When Christopher Morley explains in Where the Blue Begins that "All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim," he may not realize how closely he is describing the city illustrated in Jazz, a...

Ross Murfin defines postmodernism as, “A term referring to certain radically experimental works of literature and art after World War II” (Murfin 397). According to Murfin, postmodernism, like modernism that preceded it, involves separation from...

In Jazz, Toni Morrison writes with a style both rhythmic and passionate that is strikingly similar to the music of her novel’s title. Set mainly during the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the late 1920s, Morrison essentially tells the story of a...

In literature, what does it mean for somebody to fly? Ovid's Metamorphoses, chronicles of Greco-Roman mythology dating over 2000 years ago, depicts the failure of flight through the fates of Icarus and Phaeton, victims of hubris. Written by Toni...

One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro: two souls, two thoughts two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the...

Toni Morrison’s Sula and Song of Solomon examine the ways in which black people in black towns with black ideologies can be physically and emotionally destroyed by the infiltration of any and all institutions that are orchestrated and controlled...

In ‘Song of Soloman’ and ‘Translations’ Morrison and Friel present racial domination through the viewpoint of the oppressed minority group, respectively African-Americans and Irish nationalists. The concept of racial domination can be defined as...

In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Milkman’s progression from an immature teenager to an adult possessing moral rectitude is displayed through encounters where Milkman learns about and pursues knowledge about his past. We first meet Milkman as a...

In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, flying appears as a symbol of freedom, most notably in the African legend of Solomon, who released his son Jake to fall to the evils of American slavery while he flew away to freedom. Even though the story takes...

In Toni Morrison’s novel, Song of Solomon, the names of people and even of places take center-stage as arguably the driving motif of the book. Names are used to create Biblical allusions and delineate legacy among related characters, but one of...

Throughout the course of history, mystical concepts and magical elements have been woven into virtually every civilization’s culture. From angels and demons to fantastical creatures like unicorns and leprechauns, supernatural beliefs have...

Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon tells the story of Macon “Milkman” Dead, a character completely alienated from his community, family and heritage. In the novel, readers follow his journey to the fictional town of Shalimar that he takes in...

Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison, explores how each character searches for something, and the novel examines the ways in which they cope when they cannot find it. In the novel, many of the characters are trapped by their materialistic desires....

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison is a classic novel that tells the story of a man’s coming of age. When the protagonist Milkman truly matures, he is in his mid-thirties, and has lived, up until his journey, a life of privilege, complacency, and...

Freedom is a seemingly simple word. General definition states that it is the power to act, think and speak as one pleases. If one wanted to become less concrete, it can also be suggested that freedom itself, is a state of mind. In addition to...

In the late 20th century, a push and pull existed within the black community, the likes of which had rarely been seen before. People were celebrating the successes of the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow, but oppression and racism...

Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon is easily one of her best-selling novels and is often credited as contributing to her winning the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. However, despite its popularity Song of Solomon is in many ways radically...

The use of Biblical names in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon signals the growth of the protagonist from an isolated child-like man into a fully realized human being who has taken a place in the history of his family and by extension his people. In...

In the novels Sula by Toni Morrison and The Vegetarian by Han Kang, the main characters, Sula and Yeong-hye, are presented as extreme forces of nature grasping desperately for freedom in surroundings attempting to stifle these attempts. Resulting...

The confidante typically is known for being present when the hero or heroine needs a sympathetic listener to confide in, but that is not the case in Sula. Instead, Nel is there to show how the main character differs from the rest of the women in...

This novel is entitled Sula, after the woman who takes the conventions of her small home town and turns them completely upside down, but the story itself would not be complete without her friend and counterpart who embodies these conventions, Nel....

The concept of tough love is one that is prevalent in many African-American fictional texts. Toni Morrison's Sula is one such example of the way that tough love manifests itself through African-American parent-child relationships. It can often be...

Toni Morrison novels famously give voice to a black political, social, and moral conscience. Her novels deal primarily with the issues and concerns of black heritage and future and all the triumphs and tragedies of power and identity in between....

In Sula, Toni Morrison chronicles the lives of two African-American women whose close friendship is torn apart by infidelity. In the novel, Morrison paints the relationship between the character’s leading women, Sula and Nel, as one of...