Healing With Love:A Traumatic Analysis Of Frank In Toni Morrison’s Home

Toni Morrison is a giant in the area of contemporary American literature and even that of the world literature. Her works had drawn much attention to scholars at home and abroad since they were published. And the critics always chose her works as their focuses to review. Home, the tenth novel of Morrison, was published in 2012. It tells a story about the leading character Frank who worked through his traumas with love after he had experienced serious psychological distress, which was caused by his loss of love in the settings of home, battlefield and society.Compared with Morrison’s other works, Home has its creativity in its characterization and connotative meaning. Most of Morrison’s works use African-American women as their main characters while Home sets a traumatized veteran as its leading character. The story of Frank’s traumas and recovery is the principal line of the novel. Besides, unlike Morrison’s previous works, Home shows a positive attitude of Morrison toward the life of the traumatized African-Americans. In the novel Home, Frank is cured by love thoroughly and lives a hopeful life at last.By applying Judith Herman’s trauma and recovery theory, this thesis gives a systematical study of Frank’s traumas in Home from the aspects of his traumas, his psychological distress and his process of healing. Firstly, by analyzing Frank’s traumas in Home from three social settings: his home, the Korean battlefield and the American society, this thesis argues that the essence of Frank’s traumatic experiences is the loss of love. Without love, Frank’s traumas and psychological distress come. Secondly, based on Judith Herman’s study of traumatic disorders, it points out that lived with serious psychological distress, Frank’s consciousness, memory, his power to control himself and his living environment and his human relationships are damaged. Therefore, this thesis concludes that only by creating new connections with others, accepting his traumatic experiences and reconstructing his self-identity as a man and an African-American man with love can Frank, the representative of the traumatized African-American men, work through his traumas.