• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.813-838
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• 2011

Toni Morrison's ninth novel A Mercy delves into the colonial American history of the seventeenth century when Europeans began to migrate to the New World and when the first slaves were brought to Virginia. Morrison presents a diverse group of people such as white Europeans, an American Indian, a free black man, indentured servants, and slaves from Africa in order to explore the subjects of ownership, freedom and racism. She emphasizes the fact that most of the Europeans who came to America in the early seventeenth century were the people who were thrown out from the society such as felons, prostitutes, servants and children. By portraying how these castaways tried to settle in a new environment surrounded by unknown dangers and challenges, Morrison demystifies and reconstructs the myth of the birth of America as a nation state. In continuation of Morrison's writings about love and the betrayal of love, her novel A Mercy explores the subjects of trauma, memory and subjectivity by choosing the topic of motherly love and its betrayal which she dealt with poignantly in Beloved. The female protagonist, Florens, is given away by her mother in partial payment of debt incurred by the owner of Florens's mother. The traumatic memory of Florens's separation from her mother shapes Florence's character. She has to revisit the site of the original traumatic experiences of being given up by her mother in order to reconstruct her fragmented memory and past. The recurring dream of the traumatic incident that takes hold of Florens can be explained by the trauma theory of Freud, Cathy Caruth, Suzette Henke, and Judith Herman. The paper explores the self journey of Florens in which she faces the traumatic past and comprehends its meaning which enables her to construct her subjectivity by understanding the true meaning of being free and of owning oneself. In particular, it demonstrates how the process of writing a confession, a story about one's history, enables one to reclaim the traumatic experience and to locate it in the narrative memory.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.167-187
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• 2005

This paper tries to follow Toni Morrison's postcolonial courses in her novels. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison examines the situation in which the white's values are the standard for the whole society through two little black girls, Pecola and Claudia. In Song of Solomon she recommends emulating Pilate's love and good attitude towards tradition to shape a positive identity for Afro-Americans, which Milkman comes to accept. In Tar Baby, Morrison suggests that Son's and Jadine's ideas, traditional and modern, should be combined. In Beloved, Morrison illustrates one of the ways in which all blacks can escape from their own trauma through Sethe's process of finding her self-worth. In Paradise Morrison shows that the real de-colonial way to overcome the effects of colonization is to create a new paradigm in which everyone is respected regardless of race. In her works, Morrison insists that by remembering and regretting slavery in America, people can overcome its aftereffects and trauma. Racial oppression still exists today, so Morrison will continue her beautiful, powerful and eye-opening work.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.31-63
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• 2018

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the attitudes and practices of life demanded for authentic existence in adversity, focusing on Toni Morrison's Home which was published in 2012. Home portrays the journey of Frank Money, an African-American veteran of the Korean War who strives to extricate his sister Cee from inhumane violence. Through this work, Morrison criticizes prevalent racism in the 1950s which is regarded as a time of affluence and peace through this sibling's agony. In this paper, firstly I attempt to examine the aspects of racism which Frank and Cee face and their distorted survival strategies. Secondly I try to find the right direction of brother and sister relationship based on Frank and Cee who are compared to Hansel and Gretel. Thirdly I try to point out the importance of self-reflection required for the healing process of Frank and Cee who overcome adversity and restore their identity with the help of Samaritans. And I investigate the possibility of ethical practice going beyond my family to strangers.