Quest For Double Cultural Identity-a Postcolonial Analysis Of Toni Morrison’s Three Novels

Toni Morrison, one of the most influential American women writers, shows much concernwith the fate of her people. The quest for cultural identity has been a main preoccupation ofMorrison’s novels. The thesis attempts to explore the protagonists’ quest for double culturalidentity in Morrison’s three novels, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Tar Baby byemploying Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of identity and double cultural identity, aiming at tracingMorrison’s contemplation on the process of identification of double cultural identity of theAfrican Americans.In The Bluest Eye, the protagonist Pecola Breedlove fails to construct a successful doublecultural identity since she is so desperate to identify herself with the dominant white culture thatshe tragically loses her black cultural identity. In Song of Solomon, it is the identification withthe black cultural identity that accelerates the transformation of the protagonist, Milkman Dead.In Tar Baby, Morrison modifies her optimism of the identification of double cultural identity asrevealed in Song of Solomon. The protagonists in the three novels, except Milkman Dead, havefailed to construct a successful double cultural identity. However, the open-endings in Song ofSolomon and Tar Baby well demonstrate that the process of the double cultural identityformation is a complex and ongoing process, in which negotiations between the past and present,the South and the North, the black culture and white culture never cease. In the context ofmulticulturalism, the proper way for African Americans to survive is to combine the blackculture and white culture, that is, to preserve and inherit the essence of the black culture andmeanwhile assimilate the modern and positive aspects of the white culture.