From Self-realization to Communal Identification: A Postmodern Reading of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved

Document Type : Original research articles

Author

Deaprtment of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Damietta University

Abstract

In Afro-American literature freedom has been a watchword that derives its essence from a deep awareness of history and a comprehensive sense of wholeness that both evolves within a full realization of a strong sense of responsibility. This paper aims at tracing the journey from self- realization to communal identification in Morrison’s selected novels through shedding light upon the significance of history and freedom in a postmodern society characterized by fragmentation, detachment, loneliness and displacement. The paper argues that freedom is only acquired when linked with a co-existent trend for integration, either vertical or horizontal. In Morrison‟s Song of Solomon and Beloved, the communal element dominates the background of the action. The paper concludes that history evolves as a ruling principle that all the time has its own positive aspects that keep people safe providing them with a cultural identity that induces them with a personal one. Though freedom is a personal dream in the first place, it converts to nothing if isolated from the more comprehensive collective communal vision. It needs the community to feed its hunger for support the same as it needs the individual to frame up its strife for distinction.

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