Community in Toni Morrison’s Fiction

• Název práce v češtině: Komunita v knihách Toni Morrison
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Community in Toni Morrison’s Fiction
• Klíčová slova: Toni Morrison, Afro-americká literatura, Komunita
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Toni Morrison, Afro-american Literature, Community
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2010/2011
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 13.09.2011
• Datum zadání: 14.09.2011
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 05.10.2011
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 29.05.2012 09:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 08.05.2012
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 29.05.2012
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: David Lee Robbins, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

Toni Morrison’s concern with racial issues is increasingly topical nowadays, not only in the United States, which is witnessing its first African American President, but all around the world. It seems that our current society is facing racial and ethnic diversity and interaction at an unprecedented level as people of different races and ethnicities live together side by side worldwide.
While dealing with the topic of love in her novels Sula and Beloved for my BA thesis, I became interested in the topic of black communities as it struck me as being both a prominent and highly complicated issue that Morrison addresses. Recently, I have broadened and deepened my knowledge of her work and found that the theme of community has proven to be not just a prominent issue but a principal concern in her writings. She deals with it to a greater or lesser extent in all of her novels. Looking at three novels from different time periods—The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977), and Paradise (1998)—I will analyze her treatment of community and show whether or not it has changed over the years, and if so, how.
What seems to be the case is that Morrison appears to consider white values such as capitalism, patriarchy, the nuclear model of the family, the greater importance of an individual over the community or class division dangerous when adopted by black communities as they can lead to madness, death, and communal breakdown. As Adama Soro claims, in pre-colonial West African and later in slave communities, the community overshadowed the individual and Morrison feels that this type of community is vanishing. In an interview with Charles Ruas, she states that capitalism is dispersing a once powerful sense of community among African Americans. It appears that even though she claims she does not attempt to give solutions in her books, that an effective remedy for the damaged black communities is suggested; namely, the return to traditional African values such as the notion of an extended family, the importance of a whole community rather than the individual, storytelling, and the belief in magic and healing. Over the years, it seems that Morrison became more critical of black communities for adopting white values, thus shifting the blame from whites to blacks. She explores the forces and influences of an individual and community on one another and examines traditional familial and communal values and compares them to the current ones.[1] Each of the following novels explores some of the dangers and shows their consequences.
After comparing the values of black communities and white society (e.g. the above mentioned nuclear vs. extended family, individual vs. community, and also capitalism, racism, class division) using the work of Melville Herskovits, Adama Soro, and Benedict Anderson, I will examine the class structure within the black community as presented by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Philadelphia Negro and as discussed by Elijah Anderson’s African American Class Structure The Emerging Philadelphia. The theory of community will be discussed with the help of books by Alphonso Lingis, Rene Girard or Jean-Luc Nancy. In the following chapters, Morrison’s treatment of community in her novels will be analyzed in detail and the theory of class division within the black community will be applied.
In her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970) Morrison portrays an African American community in which some of its members lose touch with their own identity by adopting white values, especially white standards of beauty. Since in white-run society at that time, whiteness was equated with beauty, cleanliness and superiority, and blackness with ugliness, filth and inferiority, the main character Pecola assumes she can only be loved or considered attractive if she is white. As a result, she not only loses her identity, but her mind as well. Morrison introduces the theme of storytelling as one of the traditional African values that helps the characters make sense of their lives.
Her second novel Song of Solomon (1977) further explores the loss of identity caused by the adoption of white values by a black community. This time, however, Morrison focuses on the danger of rejecting the traditional African extended family – and in a broader sense the whole community – in favor of the selfish individual and, for the black community, the destructive model of the nuclear family. Moreover, Morrison criticizes white patriarchy and introduces a strong female character Pilate that was very important in traditional African communities. Pilate proves to be of great importance to the main character’s quest for his identity and the rediscovery of his heritage.
Paradise (1998) delves even further into the dangers of patriarchy and goes on to explore the adoption of a more dangerous phenomenon – racism. After experiencing racism from both whites and blacks, the leading men of the group adopt this method and create an all black community which favors individuals of a darker shade of black and ostracizes those with lighter skin. The community also adopts the values of capitalism and patriarchy as the men control everything both morally and financially. In the book, a whole group of women is killed, supposedly in order to protect the community. The importance of a female character is presented again, as women serve as guides for the community’s recovery. According to Channette Romero, the communal history has to be healed in order for the individuals and the whole community to “reimagine” the future.[2]
Based on the research and reading done so far it seems that black individuals and consequently black communities have lost their sense of identity by being ostracized by white society. However, instead of turning to their own traditional values, the black communities portrayed by Morrison adopt white values, which is, according to her, destructive. She criticizes communities based on isolationism and patriarchy and the way they try to achieve equality and claims that African American communities continue excluding and marginalizing individuals.[3] In the conclusion of this thesis, the theme of community in Morrison’s other novels will be mentioned briefly.
[1] Adama Soro, “Living Together: African Community-Based Values in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon,” Sciences sociales et humaines, Revue du CAMES Nouvelle Série B (Vol. 9, No. 2, 2007) 295.
[2] Romero Channette, “Creating the Beloved Community: Religion, Race, and Nation in Toni Morrison's Paradise” African American Review, (Vol. 39, No. 3, 2005) 415.
[3] Romero, 421.

Seznam odborné literatury

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Channette, Romero. “Creating the Beloved Community: Religion, Race, and Nation in Toni
Morrison's Paradise.” African American Review, Vol. 39, No. 3. Fall, 2005.
Davidson, Rob. “Racial Stock and 8-Rocks: Communal Historiography in Toni Morrison's
Paradise.” Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 47, No. 3 Autumn, 2001.
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Literature, Vol. 23, No. 3. Summer, 1982.
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Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
Herskovits, Melville. “The Myth of the Negro Pas.” Boston: Beacon, 1941.
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Mississippi, 1994.
Varsava, Jerry A. “Review: The Dialectics of Self and Community in Toni Morrison and
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