Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

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Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall
While the technique of juxtaposing dreams, memories, and hallucinations
with external reality advances the theme of progression from
fragmentation and dislocation to spiritual wholeness, this technique
also enables Marshall to link past to present and develop the more
compelling theme of continuity and identity for people of African
descent in the Americas. Th e fi rst dream of Avey’s Aunt Cuney, which
constitutes all of chapter 3 in part 1 of the novel, is the fi rst link to
the past. In this extended description of Tatem, Marshall consciously
includes the storytelling, folk customs, and beliefs refl ecting African
survivals to give concrete expression to the theme of cultural continuity.
Th e fi ctional island, Tatem, on the South Carolina tidewater, is much
like the actual Tatemville, Georgia, a coastal community profi led in
Drums and Shadows. As Marshall describes it, Tatem, South Carolina,
much like the actual Tatemville, Georgia, is a community in which
memories of slavery, emancipation, and “pure-born” Africans are very
much alive. Th is community, in which the dance ritual, the “ring shout,”
makes up a part of regular church services, includes a practitioner of
curative roots and herbs, “Doctor” Bernitha Grant; an artisan-craftsman
known for his carved walking sticks, Mr. Golla Mack; and Avey’s own
Great Aunt Cuney, whose grandmother had been African. Twice
weekly, Aunt Cuney takes her grandniece to Ibo Landing, to recount
the story her own grandmother had told her of Ibos who walked on
water “like solid ground” back to Africa. 14 Like Morrison’s tale of
Shalimar’s fl ying home in Song of Solomon, Aunt Cuney’s tale of Ibos
walking on water is a touchstone of black folklore in the New World.
With this story, people of African descent emphasized their own
power, however mystical, fantastic, or irrational, to determine their own
destiny. Th ough their bodies were enslaved, they could recall Africa
as a spiritual homeland, as the source of their being. 15 Marshall’s own
understanding of the function of this tale is expressed by Aunt Cuney’s
African grandmother. At the end of her recounting of the story, the
African woman always reminded her granddaughter that though “her
body . . . might be in Tatem . . . her mind was long gone with the Ibos”
(39). In Praisesong, as in Song of Solomon, the use of a black American
folktale that situated a return to Africa affi rms identity in specifi c relation
to continuity. 16 First of all, in this novel, the tale is linked to ritual,
which itself embodies an essential quality of continuity. More important,
it survives through generations. As Aunt Cuney’s grandmother
tells her this story, she tells it to Avey, who in turn recounts “the whole