Toni Morrison, an Outstanding Black Experience Novelist

Toni Morrison, an Outstanding Black Experience Novelist

Introduction

Thinking of America’s greatest 20^th-century novelist, writer, essayist, or public intellectual, Toni Morrison fits this description. Morrison was famous, particularly for her immense contribution to understanding the realities of contemporary American society. In her literary works, mainly novels, she mirrors the complex and enduring roles of social class, race, gender, and sexuality in defining what it means to be moulded in American identity and experience. Toni Morrison, known initially as Chloe Anthony, was born in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. Morrison was very interested in storytelling and classic literature at an early age, passions that were encouraged by her parents. She grew up in Lorain and went to Lorain High School. Her mother, Ramah, was a homemaker, while her father, George, worked as a ship welder. She attended Howard University, where she attained an undergraduate degree in English. At this point, she changed her name from Chloe Anthony to Toni. After attaining a Master’s degree in English literature at Cornell University, she married Harold Morrison, an architecture student at Washington. However, the union was difficult and came to an end in 1964. Her work has earned her prizes, including a Nobel Prize in literature, and she has written several novels, including Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eyes, among others.

Context

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993 because of her exemplary work. She was the eighth woman and the only black woman to be awarded the prize. She was lauded as an author who, in novels, was characterized by poetic import and visionary force, which gave life an important element of American reality. Her first novel, Song of Solomon, received a literary award (Dreifus 73). The novel established a precedent for the commendation that was received by the later works. Other examples of her works include Sula and the Bluest Eye, which stand beside Beloved and Song of Solomon as some of her greatest works. After the Nobel Prize was awarded because of Song of Solomon, the next year, she won the Distinguished Writers Award that was awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Roynon 55). Reading Toni Morrison’s works requires one to be a careful reader and a writer dedicated to the poetics and the vision of her conceptualized worlds that shed light on the different American realities with eloquence and grace. Morrison, in her words, considered her early novels to be evolutionary, where one novel influences the other. She describes her later novels as having evolved and shifted to further deconstruct America’s experiences pertinent to racism. Her involvement in academia and civil conversations dwelled on American culture and critical theory in a morally imaginative way, promoting a new way of thinking and viewing social power and existing America’s public narratives (Roynon 110).

Thesis

A close reading of the novels allows one to analyze the character development, ideas, and language in every piece of writing and compare episodes from different texts to enable one to study closely the overarching theme in various works (Burton 1). Also, one can analyze the overriding themes by identifying behaviour, character, ideas, and metaphors and applying the analysis to the remaining part of the novel if those ideas repeatedly occur in the entire text.

Therefore, the thesis of this research paper is that the overarching thematic narratives throughout Morrison’s novels surround issues concerning African-American female identity in contemporary society. Her literary works provide a complex and insightful examination of issues within the African-American society, dynamics of power between male and female gender, and racism issues in the context of white and black America. In particular, Morrison primarily focuses her interests on the African-American women’s experiences whose efforts to achieve individual identity are interlinked with the society’s cultural history (Roynon 110). The structure of this thesis involves an examination of how Morrison’s novels employ distinct and diverse thematic, theoretical, and critical narrative emphases. The fiction found throughout her novels is concerned self-consciously with post-modern meta-narratives such as cultural history, oral traditions, storytelling, and historiography. The novels depict African-American history and cultural heritage, thus showing the importance of the challenges of contemporary African-Americans in the past. Morrison has achieved literary objectives by adopting strong elements of Black English for dialogue. Additionally, contrasting and comparing passages, as well as narration, have been employed to show the essentiality of language in the creation of identity.

Employing elements of fantasy, magic, and the supernatural

Morrison’s novels have used the elements of myth, magic, and the supernatural, as depicted by one of the characters in Song of Solomon having the capability to fly. Also, in the novel Beloved, a ghost of a dead child appears. In her first novel, The Bluest Eye, the mythical figure of Pecola Breedlove is used to address concerns pertinent to beauty standards and race. The figure was an African-American girl aged eleven years, dreaming of having long, blonde hair and blue eyes (Roynon 118). Pecola is raped by her father and becomes pregnant, which results in her transcending to insanity, claiming that she has “the bluest eyes in the whole world”. In the Song of Solomon, the focus is on the dead Milkma character, who the author claims to have been born in the North and who travels south. While in the south, the character discovers to be a descendant of Solomon, who is a member of a West African mythical tribe believed to have the capability to fly. As explained, these captured African tribesmen and enslaved in America escaped slavery by flying back. Therefore, it is arguable that Song of Solomon examines African-American historical myths, thus facilitating the formation of individual identity.

Contrasting and comparing passages

Contrasting and comparing passages from various passages makes sense if there is a particular reason that warrants comparison or setting up an analogy. For instance, Sula and Sethe, some of the characters in her works, seem to be very different characters, but a close analysis reveals that they share many similarities; they even use the same coping mechanisms to handle their pain in isolation (Omar 36).

In the passage, Guitar Bains and Milkman Dead III from Song of Solomon, the author discusses plans to steal the gold thought to be hidden in the Pilate Dead’s house. Guitar holds that Milkman should be more assertive and pick the sack without hesitating. However, he does not think of the many complications that he might encounter. Guitar scolds Milkman and convinces him to steal the money by claiming that Milkman is doing nothing with his life. The ideas present n this passage are similar to many characters in the other eight novels.

Use of Black English, Rituals and Oral Tradition Narrative Voice

Morrison uses this technique of narration to enhance her system of language, style, texts, and lexicon in some novels, thus bearing Witness to the African-American culture. It is also important to examine how Morrison uses lyrical narrative voice in the novel (Omar 45). The Bluest Eye and the Song of Solomon portray the experiences of African Americans and develop a sense of cultural identity in the Diaspora of Africa. It depicts that the West African reality version allows the coexistence of physical and spiritual worlds within the spaces of the narrative. In Morrison’s novels Paradise, Jazz, and Beloved, the mythic voices and spaces create some sense of the African-American universe, thus serving as meta-narratives for the reconstruction of African-American identity.

In Morrison’s fiction, storytelling is a form of historiography, and examining its role in the narrative, it is apparent that it facilitates the reconstruction of both the society and individual self. It is notable that Morrison’s fiction challenges traditions and cultures defined by totalizing standards, patriarchal and assimilationist in all her novels (Omar 45). She has positioned herself in opposition to mainstream white European culture by celebrating and portraying unique and marginalized voices of women from contemporary American life and the history of America.

Conclusion

Conclusively, Toni Morrison was an icon in the 20^th-century literary world. The unique and effective literary styles selected by Morrison play a significant role by ensuring that the novels portray the intended and desired functionality. These styles also ensure that issues influence either positively or negatively the identity of females in contemporary society. The uniqueness of how it is kept assures them a sense of belonging and cultural activities

Works Cited

Burton, Zisca. Bloom’s How to Write about Toni Morrison. Infobase Publishing, 2008.

Dreifus, Claudia. “Chloe Wofford Talks about Toni Morrison.” New York Times Magazine 11 (1994): 72-75.

Omar, Ayan. “Goodness in Toni Morrison’s Black Female Characters.” (2020).

Roynon, Tessa. The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

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