This tag is for the students in Sp 2014 of Major Authors–Toni Morrison.
Home has many of the same themes as other Toni Morrison novels, however it has its differences. One of these differences is that instead of following the storyline of a female character we follow the story of male character, Frank Money. Where Morrison usually places male characters in the background, here in Home […]
In the beginning of the book, it’s interesting that the first scene the reader is shown is a scene where there is a stallion fight. “They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood (3).” Here, the horses are portrayed as having human behaviour, human behaviour that is attributed to the head […]
In Home there is immediately a focus of what is a home, and who a home belongs to. Throughout the story though, the characters while having many places they live don’t seem to find a home until they are surrounded by people who love them, who in a sense become their family. Each person they […]
“Whose house is this? …Say, tell me, why does its lock fit my key?” (1) Toni Morrison questions the idea of “home” from the very first page of her latest novel. The dwellings of her characters have varied anywhere from an old storefront in The Bluest Eye to the burrow Joe Trace finds in Jazz. I believe […]
A common theme has popped up during our class discussions regarding Toni Morrison’s works: we often cannot trust specific characters, narration or even the structure of the text. For instance, in Sula, the book is split into two parts and when events are retold in Part 2, they don’t always match up with the original account. […]
The title of Toni Morrison’s work Jazz is interesting in both its simplicity as well as her decision to name the novel after a musical genre that seemingly has nothing to do with the story or its characters. Before it was used to refer to a genre of music, the term “jazz” was considered a […]
What could be the purpose of the long 50 page (137 to 186) digression that had fantastic elements like Golden Gray and Wild? I am of the opinion that Morrison mixed genres in this novel to convey a message about rural/urban differences and an authentic black life in folklorist fashion. One reason this segment seems […]
Toni Morrison certainly kept me guessing, who’s the narrator of Jazz? Reading this novel was frustrating at best. Never once does Morrison point us towards the mysterious narrator. Is it a woman? Is it a man? Maybe the narrator is the one of the characters, or the reader? I was constantly writing my guesses in […]
At the beginning of the text, we are hit right away with brutality. Knowing what we do about Morrison, I found myself wondering: “Okay, who am I going to end up sympathizing with.” If I was reading almost any other novel, the answer would be Dorcas, the murdered, or perhaps Violet, the scorned woman. However, […]
In Beloved each character does their own set of traveling. We always find characters moving from place to place in their lives for specific reasons but we don’t truly see why they are always on the move until the end of the book. Traveling will take on many different perspectives as we approach this concept. […]
One of the most compelling characters that I came across in the book was Paul D. He seems to be the foil to Sethe and goes against most of what we learn about her. He travels in order to run away from the past. He openly admits that he cannot stay in one place because […]
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Beloved is a story which consists of many different symbols. Some of these symbols include colors (specifically red), a tin tobacco box, and trees. Out of these symbols, I believe trees have the most powerful effect on both the characters and the readers of this novel. Trees are used for many different symbols throughout Beloved. […]
Morrison’s use of the supernatural in Beloved is a highly discussed topic, especially in our class discussions. However, this subject is very intriguing to me, and I would like to dig a little deeper and uncover Morrison’s intention with the ghost and possession of Beloved. First, the narrative is completely reliant on a lack of […]
This semester has made me see history in a different way and how the history of a people is much more than memorizing facts and figures. Through “Rediscovering Black History” and The Black Book one can clearly see the importance history and preserving it is to Toni Morrison. Morrison says, “For larger and larger numbers […]
In The Black Book, music plays a large part within the text. While reading, I enjoyed learning about the different dancing events and songs that were created. These songs and dances were the only way that African Americans were able to express themselves and their emotions. Reading about this history of music shows how far […]
When I first opened The Black Book I was very overwhelmed; it was not easy for me to digest everything that was thrown at me. I had no clue where to even start, do I read the articles or do I focus on the pictures? Then I have to think of what Morrison is […]
We have all heard of the phrase “Little Black Book”; a collection of phone numbers and personal information of past or present “lovers”. To be honest, the first idea that came to mind when this book was assigned was just that. I knew that this book would not be a collection of phone numbers, but […]
Sula Peace, Nel Wright. Two names that are very ironic. When I was reading the novel Sula, I noticed the very distinct families between the two best friends. The Peace household is anything but peaceful. There is the dominate Eva, her caring daughter Hannah, Pearl and Plum and Hannah’s observant daughter Sula. The Dewey’s also live there along with […]
When you see a year in place of a title for a chapter you would expect that, that chapter would take place solely in that year. This is not the case for the novel Sula. There are different perspectives, two parts, a total of nine chapters, and they all take place in a set time […]
“Sula was distinctly different. Eva’s arrogance and Hannah’s self-indulgence merged in her and, with a twist that was all her own imagination, she lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her. As willing to feel pain as to give […]
I’m back from Seattle, it’s late, I’m tired, and I have finally given this blog post the amount of thought it deserves. It’s go time. In our class discussions of Sula the concept of duplicity came up a few times, and I believe that looking at the many instances of duality in Toni Morrison’s book […]
I could not help but feel compelled toward Nel, the way she was raised was not only intriguing, but also pulled at my heart strings. I could not help but feel a certain connection to Nel, with how separated her family is, and how dear a best friend really is. When it comes to Nel’s […]
When I was younger, it didn’t take long for me to realize that all of my friends had bright blue eyes, and if not blue than some other desirable light shade. It quickly became something I, much like Pecola, wanted to achieve. “Blue eyes would make me stand out,” I remember thinking, “a black girl […]
In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison depicts the life of Pecola Breedlove as one who is a victim, invisible and powerless from the start. These empty beginnings unravel Pecola’s destiny in ways that cannot change for her and bring a certain defeat. The influences that affect Pecola’s development as a child include […]
If enough people tell you, you are worthless… “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one…ugliness to wear…each accepted it without […]
Instead of everyone in our group just going with one topic we picked ourselves, we decided to focus on one key issue or theme in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye and we definitely agreed that a huge issue in the novel is the constant idea of appearances and what is ugly and beautiful to […]
In her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison implies that there is a connection between beauty and happiness. Beautiful little girls are the ones that live in nice houses. Their mothers are “very nice” and their fathers are “big and strong” (3). They have lots of friends. But what is beauty, really? Why are some […]
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