Toni Cade Bambara

The past often comes back to "haunt" the present, sometimes more literally than others. In Toni Morrison's Beloved an infant ghost haunts her mother in order to be closer to her, with the underlying theme focusing largely on slavery and its effects. Beloved, the infant ghost, is constantly yearning for her mother’s love and attention, and once she returns to 124 fully grown, she becomes increasingly present in Sethe's life and stirs up some old memories. Throughout the novel, Sethe and Beloved's…

Set in the 1940’s, Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eye” is a tale of Pecola, a young Negro girl shunned by society for being ugly due to her skin colour and appearance. Morrison explores life in America during the late 60s and early 70s in which American culture was influenced predominantly by the white race. Using a creative approach, Toni Morrison explores the white ideal that the Negro population strives to attain to shed light on an arguably different kind of racism. Through the use of…

Beloved and Pearl, the two spirit-like characters of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, share one important theme for the main characters of Sethe and Hester. They are both people that are a consequence of an unfortunate event, that of adultery and premature death, that serve as a sign of a priority that Hester and sethe must take care of. For Beloved, Sethe's priority is to begin to stop denying the past and facing it and for Hester, Pearl serves as reminder…

Once again, Salinger wasn’t oblivious to the meanings behind each character’s name. In fact, symbolism plays a part in the character Sybil Carpenter. “Sybil, bright with innocence but already tarnishing, symbolizes for Seymour the human condition: like the sibyls of old, she is the unconscious oracle through whom the prophecy is revealed, the instrument of truth” (Lane). A sibyl is defined as “a woman in ancient times supposed to utter the oracles and prophecies of a god” (“sibyl”). It is…

In Part Two of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, we witness Milkman’s journey into maturity and responsibility as he learns who he is. Through his exploration of family history, he begins to find his place in a community and in turn becomes a more mature and caring adult. Milkman first journeys to Danville in order to find the gold from the cave, which he believes will change his life and allow him to live independently, however, his journey quickly turns into a quest for self-knowledge and…

Staying Alive and Surviving the Khmer Rouge: The Important Emotion of Determination in First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung This study will define the important role of determination in the survival skills of a young Cambodian girl in the book First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung. This book defines the horrific experiences of a girl named Loung Ung in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took control of the government in the mid-1970s. Ung (2006) describes the determination that was needed to…

Toni Morrison is a black African-American novelist of 20th C whose novels show and record a brief history of African-Americans of the early times of the 19thC. She became the first African-American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Toni Morrison shows us the troublesome circumstances within which the slaves were forced to live, the dark aspects of humanity, and the destructions that are delivered to their lives through her novels. She has attempted to show the past of slavery,…

Toni Morrison is known for using vastly descriptive details throughout her writing, she does this to make descriptive comparisons in order for the reader to connect with her work. In The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison uses description to make comparisons about beauty. In Recitatif Morrison uses details to describe Twyla and Roberta’s life. She uses detail to portray to her readers the hardship and struggles each and everyone of her characters face throughout the story. This use of description draws…

The past haunts, the future taunts. Unwilling to let go of the horrors of then, former slave, Seth has dragged the weight of her past with her all through her life, experiencing things unimaginable to us. In her attempts to let go and love we see things inside characters that have not yet been discovered. A tin tobacco box, rusted shut, enclosing something precious, something sacred. Rested deep within, it traps the feelings and memories from long ago back to a time of slavery. This rusted…

In the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison, a former slave, Sethe is pushed to her limits and she uncovers the true identity of being a mother. Sethe decides on killing one of her daughter's, Beloved, to show a sign of protection and not wanting her child to live in a world where slavery occurs. Beloved’s reappearance affects Denver, Sethe, and Paul D both in a positive and negative way. Denver had always known she had a sister and she wanted to protect her from any harm coming her way. Sethe on the…