Black Consciousness In Song Of Solomon

Song of Solomon is the third novel by American woman writer Toni Morrison, the winner of Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. In 1978, the next year right after its publication this novel won the National Critics Circle Award and the Letters Award. It is widely accepted that it symbolizes the maturity of Toni Morrison's writing style.Concerning this novel, many critics focus their attention on the novel's theme, naming, myth, songs, and its gender, race, and class problems. However, as a novel about the life experience of a black American hero and his family as well as his fellow men written by a black writer, the immense black consciousness contained in Song of Solomon blends various factors such as race, class, and culture. This black consciousness is also demonstrated in other novels by Morrison; however, it is most fully explored in this novel. This paper attempts to illustrate how Toni Morrison interprets her black consciousness in Song of Solomon through identity orientation, cultural distinction, and racial attitude. This black consciousness deepens the theme, highlights the characters' personality and strengthens the artistic features of the work, and hence brings special enchantment to the work.Applying the post-colonial theory this paper explores Toni Morrison's black consciousness reflected in the text from three aspects. Firstly, Toni Morrison displays her clear orientation toward black identity from the theme and cultural identity of the characters; secondly, from the four aspects of black myth, black music, black language, and black life style, she makes her cultural interpretation of black consciousness; lastly, Toni Morrison reveals her humanistic outlook to race and racial issues from the two opposing racial attitudes held by Pilate and Milkman on one side and that by Guitar and the Seven Days on the other side. These three aspects are respectively connected with race, identity, and culture, the three key elements of post-colonial criticism, and have close relation to the novel's theme, characterization, and the artistic features. Meanwhile...