Chapter I

LONE VOICES RXFUSING TO BE HUSHED

Chapter I

LORE VOICES REFl SI\G TO BE HITSHED

Black women's contributiomts to literature have created not just ripples

hut waves of change which lashod against the multifaceted oppression and

discrimination they had to undergcl for centuries. The 'Black literature' though

not so rich in number as the other branches, have created reverberations, the

irnpact of which can be seen in the type, theme and technique of the later works

i r r the contemporary main stream literature. When the voiceless make*

themselves heard every syllable speaks volumes, which overturns, revamps and &

wipes out many of the old ideas and ideals. So the Black women's works are

extremely powerful outpourings of the repressed "selves" persecuted for their

color, race, sex and economic status.

If the Black man was oppressed for his racial and physical peculiarities,

the Black women's plight was more excruciating. They had to go through the

harrowing experiences of racist and sexist persecution with little support and

great aversion from their men (Black men). Gerda Lerner expounds their

plight in her work Black Women in Wtite America. The Black women were

doubly victimized as the exploitation by the White society was reinforced by the

indignity of the Black men. As "rc:memories" passed down from generations of

Black Americans the Black Feminist o r "Womanist" literature is wrought with

agony, violence, fear, pain and frustration. Richard Wright in his 'Magnum

opus' Our Strr~ngr Birfh describes the Black Americans as ". . . children of a

devilish aberration, descendants of an interval night-mare in history, fledglings i

of a period of amnesia on the part of men who once dreamed a great dream and

forgot" (Wright, Richard 13). The Black Women's works are 'peopled' with --

these children, these descendants and these fledglings. Even the Reformists

refused to take the Blacli women :it par rn politics o r scholarly pursuits. They

were looked upon mostly as commodities and rarely as 'Aunt Jemimas' or 'Old

nannies' by the Whites. To the Black men they were only receptacles of their

pent up fury. When they were huniiliated and assaulted by their White masters

the Black women had to play the role of a buffer to their men's flayed ego and

also receive the onslaughts of these wounded egoists.

In spite of the scholarly neglecsthe Black women writers have put in a lot 1

fbr the uplift and emancipation o" the Black women. I t was a march against

odds too hazardous to he overcome. In spite of all the pitfalls, the Black women

writers are in Hernton's view now considered as ". . . (Hluman beings, as sexual

creatures clothed in their own personal skins, as American citizens with public

rights and duties, private longings and desires, like any other citizen of this

republic" (Hernton, Calvin; 1964. 166). The amount of courage they had to

muster and the obstacles they had to encounter in the process of surging to

recognition can be seen in their works. So the works of the Black women are

excruciating experiences of despair, desolation and also the triumph of the will.

They (Black women) are giving voice to their suffering and suffocation and as

they were smothered for ages,tl~ese revelations are a t times pungent with

remorse and regret. Ashis Sengupta observes:

Black womelr novelists of the twentieth century have openly

portrayed in their works their experiences of exploitations -

-- political, racial, sexual and emotional. Driven by an

overriding impulse towards self-assertion, which can be

traced hack to the cultural ethos of thc1960s, they have

later succeeded in turning their identity into a source of

strength (Sengupta, Ashis 91).

Black women writers are aware of their status and are always on guard to resist

further subjugation. Years of suffelring had moulded them to endure the rebuffs

with the flame of rancour that the) preserve in their writings and speeches. The

contributions of the Black women writers can be defined in Langston Hughes'

words: "We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how and we

$tand on the top of the mountain free within ourselves" (Hughes, Langston;

1926, 694).

This study was initiated by a liking for the Black literature and Black

misery when Harriet Beecher Stone's Uncle Tom's Cabin opened a new vista of

experience to the scholar in the primary class and kindled an interest to go down

the trails left by the Blacks. It was an exhilarating experience, exposing man at

his worst. This researcher's interest in the unspoken and untrodden was

gratified to a great extent while ur~veiling the unseen realms of the Black lives.

l 'he Black man's history in Plmertca is drenched with blood and tears. Their

prolonged suffering has left a mark too deep for posterity to do away with. No

~ r i t e r irrespective of gender or race or language lives in a water-t ight]

compartment. They imbibe from those who had gone before them, from their

contemporaries and from their ovin experiences, T.S. Eliot's exposition of the

relevance of the past writers in his famous essay "Tradition and Individual

Talent": "No poet, no artist of any a r t has his complete meaning alone. His

significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets

and artists" IEliot, T.S. 2941 is pertinent to Toni Morrison's status as a Black

woman writer.

4 sojourn through the works of the Black women writers interesting yet

painful will show what Ms. Morriqion had to build upon and also the templates

that she had in front of her. They ahre paradigms which helped her to delve deep

into the excruciating experiences of her characters. l l ee ra Manvi comments

that a survey of the works of the Black women writers shows: ". . . a loss of faith

in the Black men and the awakvning of a consciousness geared towards the

creation of a female network" (illanvi, Meera 42). Though there were some

anonymous and unassuming womcn writers among the Blacks who preferred to

stay behind the veil, Francis E.W Harper's Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted is

historically important, as the first novel published by a Black woman. It exposes

the futility of attempting to transform the American society until White

supremacy is understood and attacked by the Whites. Nella Larsen, another

noted Black writer portrayed in her work Quick Sand, the horrors of racial and

gender discrimination the Black women had to encounter in the White, male

dominated American society. Z o r : ~ Neale Hurston is the pioneer who made the

Black women's voices irresistible to the world. She lashed out a t the American

capitalism and revealed how a Black woman can escape deprivation and

isolation, through her Pqagnu~n .- - Opus Their Eyes Were Watching God. Another

Black woman writer, ,4nn Petry, in her work entitled The Street exposed the

plight of the jobless poverty stricken Black women who succumb to sexual

exploitation. Paule Marshall with her work Brown Girl, Brown Stones gave a

new dimension to the Black women's literary world. This book according to

Barbara Christian exposes: "the Ellack women's potential as a full person and

necessarily a major factor on the social, cultura! and political issues of our

times" (Christian, Barbara; 1980, 103-105). Marshall's work is unique as she

depicts her heroine alienated from her native value system by her excessive

longing for the refinement and M'hite standards of beauty. The remarkable

aspect of this work is that it shows the effect of the d a p g e d self, the cmeept

which paves way to -- their torment, confusion and isolation. Marshall's heroine

Selina is a forerunner of many of Toni Morrison's heroines as she is one who J

realizes that the attempt to change the present will not succeed without a search , i s

for roots. fp Mary Washington's wordsti;. . . reentering the house . . . the . -.

personal and historical past and reinvesting those historical with new meaning"

(Washington, Mary Helen 3).

The Black women's works, which started as dribs and drabs became an

avaianche within a few years. T h ~ s trerrlendous increase in their contribution

show the amount of suppressed emotions and the unvoiced feelings that were

waiting for an outlet. By the post sixties Black women's writing was on a par

with any other branch of literature. Alice Walker, a luminary among modern

Black writers through her works which were clarion calls to the Black woman

reminding her of her inheritance and the importance in Karla Holtoway's words

of "gathering up the historical and ~~sychological threads of the life my ancestors

lived . . . ancient spirits, all vc:ry happy to see me and consulting and

acknowledging them and eager to 11.t me know through the joy of their presence

that indeed "1 am not alone" (Holl~oway, Karla 27). Black women writers Toni

Cade Bambara, Gayle Jones, Gloria Naylor, Jamaica Kincaid, Terry WcMillan

are equally evocative in their advoc:~cy of Black women's thoughts and words.

The Nobel Prize assumed pertinence when it was conferred to Toni

Morrison. She, as Trudier Harris comments: ". . . 111s a phenomenon in the

classic sense of a once-in-a life time rarity, the literary equivalent of Paul

Robeson, Michael Jordon, Wayne Gehty, Chris Evert o r Martina Navaratilova . . . " (Harris, Trudier; 1994, !)). 'This obeisance paid to Toni Morrison is a

recognition to the African American Literary Cannon which was neglected as

an off shoot of the "upstart literature". It is also an acknowledgement of thc

tremendous power of the human will that survived in the dark recesses of the

"slavery-ridden" White American society, where existence was prodigious.

Toni Morrison [Chloe Anthony Woffordl was born in Ohio as the

daughter of George and Ramah \Villis Wofford. Her parents were proud, self

respecting Blacks from whom she imbibed many of the qualities which made her

distinct from other Black women writers. In her interview with Dona 'Micucci

Ms. Morrison says: "I felt much endowed by their tenacity. My father always

took it for granted that I could do anything; and my mother and grand mother

never entertained fragility o r vulnerability. "After all, look what we did. they'd

say about their escape from life threatening situations in the racially tense

South" (Micucci, Dona; 1992, 276'. She owes a lot to the 'story telling sessions'

of her family. She was fasrinated, especially by the horror stories that her

father would come up with. She admits: "I grew up in a basically racist

household with more than a chilcl's share of contempt for White people," and

she has asserted on a t least one occasion t h a e "my hatred of White people is

justified and their hatred for me ir, not" (Carol, lannone 60). She was influenced

by the Russian novelists she rvad in her adolescence, especially by their

specificity. Morrison says;"When I wrote my first novel years later I wanted to

capture that same specificity about the nature and feeling of the culture 1 grew

up in" (Carol. Iannone 60). She had the added advantage of i niver\itv

education with a master's degree in literature, a rare fortune for a Black girl of

Ohio in those days. She started her teaching career in 1955 and became a senior

editor a t Random House in 1965. Accolades and acclamations came her way

regularly since 1977 when she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle

Award. She later won the Pu1itzt:r Prize for fiction and Robert F. Kennedy

. 4 ~ ard. She was the first Black woman after Zora Neal Hurston (in 1943) to be

featured on the cover of News Week. The honours bestowed on her was topped

by the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993.

Toni Morrison occupies a unique position in Black Literature. She is

American, a Black and a woman. As Dubois has stated: ". . . the Black women

writers of the eighties are always aware of their 'threeness', an American, a

begro, a woman, three souls, three thoughts three warring ideals in one dark

body" (Dubois). Morrison has d$efined herself as: ". . . valuable as a writer

because I am a woman, because women it seems to me have some special

knowledge about certain things. I1 comes from the ways in which they view the

world and from women's imagination. Once it is unruly and let loose it can

bring things to the surface that men, trained to he men in a certain way have

difficulty getting access to" (Lester 54). Her themes as well as her "story

telling" is distinct from the other Black writers. She has to her credit seven

novels, a play, a short story, a collection of critical essays, in addition to the

numerous works that she edited among which in the Making of the Black Book

and The Harlem Book of the Dead are the noted ones.

An interesting aspect of l 'oni Morrison's fiction is that she does not

concentrate on a narrow outlook o r try to exclude men or women from her

works. She is remarkable in giving to the realm of literature some ver:

interesting male characters -- mea who are a d i t t ~ of the many found in the

small towns and cities of 'Black America'. Her heroines like her heroes

elperience the agony of' alienation. In this aspect she honestly acknowledges the

fact that the impact of slavery and its aftermath is not exclusively gender based.

As Cynthia A Davis comments: "lier use of multiple perspectives has always

allowed her to show a number of subjects as comments and variations on the

central character. And her early alternation between male and female versions

of the "free" character shows that she does not exclude women from subjective

!Ife or choice" (Davis, 4. Cynthia 3'7).

.Morrison's landscape like Joyce's Dublin and Hardy's Wessex is Ohio. In

an interview with Claudia Tate, Morrison remarks:

Ohio is an interesting r~nd complex state. It has both r

southern and a northern disposition. The Ohio River has

historically represented freedom. . . The northern part of

the state has underground railway stations and a history

of Black people escaping into Canada, but the southern

part of the state is as mbch Kentucky as there is, complete

with cross burnings. Ohio is a curious juxtaposition of

what was ideal in this country and what was base (Tate,

; Claudia 119).

She belongs to the class of women writers who believe that the problems

concerned with women will be effectively articulated only by the women writers.

Vloreover .- she upholds the view that Black women are not enjoying many of

their rights like Black men but in their ability to endure and perform, they a re

definitely on a higher rung than the Black men. In her interview with

Rosemarie K.Lester Morrison comments: " . . . Black women have always been a 4

both mother and labourer, mothel and worker and have worked in the fields

along with men. They were required to do physical labor in competition with

them, so that their relations with ei~ch other turned out to be more comradeship

than male dominance 'female subc~rdination . . . . Black vomen are both ship

and safe harbor" (Lester; 1988, 49). She is here joining hands with the Black

feminist writers in projecting the relevance of Black women and their moral

fibre.

From the ex-slave Sojourner Truth to the twenty-first century post

modern writers, Black feminist writers are upholding the same ideal and

reminding the world about the shameless brutality imposed on the .American

Blacks. Sojourner Truth in her legendary speech a t the 1851 Women's Rights

Convention, .4kron, Ohio said: '"Dat' man ober dar say da t womin needs to be

helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and to hab de best place

e\erywhere. Nobody eber helps me into carriage, o r oher mud puddles, or gibs

me any best place! And a'nt I a woman" (The Routledge Companion to

F~minism and Post Feminism 187). I t is the same question that the Black women

writers are posing through their works. There is a subtle dig a t the White

women with their coiffured hair and catwalk movements. Ms Morrison

comments in an interview with Christina Davis about Black women writers:

. . . there's a gaze that women writers seem to have that is

quite fascinating to me because they tend not to be

interested in confrontations with White men-the

confrontation between Black women and White men is not

very important, it doesn't center the text. There are more

important ones for then1 and their look, their gaze of the

text is unblinking and wide and very steady. It's not

narrow, it's very probing and it does not flinch. And it

doesn't have these furmy little axes to grind. There's

something really marvelous about that . . . (Davis,

Christina 418).

The Black women writers' canon h e surpassed to a considerable extent i --

the impact of other women writ1:rs. In the brevity and pungency the Black

women's works are similar to what Gray has said "thoughts that breathe and

words that burn." Toni Morrison's works due to the fictional worlds that she d has created in them have induced the critics to refer to her craftsmanship as

2' 'Black Magic'. Ms. Morrison's works like those of Octavia Butler, Sherley Anne

Williams, and Gayl Jones have succeeded in establishing a very secure

relationship between literature and history. Ms.Morrison has succeeded in

recreating and reliving the past experiences which are the fountain heads -- of

the d i~ tc~r ted psyche, disrupted outlook and disillusioned state in which her

charactet \ are found. But she callnot completely avoid the influence or the

existence of the dominant White culture. She, like the poet in Langston Hughe's

poem "Theme for English B" asks: "So will my page be coloured that 1 write?"

Titno tly Powell remarks that the answer received to this shows that "the Black

poft'5 page will indeed be different and yet also suggesting that it is not possible

to ever fully avoid the influence of the White instructor" (Powell, B. Timothy

750). Like many other Black writltrs, Ms. Morrison also has not been able to

"fully avoid" the influence of the "White instructor?" But her success is in

presenting the sagas of the quest c~f those men and women who once dreamt a

great dream and forgot. She is trying to recreate what James Baldwin said:

"For the horrors of the American Negro's life there has been almost no

language. The privacy of his experience which is denied o r ignored in official

and popular speech -- hence the Pliegro idiom - lends credibility to any system

that pretends to clarify it" (Baldwin, James; 1963, 62). Whether she is writing

"about love o r its absence" her characters are representatives of American

individualism. They are emotionally maimed or imprisoned by the racial, social,

economic and gender divisions clf American society. I t is not the physical

bruises that extend through generations. 'The psychological torment undergone

by the Blacks had distorted their personalities and had its impact both, direct

and indirect on the lives of their k ~ t h and kin. These 'wounded souls' peopled

the Black society, making it vulnerable to abuses, malpractice and unlimited

atrocities. The focus of the present study is more on the emotional trauma

experienced by the Blacks in America than on their other deprivations. The

forced removal from -- their rrativst soil, traditions, culture, myth, folklore and

language is the primal cause of their agony which is aggravated by the

exploitation, oppression and discrimination by the White culture. O.K. Pabbly

has described the consequences of being alienated as:

The usual consequence of being alienated is the developing

of tendencies of fear-psychosis, disillusionment leading to

suicidal instincts, feeling completely disconnected and

disjointed from the outside world and the self, etc. But the

sympathy and compassic~n help in overcoming the situation.

This has been variously termed as "survival",

"afirmation" o r "abberation", depending upon the stage of

one's true realization of the mystery of life. The unfolding

of this mystery may tak.e very long and is often a painful

and agonising experience, the net result of which however,

is harmony and concc~rdance in spite of the apparent

contradictions of life (Pa bbly, C1.K. 34).

As [Ms. Morrison has repeatedly said: "I only have twenty six letters of

the alphabet, 1 don't have colors o r music. 1 must use my craft to make the Y

, reader see the colors and hear the sounds (Morrison, Toni). The researcher is

also in a similar predicament with only "twenty six letters of the alphabet" to

narrate the anguish of many generations of Black men and women who are

brought alive by Toni Morrison's Black magic, in the conjured worlds of

Medallion, Bottom, Not Doctor Street, Isle des chevaliers, Lorain, Ohio etc. A

brief contemplation of the six nova:ls considered for this study reveal how she

has used the verbal medium to tlring out the alienation experienced by the

Blacks - men and women and also the Black community in the influx of the

M'hite culture.

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's maiden work published in 1970. As it -7

is her novel attempt, it has its positive and negative features. But it is unique

being the first attempt to fabricate the agony experienced by an ugly little Black

girl who longs for beautiful blue eyes which she believes will transform her

world. Sula (1974) tells the story of Nel and Sula, very different in their

approach and outlook but inseparable. It is a bold attempt which reveals the

female bonding that is found among the Black women who realize that Black

women can find a true arbor onlj among themselves. The titular heroine has

very few parallels in literature.

Song of Solonton (1977) is Mr. Morrison's third novel in which she shifts

her focus to the male protagonist Macon Dead Jr. who in his attempt to discover

a long lost treasure discovers his 'ancient properties", finds his ancestor who

succeeded in flying and realizes that: "once you surrenders to the air, you know

how to ride it."

Tar Baby (1981) set in the Caribbean background shows the futility of -- running away from one's past and cleplorir~g one's culture. The confrontation of

the newly acquired beliefs and the old world ideals, the danger of the mad

pursuit of alien values, the reali.zation that tradition and past cannot be

completely erased, are brought out by Morrison through the love life of the

Parisian model Jadine and the rustic Son. The White benefactor and his

household play a very impertant part in showing that alienation and frustration

are not exclusively for theSlacks but the members of the White society are also

victims of isolation and loneliness.

Beloved (1987) The Nobel I'rize Winner, this fXlagnum &us of Toni I - Morrison brings forth the atrocities committed and the aftermath of years of

persecution and subjugation. I t has an "other worldly" touch especially in the

character Beloved who mysteriourily appears, stays on, disrupts the Black

woman Sethe and disappears m i t h o ~ ~ t leaving a trace. She is a representative of

the millions of "disremembered and unaccounted for" who perished on the slave

ship$, o r who underwent a death-in- life existence in the strongholds of the

CYhite plantations.

Juu (1992) set in the modern times, depicts the loveless life of a Black

couple and a teenager who seducod and discarded the middle aged man but

never disclosed that he was her assassin. The psychological trauma of shifting

from the Sylvan world of the South to the arid cities of the North, the vacuum

left by a mother who abandoned her child, the search for roots and the

realization of true identity which di~wns in the process act as backdrops.

The term alienation has n~anifold implications. For about a century E------

(c.1840 to c.1940) it was a legal term denoting the transfer of ownership o r title

of a piece of property as well as the psychiatric concept denoting a quality of

mental derangement or insanity. 'The upheaval of society following the Second

World War brought in its wake evident disorientations in the Western World,

as a result of which, a set of new and different meanings began to appear.

..\ccording to the Fontana Diction~try of Modern Thought "Alienation" denotes:

"IAJ sense of estrangement from society, a feeling of powerlessness to effect

social change and of the depersonalization of the individual in a large and

bureaucratic society." To Mary Rodnar it is "The idea that something - a tie or

bond connecting man to himself, tcl others, to the community, to the technologies

and social institutions he has created is lost, missing or severed . . ." (Rodnar,

Mary 164). This sense of alienation leads to a sense of powerlessness,

meaninglessness, namelessness, isolation and self estrangement. The

existentialist philosophers have given great importance to alienation. Down the

age: f'i-re might have been some difference in definition, but this aspect of

huilliln existence has been an area of study for many psychologists and a source

of inspiration for many artists and writers. Irrespective of the time and place the

individual happens to be, the traurna of alienation does not change. The penal

&ode and criminologists agree that 'Solitary imprisonment' is more traumatic

than Capital Punishment. Man is basically a social being and the removal from

his fellow beings may bring about physiological and psychological

transformations. The obsewat~on of the existential philosopher F.H.

Heinemann is interesting. Heinem:~nn observes: "Alienation is a fact. There

exists a feeling of estrangement in modern man which has considerably

increased during the last hundred years. I t is connected with certain changes in

human society, with the agglomeration of millions of people in great cities, cut.

off from Kature, with the Industrial revolution and with the collectivizing trend

bound up with machine production" (Heinemann, F.H. 9). The common thread

that runs through all these definitions is the belief that a preceding unity and

harmony has given way to disunity and disharmony. I t can be surmised that /

alienation refers objectively to -- a dissociation, rupture or break between

human beings and their objects and familiar surroundings. Subjectively it is the

state of disequilibrium, distnrbancv, strangeness and anxiety. In societies torn

by strifles, nihilism, doubt and despair, its members a re alienated from the age

old bonds and a t times a re even set against themselves. Once alienated from the

world the very universe appeared as holding forth no consolation or meaning to I an existence which was -- solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. This is what

Albert Camus refers to in his work 'The Myth of Sisyphus'.

Camus says:

A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a

familiar world. But, on the other hand in a universe

suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien,

a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived

of the memory of a lost home o r the hope of a promised

land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and

his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity (Camus,

Albert 13).

Karl Marx's question in The Communist Manifesto also points to this

special condition of human existc:nce: Marx doubts: "Does it require deep

intuition to comprehend that maim's ideas, views and conceptions, in a word

man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material

existence, in his social relations anti in his social life?" (Marx, Karl).

The agony of alienation can be traced back to the primeval parents who - -

were driven out of the Garden of Eden. Thrown into a Universe with a feeling

of guilt and shame, they were resigned to the fact that their fate was self

incurred. Still Adam and Eve had an agonizing existence in spite of being in

each other's company. This show', the extent of turmoil created on human

psyche on being removed from familiar circumstances. Death fear also is in a

nay related to the fear of leaving the familiar circumstances and the morbid

fear of the unknown. Alienation to a certain extent is death. Society is a

miniature world in which individuals find consolation and reassurance. Erich

Fromm observes that: "Man is alone and he is related a t the same time. . . His

happiness depends on the solidarity he feels with his fellow men, with past and

future generations" (Erich, Fromn~; 1947, 52). Bereavement o r isolation from

his fellow beings for a considerable period brings about devastating effects in his

physical and psychic selves. The peculiar institution of slavery that flourished

from the seventeenth century brought thousands of African Negroes to the

cotton and other plantations of Arnerica. This slave traffic while enriching the

coffers of many of the southern planters left the negroes in this state of

disillusionment. Stanley Elkin says: "We may suppose that every African who

became a slave underwent an exper-ience whose crude psychic impact must have

been staggering and whose consequences superseded anything that had even

previously happened to him" (Elkins, Stanley 156). When the new world into

n hich the individual is cast into is 511ed with fearful and painful experiences the

trauma undergone is aggravated. Lt destroys his equilibrium and brings about a

'neurosis' in his personality. 'Leuro5is' according to Fromm's theory is

explained by J.A.C. Brown as: "is a personal non-socially patterned one

designed by the individual in order to explain his relationship to life" (Brown

J.A.C. 154). I t is with such a 'r~eurosis' that the descendants of the survivors of

Vliddle passage live and look a1 the world around them. Inevitably their vision is

grotesque, blurred and fragmented. Most of Toni Morrison's characters are

hapless victims of alienation Ms Morrison in her interview with Thomas LeClair

has stated: "If you come from Ai'rica, your name is gone. I t is particularly

problematic because it is not just your name but your family, your tribe. When

you die, how can you connect with your ancestors, if you have lost your name.

lhat 's a huge psychological scar" (LeClair, Thomas 375). In order to explain

the aftermath of alienation a close look a t some of her characters would help to

reveal the extent of the havoc created in their physical and emotional selves.

Eric Fromm's definition appears to comply while analyzing the alienation

experienced by Ms Morrison's characters. In Fromm's opinion:

By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which a

person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one

might say estranged from himself. He does not experience

himself as the center of his world as the creator of his own

acts . . . The alienated person is out of touch with himself

as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the

others, is experienced :IS things are experienced without

being related to oneself and the world outside, productively

(Fromm, Erich; 1966,ll) .

The Black women being doubly marginalized are the most severely hit by

this traumatic experience. Their itlienation is two fold-from the dominant

society and the phallocentric Black :.ociety. Many of the behavioral aberrations,

insanity and incongruity that a r e seen in Morrison's characters are the outcome

of undergoing this excruciating existence for years. The degree and extend of

these aberrations vary, depending upon the extent to which each had

internalized the dominant culture's atrocities. Some of them with emotional

support from their family o r Black neighborhood, o r an inherent interest in an

ideal or a r t form or an all absorbing passion seem to have escaped from this all

encompassing phenomena. The solidarity achieved by the strong relationship to

one's roots or with the other members of the society has gone a long way in

rescuing some of the characters in Morrison's novels from this excruciating

experience.

According to Frank Johnsort, "In its use as a general concept, scientific

term, popular expression and cultural motif, alienation has acquired a semantic

richness (and confusion) attained by few words of corresponding significance in

contemporary parlance" (Johnson, Frank 3). Its multifaceted nature has led

many authors to weave their works centering on this unique state of human

existence. Solitude is bliss but separation from the familiar circumstances is

painful,especially if it is unwilling and unasked for. In certain instances the

distancing need not necessarily be a physical separation, a n emotional exclusion

from the group o r society can be more agonizing than the physical

estrangement. Erich Fromm says:

By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which a

person experiences himself as an alien. He has become one

might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience

himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own

ac ts . . . . The alienated lperson is out of touch with himself

as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the

others, is experienced a!, things are experienced: without

being related to onc:self and the world outside,

productively" (Fromm, Exich; 1966, 1 I ) .

Modern science has proved that the environment not only meets our

material needs, but also provides recreation, and spiritual and creative

inspiration. Our interplay with the natural environment is of central

importance in the way we express ourselves through folklore, art, religion and

customs. Human cultures evolve w thin specific environments. Just as evolution

is a biological adaptation to the environments, culture is a social and behavioral

adaptation. Each culture has its own perceptions, beliefs and value systems

derived from its natural surroundings, which in turn govern its interactions

with the environment. These are usually sound in the context of that

environment. Plants and animals do not survive due to somatic reasons when

they are transierred to unsuitabie environments. i n the case of the higher beings

iike nlan the impact is psychosom:~tic which is so deeply ingrained that the

effects of such alienation are transferred to the succeeding generations.

Alienation as a universai phenomenon can be traced hack to the expulsion

of the primeval parents from the Garden of Eden, o r even before that the

condemnation of the rebellious angels which made them jealous of man.

Arcordrng to the Christian conccbpt all human beings are victims of this

predicament which the primeval parents incurred and liberation from this is

what man is still trying to find out. All the achievements, discoveries and

inventions of which man is now proud of are only random vantages in this quest

for liberation. The primal force which governs the quest of man is a liberation

and return to the native land. Bible proposes the concept of redemption through 'itis

the Son of God. According to Indian scriptures a merging with the supreme

consciousness, the "parahrahma' from which the "jeevathma" and the

"prapancha" have disintegrated. The sense of imperfection and a disturbing

thought of being out of place are said to be embedded in the mind of every

human berng. The longing to unltta with that from w h ~ c h we have descended or

to regain the blissful state front which we have distanced ourselves vary

according to the mental facultic:~ and the mundane circumstances of the

individuals. The war between the Semitic races for the Promised Land, which

has been drsturbrng West Asra for the past few decades is inherently a desire to

get away from the shackles of alienation. The history of mankind is embedded

with such struggles and conflicts, the root cause of which is the insecurity

experienced by people trying to reclaim their native lands from which they were

driven out or that which was robbell from them.

The case of Afro-Americans is unique as they are experiencing alienation

in a most agonizing form, as the) have to live a "double existence" with an

acquired American self and an inborn Black self. W.E.B. DuBois has expressed

this as: "one ever feels his nvoness - an American, a Negro, two souls, two

thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body whose

dogged strength alone keeps it front being torn as under" (DuBois, W.E.B. 110).

This dual existence become an e7,cruciating experience which affects human

behavior in different ways., a t times positive but mo5tly negative like

destructiveness, insanity and other forms of psychological imbalances. Eric

tiromm has stated that: "The understanding of man's psyche must be based on

the analysis of man's needs stemming from the conditions of his existence"

(Eric, Fromm; 1966, 20). The condition of the Afro-American is a painful state

of alienation which distorted his ' I~fe and being' to such an extent that the Afro-

American writers cannot help thetnselves repeatedly depicting it in their works

eloquently o r subtly. Norman Harris observes: "Racism in the universe of the

contemporary Afro-American novelists is an unchanging reality, much like the

sun: one must alternately protect against its burning rays and harness the

energies it projects. The exploralions of Reed, Morrison, Johnson and Others

seem an attempt to find ways of doing this . . . The Universe in the Afro-

American fiction suggests that Afro-Americans have an incredibly dense history

capable of assuaging whatever mental and physical distortions which

technological and political changes might bring" (Harris, Norman 12). Racism

which is a man-made phenomenon is the root cause of the alienation

experienced by the Afro-Americans. Racism is by no means justifiable and as

Herton has described, it is ". . . all of the learned behavior and learned emotions

on the part of a group of people towards another group whose physical

characteristics are dissimilar to the former group; behavior and emotions that

compel one group to . . . treat the other on the basis of its physical

characteristics alone, as if it did not belong to the human race" (Hernton,

Calvin. C ; 1965, 175). There is no moral justification for the superiority of the

races. It is transitory. Many times history was forced to acknowledge that

'might is right'. The superiority or the White men is the superiority bought by

their money and weapons. The different assaults that world has witnessed is a

reflection of this self-aggrandizement of the 'mighty'. But the most silent yet the

most painful is the assault on the Blacks. Their defeat was not an

acknowledgement of the greatness of their masters but a reflection of the

meekness of the Black man who refused to wake from his cozy slumber in the

crib of his ancient culture.

Strc All ancient cultures, tribes and races share autopian concept of life where

men and women are mutually contributing factors. The existence of one is

crucial and essential for the existence of the other. The ancient Chinese could

uot even think about a single god. To them even gods could not bear isolation so

the) a re always found in pairs. The ancient Indian myths refer to the union of

Siva and Shakthi as the progenitors of the universe and the energy flowing

through it.

f$mmm$im**

{The union of Siva [male] and Shakthi [female]. An embodiment of the merging

of male and female entities in its supreme form. Symbolic of creation and the

unity in diversity)

(Sri Shankara)

'The same is the case of the ancient Africans who had their innumerable

tribes with their unique tribal beliefs, lifestyle and customs which involve a

shared life and a true partnership. Guven Patton says: "Black people must go

back to the roots of African cu1tu'-e and they will find that the African family

acted as a unit with each member contributing productively. While the warrior

\lent hunting for food the mother :and the children would fight off invaders and

enemies; and while the mother tilled the earth, the father would tend the

children" (Patton, Guven; 1970, 147). I'atton's remark is well wrought. It

throws light to what is lost and al!,o points to the prospect of better days if it is

reclaimed. The home and hearth of the Blacks were not destroyed but they

were hauled out to unfriendly shores. So the alienation experienced by the Afro-

imericans become excruciating btiyond description.

Toni hlorrison like other Black women writers extols this idea through

her works. In order to escape this plight of alienation, to wipe out the traces of

the aftermath of estrangement,the Afro-Americans have to take a journey back

to their roots. A physical return to the native lands may be practically

inlpossible but it can be compensated by a return to the roots, by inculcating the

spirit of the indigenous Black men in their self and propagating the spirit of

kinship which is one of the meritorious aspects of Black neighborhood. They will

provide a sense of independent, integrated identity to the Afro Americans who

were mercilessly denied their "self' and "psyche" by the onslaught of an

accursed system called slavery

The persistent theme of the Black American writers both past and

present is a search for a niche in the flux of the affluent American society. As

Vlartin Luther King has remarked in his famous speech "I have a dream": "We

arc like islands of poverty atnidsr the ocean of material prosperity" (Luther,

,wartin). The material prosperity that engulfs them makes their existence

painful and distressing. It also impels in the Black man a sense of weakness and

worthlessness. The affluence that surrounds him sends him deeper down into

distress and despair. He internal~zes the dangerous concept that he is a non-

entity. The futility of struggling against the odds and the unattainable goals

makes this existence precarious. The Afro-American ends up in a desperate

~ e a r c h for foot holds. The shifting sands of Western culture and the White

society do not hold any promise o r assurance. He is on an eternal search for his

long lost identity. Arunima Ray comments on this persistent search as the

insistent theme in the works of Afro-American writers. She says: "This quest

for what James Baldwin's hero in Go Telllt on the Mountain. John Grimes, calls

"another life", and what one recctgnizes as a yearning for a "home" and a

"wholeness"-- the two needs so essential to the Blacks in America is, like Ralph

Ellison's Invisible Man, whose relentless effort is directed a t not merely specific

but generic, indicative of the yearning of the Black community as a whole" (Ray,

Arunima 59). It is the search of lillison's Invisible Man that is continued by

most of the characters of Toni Morrison. Ms. Morrison has commented in her

interview with Robert B. Stepto about this theme of quest which she terms as

the travelling Ulysses theme. She says:

The big scene is the travelling Ulysses scene, for Black men.

They are moving. Trains - you hear those men talk about

trains like they were their first lover - the names of the

trains, the times of the trains! And, boy, you know, they

spread their seed all over the world. They are really

moving! Perhaps it's because they don't have a land, they

don't have domination. You can trace that historically, and

one never knows what would have been the case if we'd

never been tampered with a t all. But that growing from

town to town o r place to place or looking out and over and

beyond and changing i ~ n d so on - that, it seems to me, is

one of the monumental themes in Black literature about

men (Stepto, B.Robert 391-92).

These Black men are searching for something which they will never come across

in the White American society wldch had robbed it from the Blacks to keep

them mute, docile and non-resistant. Ms. Morrison also shows the futility in

their wait for a messiah or a savior. They have to search within themselves,

collect the snapped strings and cormect themselves by the strong bonds of love,

care and concern which the Black c:ommunities provide in abundance. Here the

researcher is reminded of the lines from one of Kabir Das' Doha referring to the

musk deer which is always searching vainly in the grass for the source of the

sweet fragrance, ignorant of the fact that it is lying concealed in its body. Even

though it is in a divine perspective, the similarity is so striking.

{Man is continuously searching for the God who is within him, like the musk

deer that searches for the sweet scent in the grass, not realizing that it is

emanating from its body}

(Das, Kabir)

Ms. Morrison in an interview witlm Thomas Leclair says that she wrote for the

tribe and she calls "her people" peasants who have come to the city. This

transplantation to strange circumrtances has led to the conflict between the

values of (be tribes and the urban values. Ms. Morrison says:

I t ' s confusing, there has to be a mode to do what the music

did for Blacks, what we used to be able to do with each

other in private and in that civilization that existed

underneath the White civilization . . . M y work bears

witness and suggests who the outlaws were, who survived

under what circumstance^ and why, what was legal in the

community as opposed to what was outside it. A l l that is in

the fabric of the story in order to do what the music used to

do. The music kept us alive but i t s not enough any more.

M y people are being devoured (LeClair, Thomas 371).

I t is as a compensation for the Black music which helped the unfortunate negro

slaves to forget their agony for short spells that the Afro-Americans turned to

their music which later enchanted the world as blues and rag times. Toni

Morrison is providing an outlet for the pent up emotions of her people through

her works. She points out that it it : the lack of such an outlet that distorts even a

positive emotion l i ke love. For e.?;., Cholly Breedlove rapes his daughter i n an

attempt to express his love and conlcern for her.

Cholly saw her dimly ::nd could not tell what he saw or

what he felt. Then he became aware that he was

uncomfortable, next he felt the discomfort dissolve into

pleasure. The sequence of his enlotions was revulsion, guilt,

pity, then love. H i s revulsion was a reaction to her young,

helpless, hopeless presence. H e r back hunched that way;

her head to one side as though crouching from a permanent

and unrelieved blow. Why did she have to look so

whipped? She was a child - unburdened - why wasn't she

happy? The clear statement of her misery was an

accusation . . . Guilt ancl impotence rose in a bilious duet.

What could he do for her-ever? What give her? What say

to her? What could a burned-out Black man say to the

hunched back of his eleven-year-old daughter? (The Bluest

Eye 127)

I t i s the same flaw that is found in the reaction o f the Black community to the

dinner held at Baby Suggs' house, the excess o f every thing, the exuberance of

the happiness o f family reunion made them so indifferent as to prevent them /

from warning Baby Suggs about the approach of the School teacher and his

nephews. The narrator comments:

Now to take two bucket.$ o f Black berries and make ten,

may be twelve pies, to have turkey enough for the whole

town pretty near, new peas in September, fresh cream but

no cow, ice and sugar, b.atter bread, bread pudding, raised

bread, shortbread - i t made them mad! . . .

It made them furious, they swallowed baking soda, the

morning after, to calm the stomach violence caused by the

bounty, the reckless generosity on display at 124.

Whispered to each other in the yards about fat rats, doom

and uncalled for pride. 'The scent of their disapproval lay

heavy in the air (Beloved 169).

Extreme pain and suffering distorts the normal equilibrium of man and he

looses control over his faculties. The instances of insanity in people who had

harrowing experiences point to this fact. Toni Morrison's much acclaimed

character Belove$ is an example oi' one who had had very painful experiences

for a long time that she lost holcl of or forgot her mundane existence and

appears to fit more to the 'unaccounted and dismembered' millions of Africans

who paid adieu to their mortal exiotence, not able to bear the atrocities of the

White masters. Ms. Morrison has dedicated this book (Beloved) to those

unfortunate souls.

Alienation from one's kith and kin is even more excruciating. I t makes

the victim a rebepike Sula who is ,'a counter part to the Biblical Ishmael, her

hand against everyone, and everyone's hands against her" (McKay, Nellie 397).

Morrison has used her as an embodiment of evil forces and also to show the

extent of aberration created in the character and personality of a human being

as a result of alienation. Ms. Mor.rison comments o n i h t s character to Nellie

McKay: "She is a masculine chari~cter in that sense. She will do the kinds of

things that normally only men do, which is why she's so strange. She really

behaves like a man. She picks up a man, drops a man, the same way a man

picks up a woman, drops a woman. And that's her thing. She's masculine in

that sense. She's adventuresome, she trusts herself, she's not scared she really

ain't scared. And she is curious and will leave and try anything. So that quality

of masculinity and I mean this ill the pure sense in a woman a t that time is /"

outrage, total outrage (McKay, Nellie 392).

a Toni Morrison's characters reveal that the problems concerning Afro-

Americans are mainly due to the iuterference of an alien culture on their racial,

social and personal lives and imposing strange ideas, ideals and definitions

which even now they are diff~cu~lt to cope with. That is why Jadine has a

stronger claim to the status of orphan than Son. Dorothea Drummond Mbalia

remarks:

Morrison's most intricate exploration of the African petty

bourgeois is reserved for Jadine, . . . She is one of the ta r

babies of the novel, a creation of capitalist America. Her

behavioral patterns, dress, language associations, and

ideology are all those of ruling class and, as such,

demonstrate her hatred of Africa and all that is associated

with it. "To roam around Europe . . . following soccer

games' is her goal in life; her fiance is a wealthy European

Parisienne who will bring her wealth and unquestioned

status" (Tar Baby 77 1.

Doreatha Drummond continues on .ladine:

It is this attempt to bt, other than herself that causes

Jadine's insecurity throughout the novel. As a Europhiliac,

she feels threatened by African women who are unashamed

of their identity and culture and beautiful not simply

because they are, but also because they possess pride and

dignity in themselves (Wlbalia, Drummond, Doreatha 94-

95).

Ms Morrison has expressed her dislike in the interference of cultural

ideals,by depicting some of her women characters as victims of this cultural

acclimatisation. Sula the masochist. Jadine the af?luent model and Pauline who

is enslaved by the silver screen belles are examples of her characters, who in the

venture to evade the solidarity of tiheir race and society falls into the Erebes of

alienation. The repercussions that Sula meets with shows what awaits a woman

who sets aside standard definitions lof femininity, she meets with alienation more

from the Black society of Medallion which makes her agony more poignant. The

Black neighborhood exorcises her evil influence and refuses to turn up when she

is dead/ to wash her o r lay her down. This total expulsion from the Black

community makes Sula's physical death less painful. As for Jadine her

European education and Paris "haute couture" does not prevent her from being

terrified by the dreams in which strange Black women accuse her o r from being

apset/wIien a dark, dark African woman expresses her contempf by spitting at

her. Susan Willis comments. "As the individual whose cultural exile is the most

profound, Jadine is haunted by riaking visions, born out of guilt and fear"

(Willis, Susan 314). Pauline Breedlove is drawn deeper down into frustration by

the contrast she sees in the life depicted on the silver screen and her store front

house. According to the narrator: '.. . . she was never able after her education in

the movies to look a t a face and not assign it some category in the scale of

absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver

screen (The Bluest Eye 97). The failure and redress experienced by those

otherwise powerful heroines is due to their deliberate neglect of the links with

the primal and natural forces/which according to K.H. is essential for Black

women as 'female healers'.

Toni Morrison whose *'life spans the last two-thirds of a century which

has seen significant changes in civil rights for Black people in America and

wider public recognition of Africr~n. American women writers" (Peach, Linden - 2) has treated different types and aspects of alienation in her works. In the six

novels considered for this stud:y she deals with alienation experienced by

individuals (male and female) in the racially oppressed American society. The

victims of alienation -- whether individual alienation o r racial o r group

alienation bear the brunt of this excruciating experience in different forms.

Some of her men and women are excluded from both White and Black

communities. The effect of alienation irrespective of gender has created havoc '; \'

in th&hearts and minds and in some cases even\the physic of many of her ;

characters. She has also depicted the harrowing experiences of people who have

deliberately distanced themselves from the community in their quest for

material affluence or drawn by the dictates of the White masters whose

irresistible dominance makes them mute followers of the ideals and ideas

inflicted by them. For eg: Macon Ilead of Song of Solomon who thinks that his

money and the keys to the shacks he rent out a re proper compensations for an

unhappy marriage and the eternal hatred of his own blood. "Let me tell you

right now the one important thing you'll ever need to know: Own things. And

let the things you own own other things. Then you'll own yourself and other

people too. Starting Monday, I'm going to teach you how" (Song of Solomon 55)

is his advice to his son Milkman. He is so grumpy about his business and so

meticulous about collecting his rents that made the Blacks of the town grumble:

"A nigger in business is a terrible thing to see. A Terrible, terrible thing to see"

(Song ofSolomon 22). Sydney and Ondine Childs of Tar Baby consider their

status as butler and maid in the Villa of the candy magnet Valerine,superior to

that of the other Blacks of the islan(d. Doreatha Drummond remarks:

Not only do they embrace the same racist stereotypes as do

their exploiters but the Childses use the same negative

jargon to refer to people who look just like them!. The

poor African masses are niggers who steal; in contrast, the

Childses are Negroes rc:spectable Africans (Tar Baby 32,

87). It is a respectability that prevents them from seeing

themselves as a part of the African masses (Mbalia,

Drummond Doreatha 93).

The effect of dislocatiorl and disruption is found in the White characters

also. Mrs. Margaret Valerine, with all the material prosperity and l u x u ~

experiences alienation like the Blacks. Margaret for ever: ". . . longed for her

mother's trailer so far from Philadelphia and L'Arhr de la Croix but may be

not so far after all since the bedroom she had locked herself into was a high-

class duplication, minus the coziness, of the first" (Tar Baby 71). The impact of

alienation is so profound in her that she goes to the extent of maiming her little

son. The millionaire Valerian alsas, in spite of being White and rich is caught in

the grip of agonizing alienation which forced him to take refuge on the

Caribbean island. But to Valerine it was far better than his home town which

grows strange to him as he grows old. The strangeness was so bewildering that

he preferred the alien Caribbean island which to his wife was "a boiling

graveyard" (Tar Baby 72). But V:alerine preferred it to his home town with its:

"Sidewalks and thorough fare. . . populated by people he did not know, shops.

. . run by keepers who did not know him. . ." (Tar Baby 122). Through these

characters Toni Morrison shows that alienation is not exclusively a racial

experience, it is not restricted to the color of the skin or gender of the victim. I t

is an agonizing state which benumbs the victimgand makes them easily accessible

"dumping grounds" and "scapegoats" of the dominant forces. The extent to

which her characters are affected by alienation varies and is decided by various

factors. But the greater their distance from their native culture and society the

more severe is the agony experienced. Ms. Morrison has also depicted some

characters, mainly women who have overcome this excruciating experience.

They have achieved this mainly thoFh -- the bond that they retained with their 7

roots, their link to their ancestors, their beliefs, myths, folklore and even their

language which is transplanted into the alien land not in syntax o r semantics but

in its articulation. Their music i.e., the blues also have a significant part to play

in the rescue of these few, who like the Black women writers 4ave emerged

victorious in their struggle with the White American society. Ogunyeme,

Chikwenye Okonjo has hailed the blues for the decisive role it played in the life

and rescue of the Afro Americ:ans, she has pointed out that m: "Black

American female writers share with Black males the heritage of the blues, whose

spiritual dynamics ensure equilibrium in a turbulent world perhaps as

Stephen Henderson points out, there is a connection between the blues and the

capacity to experience hope. The blues have had a tremendous impact on the

Afro-American womanist novel, and in contrast to feminist novels, most Afro-

'/ American womanist novels, culture oriented as they are abound in hope

(Okonjo, Chikwenye Ogunyemi; 1985,72).

An interesting aspect of Toni Morrison's novels i s that she shows the

impact of alienation not only on men and women but towns, localities,

landscapes and for that matter even streets. The "nigger joke" about the Black

village of Bottom in Sula reveals hl3w the Whites had set apart certain areas of

the country side, how they have demarcated their terrain from the Black man's

dwellings. The Not Doctor Street which should normally be named after the

f i r s t Black doctor but was purposc:fully renamed by the Whites in an effort to

rub away all the traces of Black ingenuity and solidarity. Medallion and the wild

Caribbean island Isle des Chevaliers where hundred blind horsemen race in the

woods which s t i l l harbor the champion daisy trees, are set apart for the Blacks

to stagger i n search o f an identity which was long lost but not completely erased

from the racial consciousness. The house 124 which was considered to be: "full

of a baby's venom" are examples of the exclusion of inanimate things by their

relevance to the Black lives of the country.

The exclusion of the Black commuuities referred to as 'neighborhoods', a

very vibrant aspect of the Afro-Arnerican life, led the Afro-American's to bond

more strongly and to develop filial relationships and to imbibe the inherent

qualities which were still retained within the bold and powerful psyche of many

o f them. In Morrison's works these characters are presented as 'beacons' in the

engulfing ocean of racial deprivations. It is interesting to note that most of these

characters a re women, the women not in the prime of their lives but those who

have endured and succeeded in overcoming the onslaughts of brutality and

animosity, whose lives: "Were synthesized in their eyes - a puree of tragedy and

humor, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy" (The Bluest Eye 109). The

failure and redress experienced by these otherwise powerful heroines due to

their age and experience have left them "Suspended between the nastiness of life

and the meanness of the dead . . ." (Beloved 4). The others like Jadine, Sula,

Pecola etc a re engulfed by the oppressive forces due to their inability to attach

themselves to the links that might have helped them to associate with the primal

and natural forces which according to Karla Holloway is necessary to Black

women as female healers. She remarks: "Black women merge mystery and

madness in a way that deepens and gives roots to their lives, their souls. And this

depth, resonance, darkness, is thc crux of what Jadine never has and Pecola is

denied" (Holloway Karla 152).

The agony of alienation reduces the Blacks into objects facilitating their

White masters -- to rent them, loan them, buy them, store them, mortgage them,

steal them o r seize them as commodities. As Ms. Morrison says in Beloved:

"Anybody Baby Suggs know, let alone loved, who hadn't run off o r been

hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up,

mortgaged, won, stolen or seized (Beloved 23). This exposes the helplessness of

the Blacks who were hapless victims of an inhuman system which reduced

human be;* to a state lower than that of animals. The White masters seldom

realized f.hat in the blackbodies there was a mind which could think and a soul

that cou~ld feel. These excruciating experiences benumbed the Blacks but did not

extirigu;sh the flame of remorse and regret These are expressed in different

waJs by different characters in Toni Morrison's fictional world. She has used

then1 !b extol the fact that human spirit is beyond the reach of the instruments

o f tortu re.

A nuther interesting aspect of Ms. Morrison's novels is that it is the

'resperteble negroes' who are more alienated than the ordinary niggers. The

repulsion of Geraldine on seeing Pecola in her house and Macon Dead's

aversion to the Black tenants, the (objection raised by the Childs in retaining Son

in the Villa reflect their fear of their Black selves which threaten to come out of

the mask of Anglophilia. They a r e quick, and loud in expressing their

disapproval, this expose their anguish in losing the self-imposed superiority

which they flaunted before the 'Ic~ud, dirty, niggers'. The importance they gave

to the things they owned, their fear a t the prospect of being thrown outdoors,

are signs of their sense of hollow~less. These unhampered selves, drifting in the

troubled waters of an alien society, cling desperately to any weak straw for

security. The narrator in The Bluest Eye comments:

Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us

a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm possession

of a yard a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied Black people

spent all their energies, all their love, on their nests. Like

frenzied, desperate bird:$, they over decorated everything;

fussed and fidgeted over their hard-won homes; canned,

jellied, and preserved all summer to fill the cupboards and

shelves; they painted, picked, and poked a t every corner of

their houses. And therte houses loomed like hot house

sunflowers among the rows of weeds that were the rented

houses (The Bluest Eye 12).

This excessive sense of ownership shows how much they desire to belong to a

solid, stable place. The sense of helonging to a little niche went a long way in

erasing the aftermath of alienation. When human company was denied they

turned to inanimate objects. Something was better than nothing, some

flickering s tar in the engulfing gloom to lead the way. The Afro-Americans

desperately clutched anything that came their wag in the hope of tiding over

the waves of oppression and segregation. Ms. Morrison has portrayed this

aspect of Afro-American personality in almost all her works.

After having this birds' eye view of the effect of alienation depicted in

Toni Morrison's works the researcher makes a closer observation of Morrison's

characters. Preference is given to the vanquished o r defeated who form the main

chunk of her fictional charactel-s. They are "marginal (liminal) personalities

who lack social, spiritual, psycbolo~:ical, historical, geographical o r genealogical

place o r "centre". Their betwixt - and betweenness necessarily involve them in a

quest for personal and o r commu~nal wholeness and fulfilment" (Wilfred, D

Samuels & Weems Hudson Clenorrr (ij. Following these vanquished souls come

the dynamic Blacks, the tussling sp~r i t s of Toni Morrison, making an attempt to

efface the traces of the aftermath of alienation. They are characters undergoing

transition "coming to grips with their search for selfhood." After the defeated

and the transitory come the ~ictorious, those who tower over others,

undisturbed by the surrounding gloom and chaos. They are safe and secure with

their realization of self and the sewe of brotherhood which extends from human

beings to nature and even to inanimate objects. They are those who have

mastered the a r t of "flying withou~ ever leaving the ground" (Song of Solomon,

340). Morrison highlights these characters to show that even an agonizing

experience like alienation can be overcome. I t is a hell fire to those who are

maimed in spirit and mind, hut those who have a "self' realized through

continuous and heroic efforts can rise out of it like Phoenix and declare: "there

i~ a way out".

Even though Ms. Morrison has made use of this theme (agony of

alienation) exhaustively in her works she does not consider it as a perpetual

existence. It is a phase through which some generations of Afro-Americans had

to go through due to the very special conditions related to the system of slavery

in which the owners used a lot of tactics to convince the slaves that "their

situation was hopeless". According; to Trudier Harris:

These mind control~.ng tactics took a variety of forms,

beginning with the defitruction of family and linguistic

groups in the assirning of slaves to plantations in the New

World. The psychologic:al damage attendant upon realizing

that one was separated from blood relatives and kins

people, essentially alone in the world, worked to the benefit

of the slave holder and was designed to teach dependency

in the slave. At the least sign of uppityness, slaveholders

could further "break" slaves with a series of barbaric

punishments, including whipping, branding a letter on the

face or back, cropping rln ear o r a finger confining them in

bits, o r setting them "down the river", which had

connotations of horror that far outstripped any actual

physical punishment. 4.11 of these tactics were every day

reminders to slaves that the masters possessed their very

minds and memories - had indeed erased if not destroyed

their histories - even as they owned their bodies (Harris,

Trudier 330).

As a committed writer Ms. Morrison does not want to leave her

characters in eternal pain and peril. That is why she has also shown some hide

outs, some safe holds to get away from this mortifying existence, when she

exposed the untold miseries and siufferings of the victims of alienation. Any

movement will have an alleviating cbffect if it is from a problem to its solution.

This researcher is therefore followir~g a similar method by dealing first with the

defeated characters and then moving to those struggling to rise and then paying

tribute to those who bear the palm and ha& looked on tempests. They have a

message to posterity which they share with Ms. Morrison. Toni Morrison has

described them as not "just parents. . . but timeless people whose relationships

to the characters are benevolent, instructive and protective, . . . (and who)

provide a certain kind of wisdom" ('McKay, Nellie 2).