The Traumas And Healing For Blacks In Toni Morrison’s Home

African American writer Toni Morrison(1931—)is a leading figure not only in African American and American letters but also in global literature.A very prolific writer,she published her tenth novel Home in 2012,which,upon publication,has received mixed,and mostly positive,reviews.As in her previous novels,she succeeds in portraying two ordinary but typical black figures,Frank and Cee.The story takes place in 1950 s.Frank is a veteran of the Korean War.His war experience inflicts him with serious post-traumatic stress disorder and gets him hospitalized.When a letter comes,it impels him to go back to his hometown Lotus,a place he hates the most.Cee is Frank’s sister,the person he is going to save,has also gone through some grave trauma on her body and mind at home: The maltreatment from their step-grandmother during her childhood,a failed marriage with a dishonest man in her adolescence and the experimentation on her body by a white doctor.Home continues to tell us how these two siblings are healed and find peace in Lotus.“I was interested in the 1950 s because we associate it with the postwar Doris Day decade,when it real y wasn’t like that.Forty thousand Americans died in the Korean War,which wasn’t cal ed a war—it was cal ed a police action.It was the time of the Mc Carthy hearings and a lot of medical apartheid,the license of [eugenics practitioners] preying on black women,the syphilis trials on black men.The 50 s was a highly violent race period.Emmett Till was murdered in 1955.There were a lot of moments like that.The seeds of the ’60s and ’70s were already being planted.” In an interview she explained the inspiration for her Home,and it’s also an inspiration for this thesis.In this thesis,trauma theory will be applied to analyze the traumas of Frank and Cee and the healings of their traumas.It consists of three chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion.The Introductory part will make a brief introduction about Toni Morrison,Home,and various criticism on this novel,and a general one about trauma theory.Chapter One analyzes the experience of Frank Money on the battlefield of the Korean War and his Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.Chapter Two explores the traumas of Cee Money,including the stressors for her trauma and the process of how she became a “gutter child” ultimately.Chapter Three researches the healing of Frank and Cee’s traumas.The thesis final y concludes that to interpret Home in the light of trauma theory might be a meaningful way to explore Toni Morrison’s real purpose in writing this novel.