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The Theme of Death in Toni Morrison’s Novels

Author: ZhanMinNa
Tutor: FangKePing
School: Nanchang University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: Toni Morrison death cultural survival
CLC:
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2006
Downloads: 554
Quote: 3
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Abstract

Toni Morrison, as the first African American female writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, has exerted a great influence upon the literary world. She has been regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the contemporary world, and her works represents the outstanding achievement in Afro-American literary history. Morrison devotes herself to preserving and developing the culture of the blacks. All her novels are centered on Black people’s pursuit of their cultural survival and identity in the dominant white society. This thesis will have its focus on the death scenes in her novels, investigating into the cultural significance they have for the black people in their struggle for survival.The thesis consists of six parts. Part One is an introduction to Morrsion’s status in the literary world, some of the theoretical frameworks that have been applied to her study, and the major points to be made about the proposed topic in the ensuing chapters.Chapter Two examines the loss of black identity in her third novel Song of Solomon. It is argued that Hagar and Smith are meant to represent cases that are overwhelmed by the dominant culture, and lose the support of their own. So they are doomed to end up with occupying no place in either. Hagar’s internalization of the norms of beauty actually dispossesses her of a sense of "self", and this in turn causes her self-destruction. Smith, subtly aware of his awkward position in this hostile society, tries to subvert those political and social restrictions, but because of his unstable possession of his Afro-American identity, he fails. Chapter Three focuses on black mothers’ cultural resistance of the white domination by means of homicide in Sula and Beloved. Eva burns her own son for the dignity of survival and Sethe commits infanticide because she refuses to let her daughter return to slavery, which defines a slave as an animal. Both black mothers desperately and sacrificially attempt to provide preservation and protection for their children, while, under extreme situations, they have to resort to the extremity of murdering

The Theme of Death in Toni Morrison’s Novels

Abstract

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