Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entrée of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.
For it hath been declared
unto me of you, my brethren, by them
which are of the house of
Chloe, that there are
contentions among you.
What's up with the epigraph?
Morrison chooses a passage from section 1:11 of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. The epigraph basically says that the speaker has heard about contentions, or a big family feud, in the "house of Chloe." That sounds familiar: there are definitely contentions taking place inside Valerian Street's house. Does this epigraph just refer to Street family drama, then?
Nope. There's something else lurking beneath the surface meaning of this epigraph. Chloe is the real birth-name of Toni Morrison. That's too weird to be a coincidence. Morrison is hinting that the conflicts she explores in this book are conflicts that she has personal experience with… like maybe the struggles of being an unconventional black woman in the 20th Century?
But, like in the passage from Corinthians, all Morrison can really do is show us that problems exist. She can't actually give a solution. Any solution is gonna have to come from us readers. Any ideas on how to solve the conflicts in Tar Baby? Anyone? Anyone?