Morrison has a Faulkner-like obsession with bloodlines in this book. There are many parallels between many of the characters–a stark reminder that we have more in common with each other than we allow. We meet the women of the convent, their former families and all who had abused or helped them in the past.Īnother thing making it difficult to keep track of characters is their similarity. Morrison introduces us to the residents of an entire town, their ancestors, and their tormentors. There were a lot of characters in the novel and it was sometimes hard to keep them straight. They are ones of starting new and surviving only by keeping other people out. They are ones of rejection, stamina, running away, and isolation. Indeed the women of the Convent and men of Ruby are more alike than any of them would willingly admit. And this is true of the women of the Convent and the people of Ruby. Nearly all of the characters are left with deep psychic injuries that prevent hem from trusting or from being tolerant. Paradise is the story of people who are traumatized by life. Living there now are women of varying ages who have experienced various hurts, abuses, and losses. All the sisters have left by the time the book begins. The Convent was once an orphanage run by Roman Catholic nuns. When the dream seem to be spoiling and tragedies begin to impinge on their self-made Paradise, the founding fathers look outward for a cause and find it in the women of the Convent.
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It is where several families have built a home free from the rejection, violence, and prejudice.Įven in Ruby, though, things cannot stay the same. This book begins with a posse of men from Ruby raiding a convent where a group of world-worn women are living. Plot SynopsisĪs much as I hate reducing a book like this to a plot summary, I feel I have to tell you something about what happens so that this analysis will make sense. It is a bold literary device: In struggling to figure out which of the women is white, the reader is forced to ask why that detail even matters-except to figure out who was killed first.
I was comforted a little when I read an analysis of the book where it said, “These women (the ones in the convent) are not ‘color coded,” as Morrison puts it, and the reader has no way of knowing their race. Yet, the more I re-read the book, the less I was sure about the details.
This bothered me, for I feared that I had not given the book the attention it deserved, that I had missed something. The novel had brought these women into my life in intimate ways, yet I hadn’t a clue which of them were white and which of them were not white. I was ashamed to say I didn’t know which character was murdered. After the initial shock wore off, I flipped back a few pages to make sure I was starting at the beginning and that I hadn’t missed the first chapter.Īfter finishing the book, I went back and re-read the first chapter. I momentarily stopped reading after that first sentence. Morrison begins the mystery with the very first sentence: “They kill the white girl first.” Toni Morrison is able to weave a tale so intricate that it may take several readings before one can figure out what happened.
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