The Role of Family and Society in the Development or the Destruction of African American Children’s Selfhood in Toni Morrison’s selected Novels.

Abstract

Through fiction, Morrison projects the history of the African Americans and their everlasting struggle to reach their authentic selfhood. This dissertation sheds light on the experience of African American children’s journey to reach selfhood. Morrison’s three novels, A Mercy, Beloved, and The Bluest Eye, present the history of African American struggles in America. From the first seeds of racism in A Mercy and, through Civil War in Beloved to Civil Rights Movements in The Bluest Eye, the changing and challenging societies and parents’ reactions influence the Children’s attempt to reach their self-accommodation into family and society. African American children are vulnerable within their own home and society. Thus, this dissertation is devoted to the influence of the society, the mother, and the father in the development or destruction of African American children’s selfhood. Chapter one projects the influence of the struggling American and the African American society on children from the new world (America) to the modern America. Chapter two is devoted to the influence of the mother. Mothers are always present for their children, yet their presence takes the form of fatal love in A Mercy, thick love in Beloved, and abandon love in The Bluest Eye. The third chapter is devoted to the role of the father in the children’s lives: The absent father in A Mercy, the invisible father in Beloved, and the destructive father in The Bluest Eye.