Love by Toni Morrison - Book Report/Review Example

1 Love By Toni Morrison Order No: 179393 No: of pages: 5 Premium – 6530 About the Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, is one of the most fascinating and distinguished writers of America. She also won the “National Books Critic’s Award and the “Pulitzer Prize” for her amazing works. She lives in Rockland County, New York and Princeton, New Jersey. She is a professor of Humanities at Princeton University. Born to Ramah and George Woffard on February 18th1931, she was the second of four children and her original name was Chloe Anthony Woffard and she grew up in the American mid- West in a family that had a passion and fascination for black culture. The formative part of her childhood was spent in story telling, songs and folk tales. 2 The central theme for all Morrison’s novels is the experiences of the black American people in an unjust society, in which her characters struggle among themselves to find their cultural identity. Her deft use of fantasy and poetic style, with rich inter weaving of her characters gave her novels great strength and a fine texture, that makes her one of the outstanding authors of her time. Morrison’s new novel “Love” is set against the background of the segregated black ocean front community of the South with the less glamorous modern black communities and unravels the story of six women who are obsessed with love, for the owner of a fabulous and exotic seaside resort that once attracted the rich and the famous to its shores. The person in question is none other than Bill Cosey, who means many different things to different people. He is the sun, around which the lives of all these women revolve. “Love”, is an awesome novel and can be described as “human drama at its best”. Though Bill Cosey is the fulcrum around which his women revolve, yet the novel deals with the interaction between his women who are lovable, mysterious and timeless. The novel spans the twentieth century, in which Morrison presents the events of World War II. The story is developed using the backdrop of the murder of Emmet Till and the assassination of Martin and Malcolm. Most of Morrison’s characters are shrouded in mystery and unlike other mystery plots that figure who done it or who is behind it, Morrison’s character driven story explains who her characters are and how they got where they are at present. 3 Junior, a female parolee from the reformatory school is depicted as a catalyst in the story and whose presence in the Cosey household will determine whether the Cosey family would be saved or destroyed. “Love” is shrouded in mystery and the author keeps her readers guessing about the events and their consequences as the story unravels with many unanswered questions. This is not a simple, puppy love kind of a story, but one that is complex in itself, explaining love in different forms like romantic love, jealous love, hateful love, paternal love, platonic love and even love that is shared by strangers. Despite their love for Cosey, each of these women, take pleasure in inflicting pain upon each other. In describing “Love” Morrison says, “The eyes are enslaved by the others. Opening pangs of guilt, rage, fatigue, despair are replaced by a hatred so pure, so solemn, it feels beautiful, almost holy”. (Morrison, 2003, pg – 177) Morrison keeps her audience confused, often grappling with the story and characters. Though the title appears simple, yet the characters are quite complicated by themselves. The story that emerges from this novel is a fascinating love story that engages different characters who learn to live and love one another. An example of her complex style of writing can be seen in these lines, “Twelve rings, two on three fingers of each hand, snatched light from the ceiling fixture and seemed to elevate her task from drudgery to sorcery”. (Morrison, 2003, pg – 20) 4 When speaking about Bill Cosey, we can understand Morrison’s good choice of words by the lines of Vida, “I saw him the day he died, Hale at breakfast and dead at lunch”. Morrison, 2003, pg – 17) She was extremely vivid in her description of things that always kindled the imagination and curiosity of her readers. We can see this in the following lines that described the place spoken of. “Tiles of ice had formed at the shoreline and, inland, the thrown-together houses on Monarch Street whined like puppies. Ice slick gleamed then disappeared in the early evening shadow….” (Morrison, 2003) The depiction of characters in the novel “Love” is something that its reader would remember for a long time to come. Christine, May, Junior, Heed and Vida, are all the women who are obsessed with Bill Cosey, the rich Hotel and Resort owner. He manipulates their yearnings to suit father, lover, husband, friend and guardian that dominates the lives of these women even much after his death. Bill Cosey, on the other hand, is himself driven or plagued by secret forces, due to his troubled past and held in the grip of a spellbinding woman named Celestial. Morrison’s blatant yet deep exploration on the nature of love, its sublime possession of its characters, mingled with a striking description of scenes, gives its readers a profound and vivid understanding of how alive and real the past can be. Love is not so much of a disputed will and divided affection; it is much more than that. It is about love itself, with all its passion and ruinous incarnations. It not only deals with 5 family but gender, race and history, traveling from compassion to lust. It explains the many forces that shape the destinies of the different characters in the novel and shows how it distorts an individual’s life. Morrison’s trademarks of surprising twists and turns in the story and a plot that is filled with unexpected events taking place all of a sudden, keeps the reader engrossed with curiosity and surprise. Her creativity is mesmerizing as she takes her readers along with her giving them valuable insight through a display of humanity that is portrayed with intelligence, truthfulness and emotion in a much matured fashion that undoubtedly brings out Morrison’s brilliance and proves that she is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Conclusion: Morrison’s books are quite popular at college level as they are used as course books because her writing is filled with good structure and symbolism and a kind of mystery not often found in popular fiction. Her books are not easy to skate through as she fills the characters and story with a complicated style which is all too evident in most of her books. "Its a dense, dark star of a novel, seemingly eccentric, secretly shapely, and with Morrison writing at the top of her game." (--David Gates, Newsweek) If anyone wants to know what love is, or if you already understand what love is, or you want to know why Toni Morrison is such an appreciated and well loved author, then you owe it to yourself to read “Love”. References: Toni Morrison – Winner –Nobel Prize for Literature www.aalbc.com/authors/toni.htm Toni Morrison Society www.tonimorrisonsociety.org/links.shtml “Love” by Toni Morrison www.keithboykin.com/arch/2003/11/21/love_by_toni_mo Toni Morrison – Encyclopedia Britannica www.britannica.com/eb/article-9053829/Toni-Morrison Love / Book Published by Alfred A Knoph New York, 2003 www.aaknoph.com Love: Books: Toni Morrison www.amazon.com/Love-Toni-Morrison/dp/0375409440 Read More