earticle

영어

This study aims to discuss Toni Morrison’s characters Soaphead Church, Baby Suggs, and Consolata Sosa from the perspective of being African priests as healers. Morrison introduces us to the shortcomings of the Western model of God, namely the problem of how a supposedly omnipotent and loving God can allow the existence of evil and suffering. She then introduces us to African priests whose religious backgrounds are rooted in the traditional African religions, Voodoo and Candomblé which are inextricably linked to African religiosity. Her priests, who are subversive to the Christian taboos, are healers, diviners, spiritual communicators, and herbalists who regard evil as the fourth face of God and cross the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual world. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison features Soaphead Church as a priest-healer who eases Pecola Breedlove of pain by driving her to the border between reality and a reality-induced fantasy. In Beloved, she features Baby Suggs as a priest-healer who encourages African Americans to value their own racial selves and eases them of their suffering from slavery. In Paradise, she features Consolata as a priest and spiritual healer who leads racial-sexual-patriarchal victims to heal their pains of the past and create a new momentum for the future.