Motif of Dream and Dreaming in Toni Morrison’s Fiction: The Bluest Eye to Love

Abstract

The Nobel laureate Toni Morrison probingly dissects the gendered and racial nature of American society through her novels. Her stories are mainly centered on the past and present of African American society along with their concerns, expectations, memories, dreams, and desires. Her novels from The Bluest Eye (1970) to Love (2003) are literary mind-mapping of the African-American society regarding their identity and representation. The present paper is an attempt to study the motifs of dream and dreaming to explore the psychological landscape of the said community. The subtle use of these motifs by her lays bare the entire social journey of the African Americans, their selfhood, and the ever-up white hegemony in socio-cultural and the overall identity matters.