Anansi Tar Baby

tale:anansi_tar_baby

Something keeps stealing from Anansi's garden, so he shapes a figure of sticky gum and sets it to watch. In the night the thief — or Anansi himself, in the tellings where the trick rebounds — demands the silent figure answer, and strikes it in anger; fist and foot stick fast, blow after blow, until the striker is held helpless by the gum. Moral: it is wounded pride, not the trap, that holds us fastest. — Anansi folktale