Context: Narratology

Morrison is known for her distinctive narrative style. Narratology, which is the study of the ways in which "narrative structures our perception of both cultural artifacts and the world around us", can be helpful in interpreting Morrison's work. Because "our ordering of time and space in narrative forms constitutes one of the primary ways we construct meaning in general", narratology is a developed study with influential theorists and concepts.

Peter Brooks is one theorist who promotes the theme of "plotting" in narrative works. In contrast with narratologists who take a "structuralist" or "static" approach, Brooks notes the "temporal dynamics that shape narratives in our reading of them, the play of desire in time that makes us turn pages and strive toward narrative ends". He also sees narrative plot as "the motor forces that drive the text forward, the desires that connect narrative ends and beginnings, and make of the textual middle a highly charged field of force" and looks for "the internal logic of the discourse of mortality" within.

Other narratology theorists, such as Roland Barthes, believe that all narratives are comprised of five codes, which each individual work "weaves" together in unique ways. The five codes include the "hermeneutic", the "proairetic", the "semantic", the "symbolic", and the "cultural". The first of these (hermeneutic) describes techniques that the author uses to withhold information or explanation, invoking questions in the reader. Examples of this include "snares" (deliberate evasions of the truth), "equivocations" (mixtures of truth and snare), "partial answers," "suspended answers," and "jammings" (acknowledgments of insolubility). These devices serve to "frustrate the early revelation of truths" and are evident in Morrison's Love. Proairetic code also relates to creating suspense, however in this case it is done much more simply in the form of action. Any event or action that moves the story on is proairetic. Semantic code involves symbolism and connotation, which Morrison often invokes as she says one thing and suggests quite another. Symbolic code is very similar to semantic, but it is helpful to think of it as "a "deeper" structural principle that organizes semantic meanings, usually by way of antitheses or by way of mediations". Lastly, cultural code, which may be most prevalent in Love, describes shared knowledge and experiences of a particular group. As Morrison's novel explores the reactions of a specific group to the Civil Rights movement, she invokes cultural code.

These are but a few ideas from narratology. For more information (which can be very helpful in interpreting Morrison), visit: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/

Context: In Morrison's Own Words

In an article from a Princeton University publication, Morrison describes the influence of the Civil Rights Movement and other inspirations for Love. "I was always interested in efforts people make to thrive, to survive and to relate to one another," she says. Of the Civil Rights Movement in particular, she notes: "Even though I describe all of this as the paramount thing, it isn't. That is the background story. The people, the characters, are consequences of other people's actions as well as their own history." As such, the novel was meant to investigate African American culture before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement.

Morrison calls love a "mediating factor" in her novel, and says that love "eludes or drives or confuses or even destroys and, sometimes, enables the characters. Equally important, it is indeed the most empty, clichéd word in the language besides 'nice.' At the same time, it is the most powerful of human emotions and one of the few things that distinguishes us from other kinds of life on earth – the ability to love something or even search for love."

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/03/q4/1022-morrison.htm

The Best Reviews Review

Reading Pulitzer and Nobel prize- winner, Toni Morrison's most recent novel, LOVE, was like trying to put together a giant jigsaw puzzle. You never know where you are going to find the next piece, and when you do find it, how will it fit in. Sometimes, however, the pieces are not exactly what you had expected. Somewhat like having your eyes out of focus and not quite sure as to what you are seeing.

In fact, as we discover, some of the raw material of the story turns out to be quite disturbing, as they allude to such acts as child molestation, pedophilia, statutory rape, kinky sex, and whatever else Morrison can throw in.

To read the complete review go to: http://thebestreviews.com/review17623

New York Times Review

Although galleys of Toni Morrison's ''Love'' herald it as a ''major new novel,'' the book is in fact one of her slighter efforts. Certainly it is more engaging than ''Paradise,'' her flatfooted and highly schematic 1998 novel, but at the same time it lacks the magic and mythic ambition of her 1987 masterpiece, ''Beloved,'' and the bravura blending of the ordinary and the fablelike that distinguished her earlier fiction. Indeed, much of ''Love'' reads like an awkward retread of ''Sula'' and ''Tar Baby'' combined: once again, we are given a story about the long relationship of two women who have known each other since childhood; once again, we are given a story about a dysfunctional family living in what was once a seeming paradise. All of Ms. Morrison's perennial themes are here: lost innocence and the hold that time past exerts over time present; the sufferings sustained by black women at the hands of black men; the fallout that social change and changing attitudes toward race can have on a small community; the possibility of redemption, if past grievances and hurts can somehow be left behind. But while there are some beautifully observed passages in this book, where the author's distinctive style (forged into something new from such disparate influences as Faulkner, Ellison, Woolf and García Márquez) takes over, the story as a whole reads like a gothic soap opera, peopled by scheming, bitter women and selfish, predatory men: women engaged in cartoon-violent catfights; men catting around and going to cathouses.

…In Ms. Morrison's finest work, these same issues are dramatized with hallucinatory clarity and power. In this haphazard novel, they all too often sit there inertly on the page, like cumbersome subtitles to her characters' stories.

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI Published: October 31, 2003

Find the complete article at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7D91430F932A05753C1A9659C8B63&scp=1&sq=toni+morrison+love&st=nyt

Amazon.com Review

The first page of Toni Morrison's novel Love is a soft introduction to a narrator who pulls you in with her version of a tale of the ocean-side community of Up Beach, a once popular ocean resort. Morrison introduces an enclave of people who react to one man--Bill Cosey--and to each other as they tell of his affect on generations of characters living in the seaside community.

One clear truth here, told time and again, is how folks love and hate each other and the myriad ways it's manifested; these versions of humanity are seen in almost every line. Monsters and ghosts creep into young girls' dreams and around corners and then return to staid ladies' lives as they age and remember friendships and cold battles.

Men and women--Heed, Romen, Junior, Christine, Celestial, and the rest of Morrison's cast--cry and sing out their weaknesses and strengths in rotating perspectives. Sandler, a Cosey employee, is a brilliant agent of Morrison's descriptions of human behavior, "Then, in a sudden shift of subject that children and heavy drinkers enjoy, 'My son, Billy was about your age. When he died, I mean.'" And Romen is allowed to play hero by saving a young girl from a brutal gang rape, while at the same time, he battles disgust like no superhuman would be caught dead feeling.

Though slim in pages, Morrison constructs Love with a precision and elegance that shows her characters' flaws and fears with brutal accuracy. Love may be less complex than others in the grand Morrison oeuvre, but not because Morrison performs literary hand-holding. Readers will experience in this smooth, sharp-eyed gem another instance of the Toni Morrison craftsmanship: she enters your mind, hangs a tale or two there, and leaves just as quietly as she came. --E. Brooke Gilbert --

Read the complete review at: http://www.amazon.com/Love-TONI-MORRISON/dp/B0007IN2W8/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205720909&sr=1-1

Geneaology

Thanks to Dr. Olmsted for creating a genealogy for the characters. It is posted below. “m.” means “married” and > refers to the children as a result of the relationship.

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W. Cosey m. Julia > Billy Boy m. May > Christine

m. Heed the Night (lover Knox)


Christine m. Ernie (soldier WWII); Fruit; Dr. Rio


Sandler m. Vida > Romen (lover Jr.)

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Genre: Postmodernism

Postmodernism Refresher

Postmodernism was a direct reaction to the Modernist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, especially the modernist conventions such as all-encompassing theories and the disparity between "high culture" and common life. It was inspired by the "disillusioned" fall out from World War II. Generally, postmodernism in art, literature, scholarship, and other mediums is characterized by the lack of a central hierarchical structure. Postmoderinism may also embody all or some of the following qualities (adapted from http://www.brocku.ca/english/ courses/2F55/post-mod-attrib.html):

- struggle in a world of consumerism, in which so many things are available to be collected and obsessed over and simulation and representation have taken the place of actual experience (could this relate to the eventual closure of Cosey's hotel?)

- a sense of fragmentation and discontinuity, and reality as a pastiche rather than a weave (Love's multiple and sometimes confusing voices)

- the idea of society, history, and the self as culturally constructed rather than actual

- pushing societal norms and mores, even to the point of dishonoring taboos (example from Love is and old man marrying an eleven year old child)

- "the use of paradox, of undercutting, of radical shifts, in order to undercut any legitimization of reality, subject, ontological ground"

- the importance of rhetoric, words and symbols that may or may not have actual meaning and value

- "a greater emphasis on the body, on the human as incarnate, as physical beings in a physical world" which results in " an emphasis on chance and contingency as fundamental conditions of our being

- reconsideration for modernism's disregard of history (history plays such an important role in Love)

Check out the following article for more information on the postmodernism aspects of Morrison's work. It's long, but talks about Oprah's influence on audience's reactions to Morrison's novels. So interesting : http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-77828276.html