The Racial War In Paradise From Biblical Archetype Criticism

Toni Morrison is the only African American women writer who wins the Nobel Prize for literature. Toni Morrison brings great influences to the African American women literature. Paradise tells the stories that a group of black people move west to create their own Paradise, an all-black community because of racial discrimination from the whites. At first, the black town has been prosperous, as time passes, it declines in the end. Much worse, there is a massacre of the Convent women in the town. Toni Morrison’s novels which particularly emphasizing black women’s experience in an unjust society are mainly related with black American experiences in an unjust society. Since it was published in1998, it has received widespread reviews from critics both at home and at abroad. However, none of them has reviewed the book from the perspective of the biblical archetype. Therefore, this paper focuses on analyzing biblical archetypal characters, biblical archetypal situation and biblical archetypal images to conclude that racial prejudice in American history results in the black peoples’ isolation and exclusion, and even leads to separation with the black community. Paradise reveals that women, especially black women, are heavily oppressed in the patriarchal community. It is hope that the application of archetypes can help us better understand the profundity and the rich connotations of the novel.