A Womanist Reading Of Toni Morrison's Quest Myth-Song Of Solomon

As the most acclaimed contemporary African American writer and winner of Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, Toni Morrison describes herself as a "black woman novelist" (Caldwell,243) and her works bears distinguished features of racial, cultural and gender identity. Song of Solomon is her third novel, which is generally considered as the landmark of the maturity of her literary creation, reaching the New York Times best-seller list and receiving the National Book Critics Award and the American Academy and Institute of Art and Letters Award. The most unique quality of is, before this novel, all of the novels she wrote were centered by the female protagonist, while Song of Solomon is her only novel unfolded around a black male. What is more, she even adopts the classic archetypal Western quest myth to help her to narrate the story. Since its publication, many critics view it as the transition of Morrison's concepts for creation.This thesis aims to demonstrate that although Toni Morrison chooses to borrow the structure of Western archetypal hero's journey of quest to support her narration, her real intention is not to mimic an uncomplicated male-centered Western hero's journey, but to arouse reader's attention to the story behind the male character's glorious flight. In Song of Solomon, by depicting a young black man-- Milkman Dead's journey down the American South in search of self-identity, family ancestry and African cultural heritage, Toni Morrison rewrote the Western classic quest myth in her special way. In the head page, Toni Morrison wrote a maxim:"The Fathers may soar/And the children may know their names." This sentence is the key to understand the whole novel. Although male characters seem to occupy the central and leading position in this novel, black women, who are under the double oppression and marginalized by the white society and black men, are the real conveyor of the African culture and tradition.By analyzing the structure of the novel from Western archetypal hero's journey of quest and the content of the novel from Womanist criticism, the thesis concludes that Song of Solomon fits into the Western tradition of quest myth in structure, while in content the novel subverts the male-centered tradition of the quest myth as an attempt to advocate Morrison's Womanist concept-her challenge of white supremacy, her deep concern of the living condition of the African American woman and her celebration of the traditional values and the African cultural identity.This thesis is divided into five parts, including three chapters between the introduction and conclusion. The introduction part gives a brief review of Morrison's literary achievement and the unique status of Song of Solomon in her literary career. It also gives a general survey of the research results correlated with Morrison's Song of Solomon.Chapter one focuses on the discussion of the theoretical approaches of this thesis. In the first part of this chapter, the thesis amplifies the archetypal criticism, especially the relevant theory about the classic archetypal quest myth. In the next part of this chapter, the thesis discusses issues about the Womanism which profoundly influenced Toni Morrison's literary creation.Chapter two analyses the structure of Song of Solomon and demonstrates that, structurally speaking, like the classic archetypal quest myths of Odyssey and Beowulf, the protagonist Milkman Dead's root-searching journey to Virginia fits in the framework of archetypal hero's journey of quest, that is, the process of "separation, initiation, and return."Chapter three centers on how this novel subverts the male-centered archetypal quest tradition as by contrasting the male "villains" and female "angles", Morrison technically hide her womanist idea behind the legendary coat of quest myth. The subversion of the tradition is achieved through the white-assimilated, the revenge-obsessed, and the irresponsible black males'harmful influence on Milkman, and the protection and love offered by the silent, voiceless black females who suffered from sexism and racism. By doing so, Morrison wants to draw people's attention to the double-oppression shouldered by the black women, show the destructive consequence of the pervasion of the white ideology in black community, the horror and cruelty of the racial killing, the pain and sufferance caused by irresponsible escapism.The final part is the conclusion part. Through the above analysis, the thesis may at least claim the following conclusions:Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon is not only a parody of archetypal hero's journey but also a subversion of male-centered narrative tradition as Morrison attempts to promote Womanist ideology. As a womanist, by subverting the male-centered quest myth, Morrison does not intend to demonize black male, her real intention is to show the women's misfortune after men's irresponsible flight and make women's voice heard. Instead of advocating fierce confrontation between the male and female, she is more concern with finding the accommodation and mutual understanding between the opposite sexes. She believes the African Americans, should stand together and respects each other, feel proud of their own culture and black identity, return to the black traditional values, principles, ideas and cultural identities, and challenge the white oppression.