Theme Of Toni Morrison's Novel Growth

As a literary proposition which almost throughout the entire history of Western literature, the growth theme reflects the experiences of teenagers, who get rid of the innocence of childhood, and step into the real and complicated adult world. And it is elaborated and discussed by Western scholars repeatedly. As one of the most famous contemporary black women writers and the Nobel Prize winner of1993, Toni Morrison’s creations not only have the courage to explore new novel contents and forms, but also are rooted in the historical and culture traditions and the reality life of African American deeply. Therefore, her works have the profound historical and national characteristics. Without exception, her early three novels "The Bluest Eye,""Sula," and "Song of Solomon", all express the black teenagers’suffering and hard upbringing in the American society with Caucasian civilization and racial oppression and discrimination. As a scholarly writer, Morrison resides the individual growth experience of black teenagers into the fight for national independence and freedom of the entire Black Nationalist, which makes the growth theme of her novels to be profounder and more universal. In this paper, we will take Morrison’s three early novels as examples to discuss the thinking of Morrison about how the black teenagers in the plight of racial oppression strive for independence and freedom and eventually to mature; and the metaphor for the problem of cultural identity is of the entire Black Nationalist construction in American society.The full paper is divided five parts:The first chapter, we will clarify the special metaphorical of growth theme in Morrison’s novels, and the research status of domestic and foreign of Morrison’s novels.The second chapter is the main part of the article, which will take "The Bluest Eye" as the example to explore under the impact of the white mainstream values, the distorted values of just using the skin-color and money, which are the symbols of Caucasian features, to measure the Black’s individual value in the African-American community, and the black children’s growth tragedy caused by these.The third chapter takes the novel of "Sula" as an example. In this work Morrison reveals to the black teenagers whose self-consciousness preliminarily awakened already, awarded of their different with whites, and could not use the white’s values to decide their own thoughts. But at the same time, they also apart themselves with their black compatriots, and went to the failure of growth experience ultimately.The fourth chapter, with "The Song of Solomon" as example, we will discuss the complex and contradictory character of the protagonist Milkman, who grows in the family and friend, whom represent different culture values and social classes. And the protagonist tried to get rid of the fetter, to integrate into the development of the entire African-American gradually by pursuing hundred years history of his own family, and finally went to maturing.The fifth chapter discusses relationship of the three novels, and the unique of Morrison’s creations. Through the analysis and summary of above chapters to show that the growth of black teenagers cannot be separated from the historical traditions and cultural development of their own nation. And only through integrating their own growth and fate with the nation’s independence and development of African-American closely, the black teenagers would go to the real independence of spirit and maturity.