Morrison has created many dynamic black characters who are trying to capture their authentic selfhood in the empty or destructive world. With her sophisticated exploration of communal black life, her sincere concern to look for a wholesome life model ...
Morrison has created many dynamic black characters who are trying to capture their authentic selfhood in the empty or destructive world. With her sophisticated exploration of communal black life, her sincere concern to look for a wholesome life model for blacks makes her one of the greatest black writers.
Morrison's work is grounded in the premise the her fictional characters are marginal personalities who lack social, spiritual, psychological, and historical center. Some characters are masking their lack under the strict stoicism and moral-they are giving up their identity by choosing to make themselves as Others.
Morrison's more positive characters try to find their own voice and identity. Sula, Milkman and Jadine are among them. Morrison shows somewhat different personalities and choices through them and studies their own limits. Sula is great in that she refuses all oppressive rules on her and protects her freedom against the mean world. But her freedom is too egoistic and dangerous to be a real authentic model.
Milkman's discovery of his ancestor's heritage seems to promise the possibility of blackness as a strong alternative to corrupted modern capitalistic society. But Morrison's next novel, Tar Body, is very cautious about this hope. The simple return to old black world would result in the new weakness of blacks.
In spite of all these limits, Morrison seems to argue the importance of recognizing the black tradition and collective unconsciousness as the essential basis for their authentic existence. She also suggests that the conflict between different values can be a foundation of more powerful and wholesome identity of blacks.