Brian Gallery
Mr. Kaplan
English IV
November 8, 2017
Themes, Styles, and Techniques of Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison’s novels all seem to tell different, unrelated stories, but upon further, more in depth reading, you start to notice a defined pattern among her themes, styles, and techniques. For example, each of her books has one or more aspects of important African American culture, history, and tradition tied to it. Morrison’s styles and techniques that many people would overlook include her use of simple language to convey a bigger meaning, switching between a number of different narratives in her novels to keep the reader engaged, psychoanalysis, and more, all of which will be discussed later in this paper (Eckstein,Griffith,Osagie).
As stated in the introduction, one of the main themes present in all of Morrison’s works, whether it be “Beloved,” “The Bluest Eye,” or “The Song of Solomon,” is African American culture and tradition. Different important aspects of the culture such as music, religion, and storytelling all come up in some way or another in all of Morrison’s books. Reading her works can show us how important these different aspects are in African American culture. For example, we are shown how people were able to communicate through their music and how it differs from how you or I would listen to music, and the importance of musical rhythm and storytelling in regards to religion (Eckstein).
Morrison’s novels, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, gives us insight into the importance of music in African culture by her use of “jazzthetic strategies.” Different styles of music can portray different moods or vibes. This can be seen in “Beloved,” where each character has a different rhythm associated with him or her. For example, Paul D (a character in Beloved) has a bluesy rhythm associated with him because he has a very solemn history filled with slavery and despair. Other characters who may not have such a depressing history may have a more jazzy, upbeat rhythm associated with them to portray more joyful topics. Not only does Morrison use jazz and blues as a way to personify her characters, she also tries to have her books sound as if they are a piece of jazz music. She does this to show not only the importance of music in the African American culture, but also to show the cultural divide between Westerners and African Americans (Eckstein,Farshid).
Another overwhelmingly important aspect of African American culture is religion, and more specifically Christianity. Morrison makes many references to religion in many of her stories. Many of these references come from “Paradise.” The location that the group of women are living in is called the convent, because the place was once owned and inhabited by nuns. Other references to religion from “Paradise” include the mention of Mary the Mother of God, and Eve. We also have the town of Haven, which is said to resemble the early Churches in the Holy Land. Morrison also has quite a few characters named after people from the Bible. For example, in “Paradise” we have Zechariah, and in “The Song of Solomon” (which is consequently the name of a book in the Bible) there is a character named Hagar. And finally, many of Morrison’s stories are aspects of didactic fiction in them, a technique seen often in the Bible (this will be touched on more thoroughly at the end of this Paper) (Barr,Griffith,Warner).
It’s clear that Morrison knows that the people of western and African culture see things very differently. In “Song of Solomon,” some of the characters seem to be brought to the point of suicide because of the ridicule and torture that they receive from the white Westerners accompanied by the thoughts of slavery and all that their ancestors had to go through with that. This is where the views differ. Morrison puts forth that white people must overcome evil and fight it to the death, while African Americans have the thinking that it is better to survive evil than to fight it; they are more accepting of evil than white people. This is why no one actually commits suicide at any point in the Song of Solomon. The west is portrayed by blacks as a place for white people to thrive and diminish the ways of African Americans. An example of this is slavery. The whole premise of slavery is that white people are better than black people, and that is apparently how some of the characters in “Song of Solomon” see the western world, not as the land of opportunity and wealth that it is meant to be (Warner).
We turn now to ethics, the very basis of humanity, is a highly touched upon topic in Morrison’s “Paradise.” “Paradise” is a story of two groups of people, a men’s group and a women’s group, who live in a town called Ruby. The men’s group is totally against change whereas the women’s group wants change. Throughout the novel, the men speak in a derogatory way of anyone outside of their community who went against their ideals. The two groups not being able to agree with each other sets the scene for the town and all it stood for to fall apart. Reading into this gives us reason to believe that we all must respect people's opinions, or else society around us will go to ruins (Griffith).
The effect that slavery had on African American culture cannot, and is not, overlooked by Morrison in her novels. In “Beloved” Morrison tells of the slave's journey from Africa on a slave ship and how the awful conditions led some people to the point of wanting to commit suicide. She also mentions the cruel treatment, beatings and the like, that the slaves received from their masters. It must be made clear, however, that Morrison did not write about slavery and describe the terrible experiences that these people went through for dramatic effect; she wrote about this stuff to make history more real to the average reader. Stemming from slavery, we can notice that the characters in “Beloved” have a certain eternal fear. Since racism is one of the left over parts of slavery, African Americans have the rite to be fearful of those who discriminate them, as displayed in “Beloved” (George,Osagie).
In Morrison’s “Paradise” we see the use of relationship between men and women as a major theme. The men, dubbed “patriarchs,” are seen as dominant in the town, wanting nothing to do with the women’s community or their ideals. Morrison originally wanted to name the novel “War Between Good Women and Bad Men.” This steers from the main message of the story, but gives us an insight into the difference between the ideology of men and women. Critics have said that Morrison draws an inaccurate picture of men and women, saying that the men are “one dimensional,” however the men in the story ultimately convert and find the reason behind the women’s thinking. However, this change of heart did not just come about out of nowhere. The women in the story created a voice for themselves that was able to persuade the men to have this change of heart. It was extremely difficult for these women to create this voice. They were constantly being pushed down by the men because, as mentioned previously, they wanted nothing to do with what the women thought. After some time, however, and getting fed up with the men and their stubbornness, one of the women by the name of Consolata decided that she needed to speak up and put the men in their place (Barr,Griffith)
The next theme is one that can and should be implemented by everyone in their everyday lives. We can tell through Morrison’s writing that not all of her characters are perfect. For example, in “Beloved,” one of the characters is not as physically beautiful as the rest. Also in “Beloved,” we see instances where some characters see things differently or act differently than others because of their culture or religion. It is important for Morrison, as an African American, to be able to connect with her readers and show them that it is ok to be imperfect and different in society (Warner).
Works Cited
Barr, Jason. "Viewing Toni Morrison's Paradise as a Response to William Carlos Williams's Paterson." African American Review, vol. 44, no. 3, 2011, p. 421+. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 17 Oct. 2017.
Davis, Kimberly Chabot. "'Postmodern blackness': Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and the end of history." Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 44, no. 2, 1998, p. 242. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Eckstein, Lars. "A love supreme: jazzthetic strategies in Toni Morrison's Beloved." African American Review, vol. 40, no. 2, 2006, p. 271+. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.
Farshid, Sima, and Farshid. "The composing mode of jazz music in Morrison's Jazz." Journal of African American Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, 2012, p. 363+. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 13 Nov. 2017.
George, Sheldon. "Approaching the Thing of slavery: a Lacanian analysis of Toni Morrison's Beloved." African American Review, vol. 45, no. 1-2, 2012, p. 115+. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017
Griffith, Johnny R. "In the end is the beginning: Toni Morrison's post-modern, post-ethical vision of paradise." Christianity and Literature, vol. 60, no. 4, 2011, p. 581+. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.
Osagie, Iyunolu. "Is Morrison also among the prophets?: 'psychoanalytic' strategies in 'Beloved.' (Toni Morrison)." African American Review, vol. 28, no. 3, 1994, p. 423+. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.
Warner, Anne. "New myths and ancient properties: the fiction of Toni Morrison." Hollins Critic, vol. 25, no. 3, 1988, p. 1+. Academic OneFile, Web. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.