On The Cultural Implication Of The "song Of Solomon"

As the only black authoress who gains the Nobel Prize, Toni Morrison's novel focuses on Afro-American lives, has intense Afro-American cultural tradition and makes people taste the extraordinary aesthetic feeling and power of Afro-American culture. The reason why the paper takes her third long novel Song of the Solomon as an example lie in its rich cultural theme. The novel describes the conflicts of Afro-Americans between culture and history which is worth explaining thoroughly.Morrison always pays close attention to reality and future of Afro-Americans. How can they get rid of the mental burden to gain spiritual independence and cultural self-confidence is the main clue of her novel. Morrison carries on the exploration to this question and the novel Song of Solomon embodies her thought.Morrison shows her basic standpoint in creating this novel: progress of humanity should satisfy the survival and development of individual person. During the past 200 years, Afro-American experienced the transformation from African blacks to Afro-Americans which was not external only but intrinsic. The point is that traditional culture, as the symbol of blacks, is being impacted and corroded by the white mainstream culture. The blacks who own the original culture are troubled by the following questions: Where do they come from? How can they survive in the place far from Africa? How can their soul find the place without the African names? These are the unavoidable questions for a nation attention to history. So a growth story of a black youth that looks simple owns rich historical culture connotation just for a series of narration related to status.To speak simply, Morrison tries to seek a reasonable reason for survival of the blacks through the course of root seeking, whereas the root foundation of blacks is in accompany with pain. In the author's opinion, the blacks should face the reality which requires them not to admit the slavery but face the decided and unchangeable past, not to let the reality of being slavery become the shadow of reality. She points out the road of limited root seeing in which the root means the black traditional culture in South America where is origin of American black culture. From historical point of view, the reason why Morrison does this is not to cater for the mainstream but surpasses the race-oriented value and makes reasonable choice for the fate of blacks.The paper elaborates her exploration from cultural tradition, cultural conflict and fusion, and cultural localization among which culture tradition acts as modern Afro-American culture and cultural conflict and fusion as background of the arising of modern Afro-American culture. Only by deep understanding of the conflict of black and white culture and the connotation of traditional culture, can the readers really understand the real purpose of the author-based on this field, on the basis of inheriting traditional culture, the black can really fly.