Collective Trauma, Conditioned Identities, and the Struggle to Healing and Reconciliation in Toni Morrison`S Song of Solomon

Abstract

As an outstanding African-American author who has got fame for her tragic novel, Toni Morrison is well-known for her depiction of black experiences as slaves. She is an expert in portraying characters who are dealing with the after-effect of their ancestral African-American traumas. Morrison`s community is weighed down by the heavy burden of rejection, oppression, racism, and white dominance, so they are burdened with a wounded psyche and body, therefore experiencing painful memories of their past. This paper focuses on Morrison`s one of the major novels, Song of Solomon which highlights traumatic events that the African American community is faced with. This paper aims to study the collective trauma of these black characters who struggle with major repressive pressures within trauma theory; it further intends to analyze how this trauma condition`s the characters` life and focus on their difficulty dealing with the problems. Also, it intends to deal with the issue of recovery and reconciliation among these black communities, whether they could pass the stages of recovery or rather are conditioned by the heavyweight of their trauma.