Genre Analysis Of Song Of Solomon As An Initiation Story

Song of Solomon is the third novel of famous African-American author Toni Morrison, published in 1977. In 1978, the novel won the National Book Critics Award and the Letters Award. From the very beginning, this novel received popularity from both critics and readers. Due to Morrison's special identity, a black woman writer, many critics focus their attention on white domination and oppression and attempt to re-establish black tradition as an opposition to the dominant western one. Most of the criticism concentrates on the following topics: significance of naming, orality, folklore and folk tradition. However, this novel has never been analyzed from the angle of the specific literary genre, Initiation Story systematically.This thesis intends to explore how the novel manages to use Initiation Story to show the growing process of the hero and analyze it according to the general features of Initiation Story. This thesis will be divided into five parts:Introduction:This section gives a brief introduction of the author's life and works, the novel's main plots and current research status.Chapter One:Initiation Story:a Literary Genre. This section concentrates on the origin and development of the Initiation Story and analyzes the main characteristics of this genre.Chapter Two:Song of Solomon, a Typical Initiation Story. This Chapter mainly explores how the author presents the difficult initiation process of a black young man and defines the novel Song of Solomon as an initiation story by looking at the features of initiation story in contents and structure.Chapter Three:Growth of Black People, Peculiarity of Song of Solomon. This chapter mainly explores the peculiarity of black male's initiation from the perspective of conflicts between two cultures.It also points out that the novel Song of Solomon is not only a typical initiation story but also has its own peculiarity.Conclusion:This part summarizes this thesis in terms of its successful manipulation of the literary genre----Initiation Story and its significance in the field of literary criticism. Through the depiction of Milkman's initiation process, Morrison points out a new way for African Americans-----root in American society, comprehend black history and inherit traditional culture.