Master of Arts

Toni Morrison deals with fragmented African-American individuals. In her fiction, she examines the causes and reveals the pain in being institutionally marginalised because of one's color, class and/or sex. She looks to re-claim for some of her characters a sense of identity by dismantling the predominant order. This as an act of recovery and establishing a new paradigm for the African-American in the America of the late twentieth century. Recovery begins at an individual level and Morrison asserts that African-Americans need to address the past and relate to this history and their African-American heritage, This, the study notes, is a journey of self-discovery.

The individual according to Carl Jung has three possibilities of living his/her life. The first is that an individual can remain at a Persona stage, repressing most of what is painful into the unconsciousness. At the next level, the individual in addressing the Unconscious may be willing to integrate the Ego with the the inner psyche and reach a greater self-awareness. The last stage to self-realizations is to resolve the anima-animus conflict in the Collective Unconscious of the individual, turning most of the unconscious elements into conscious ones. Jung believed that self expressions are conditioned by society and these personae often become substitutions for the 'real' self. This self can be recovered through a process of individuation.

In this thesis, I examine the characters in Toni Morrison's novels in a Jungian perspective of individuation. I discuss characters who remain at the Persona-level, others who are involved in the process of self-discovery or some who are resolved individuals. I draw out, these individuals from the complex backdrops of being marginalised and their sense of rejection, to analyse how consciousness/ unconsciousness influence and dictate self-expression of the individual African-American.