The Quest For Growth In Toni Morrison’s Three Novels

As a famous African-American female novelist, Toni Morrison insists on concerning about the growing process of the marginalized African-American youths. She roots in African-Americans’ particular history, legends and real life to create plenty of works which explore mainly the fates and spirits of the blacks, criticize the evil racism, and praise the enduring history and culture of black people. Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye presents a story about a vulnerable black girl Pecola who gets lost in her dream of possessing the bluest eyes under the enormous influence of the white standard of beauty. Her second novel Sula shows us the protagonist Sula who takes a resistant attitude to her own black community under the white dominated society and becomes a scapegoat of her community finally. Song of Solomon is Morrison’s third novel and her only novel in which the protagonist is a black male. This novel focuses on the initiation and awakening of Milkman, who alienates and isolates himself from his own family and community in his early life and starts his journey of self-awareness and achieves a full understanding of self with the guide of his mentors at last. Morrison inherits the mode of traditional Bildungsroman in her creation of Song of Solomon in which typical features of Bildungsroman can be observed, such as:male protagonist, mentors, journey and rituals, etc.Growing-up is an inevitable stage in human’s life. At the same time, it is also a long-standing literary theme, which bears a profound cultural connotation. As a literary genre, Bildungsroman explores mainly the protagonist’s process of growth and maturity, including his or her physical and psychological maturity. How to grow up healthily and comprehensively in the marginalized black community under the dominated white culture is a big problem that African-American youths have no choice but to face.This paper puts these three novels---The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon together as a Bildungsroman trilogy and studies them in the framework of western Bildungsroman. Through the analysis of the different growing process of the three protagonists and use of some concepts of Bildungsroman, this paper creats an insightful understanding of the growth of African-American youths:from Pecola’s blindly obedience to the white culture to Sula’s crude resistance to her own culture and community to Milkman’s close association with black history and African tradition culture, and from Pecola and Sula’s loss of identity to Milkman’s final maturity. Besides, this paper also embodies Morrison’s quest on the growth of African-American youths and the "bildung" of her growth consciousness in the trilogy.