earticle

영어

This study discusses Toni Morrison’s cross-cultural perspectives of African Americans’ community spirit and Hippies’ individualistic spirit in God Help the Child. Morrison shows her perspectives of African Americans’ community spirit and Hippies’ individualistic spirit in light of their primitivism which sets a higher value on spontaneity, simplicity, and anti-materialism. In the novel, Morrison describes a hippie couple who is directed against the 20th century conservative middle-class values, such as materialism, commercialism and consumerism of the post-industrial society. The couple live individualistic lives in the remote country from urban and civil advantages. Nevertheless, they willingly help their racial outcast Bride out of her car which crashed into one of the street trees, take her to the hospital, take care of her for six weeks, and criticize her materialistic values. They practice their community spirit for people in need without hesitation. Therefore, the portrayal of the hippies can be traced back to that of Morrison’s African American female character Pilate Dead in Song of Solomon. Pilate lives in a grove of four huge pine trees at the back of her house which is far away form the post-industrial world. Her association with the grove marks her primitive-naturalistic life styles and values. As the hippie couple do, she lives without any civilized necessities and facilities. She not only bridges between ancestors and descendants but also helps her nephew Milkman Dead out of his father’s inhumane materialism and middle-class hierarchial values to show him into the primitive history and myth of African-American ancestors. Finally, Morrison shows that the cultural boundaries between African Americans’ community spirit and Hippies’ anti-civilized spirit can be dissolved into the primitive, naturalistic, and communal spirit.