토니 모리슨의 소설에 나타난 생명의식

Abstract

The Living Soul in Toni Morrison’s NovelsMyung-su KongThis paper aims at analyzing the living soul of the African Americans based on Toni Morrison’s novels. The African’s cyclical concept of time perceives death as a significant phase in a movement that includes birth, life, death, and rebirth. Morrison weaves this cosmological view into the African value of mothering, which is found in African Americans’ lives to assure the continuity of the clan through the birth and nurture of the children. Morrison’s living soul is implicit in the reciprocity that exists between the living and the living dead. This archetypal living soul flows in Eva’s and Sethe’s nurturing spirits that destroy Plum and Beloved to give them new lives. Their children are dead in body, but not in spirit, if they are remembered by the surviving members of their family. The mothers’ major role is to give their children something potential to survive with. Accordingly, being independent, adventurous, inquisitive, and strong-willed, Sula represents the creative energy of life immanent in African Americans. Realizing his genealogy related with Lincoln’s Heaven and the Macon Deads, Milkman understands the context of the traditional African culture which embraces the living and the living dead. Ultimately, in Morrison’s novels, the African circular cosmology reinforces the survival power maintaining the blackness in the midst of a linear white culture.