The Bluest Eye And Sula, As Bildungsroman Developed By Toni Morrison

From many critics'viewpoint, Toni Morrison's first novel The Bluest Eye does not include the motif of"leaving home in quest of the self"; in her second novel Sula, the heroine Sula fails in her course of growth with loss of her identity. The two heroines terminate their course of growth either in insanity or death. Both of them fail to find the genuine self in their arduous quests. For the reasons above, a few literary critics do not consider them to be traditional bildungsromane. By carefully reading them and surveying related theories, we can find that on the one hand, they match in part the general definition of European traditional bildungsroman supported by Buckley, but on the other hand, the female African American adolescents'quest for the self in their course of growth developed the traditional connotation of bildungsroman by enriching and verifying it.Not conforming to the traditional male-centered or white-centered bildungsroman, Toni Morrison presents readers with sufferings of female African American adolescents'growth. In her novels, the black female's sufferings in their courses of self-quest amplifies the traditional form of bildungsroman. Morrison does contribute a lot to the development of bildungsroman as a genre. The author of the paper intends to achieve three purposes in writing the paper: Firstly, it provides insights into the development of female African American adolescents in the 20th century; secondly, it promotes the study of the present female African American adolescents by focusing on the special group of people in the two novels; lastly, after a study of the female African American's growth, It calls for concern for adolescents in other American ethnic groups.