Anansi the Spider is a character from West African folk tradition. He is sometimes characterized as a god, and sometimes as a mortal trickster. He is sometimes a spider, sometimes a man, and sometimes both. His stories seem to have survived the Middle Passage because “Anansi is the spirit of rebellion; he is able to overturn the social order; he can marry the Kings' daughter, create wealth out of thin air; baffle the Devil and cheat Death. Even if Anansi loses in one story, you know that he will overcome in the next. For an oppressed people Anansi conveyed a simple message from one generation to the next:--that freedom and dignity are worth fighting for, at any odds.”22 Like Brer Rabbit (see next section), Loki in Norse Mythology, or Coyote in Indigenous American mythology, Anansi uses tricks to achieve his goals. He often tricks his opponents by pretending to be stupid, which lulls his victims into a false sense of security. In the context of slavery, “skills used by Anansi to thwart his rivals were ones that slaves could use to their advantage in their daily lives…. to lower planters’ expectations and reduce suspicion and watchfulness.”23
In one story,24 Anansi wins all the stories in the world from the previous god who owned them. The other god sets a series of tasks for Anansi to complete, including catching Snake alive. Anansi tricks Snake by flattering him (“You are much too clever… I tried to catch you, but I failed.”), then by lying about his goal, (“Now I can never prove that you are the longest animal in the world, longer even than the bamboo tree.”) Anansi tricks Snake into stretching along a bamboo branch and ties him up, and can then bring him to the other god alive.25
On a plantation, the enslaved people would use Anansi-style tactics to “decrease Massa’s income, find food, and avoid work.”26 By spying, stealing, working slowly, avoiding work, breaking things, and generally acting foolish, the enslaved took a little power away from the masters. Given that popular thought among slaveholders at the time was that enslaved Africans were “savage animals in need of training,”27 biblically cursed and “too barbaric to be converted [because they] were savage to the soul,”28 and literally not-quite-human,29 it was easy for the enslavers to believe that their human property was actually just that stupid. In a system where they had almost no power or control over their lives, enslaved people passed on Anansi stories as a coded way to spread rebellion against their masters.
