellow language lover. I haven't looked at your introduction yet so I'll find out soon. Hopefully I'm not just being a fool! haha! Some people get frustrated with dialogue being written to reflect the speaker's dialect, but I've always found it fun. And the whole business of not having a clue what's going on due to said dialect makes it even better. I want to read more of your stuff!
ReplyDeleteWhoa Jake! This was an amazing story. My favorite part was when Bear Rabbit got smacked! I think it was him. I didn't read the unit. but from they way you told your story I bet it was a good one. I found myself struggling to read through the dialect, but that is what made the story so good and funny at times!
ReplyDeleteHi Jake!
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness I loved this story so much! You are a fantastic writer. The story "melted" together so well (lol sorry for the pun). I love that you chose to do a satirical aspect. I have not read the original, but if the writing is that difficult to read, then I think I'll just take your word for it! Awesome job, I want to read more of you stories!
Jake, I did not read the unit and the dialect is definitely hard to read so maybe it's a good thing I didn't! You did a great job of incorporating the dialect into your story though and the way in which you wrote this story was very entertaining. You did a great job to give the narrator a personality and I thought he was very funny. Job well done!
ReplyDelete“Looks like we’re hitched.”
ReplyDeleteHaha! The voice of Tar-Baby is what makes this story really come to life for me, and you establish it so well in the first paragraph. Tar-Baby’s glowing optimism even as literally melts beneath the “cheerful” sun and the way he takes everything in stride makes for some great humor. It must have been fun for a language guy like you to write the dialogue in such an amazingly murky dialect.
Wow, Jake, I was super impressed with your use of dialect with the Rabbit. I find it extremely difficult to read dialect like that so I can only imagine how difficult writing in that style must be. I also thought it was super creative of you to write from the Tar baby's perspective, giving a voice to something that was assumed to be inanimate. That put an interesting and original touch on a pretty familiar story. Well done!
ReplyDelete