63 pages • 2 hours read
Toni MorrisonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The origin of the trilogy is Greek, first appearing as a series of three tragedies by the author Aeschylus for the Dionysian Drama Festival in Athens in the fifth century. Morrison, who performed classical drama at Howard University in the 1950s, was familiar with the work of Aeschylus and the way trilogies could build tension and explore complex ideas. However, Morrison’s trilogy departs from traditional examples in the genre. The three works do not follow the same characters or even the same periods. Instead, they expand upon a theme of love and its connection to violence and trauma within a history of Black experience in American spaces.
All three works in the trilogy—Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise—are inspired by real people and events. Beloved was inspired by a newspaper article about Margaret Garner who killed one of her children in 1856 rather than see her child enter a life of slavery. Jazz was born from a photograph of a woman who bled to death rather than reveal the identity of her lover who shot her. This photograph, taken by James VanDerZee appears in The Harlem Book of the Dead, a 1978 collection of funerary portraits. Beloved’s fictional town of Haven is modeled after Black settlements which formed after Reconstruction.
By Toni Morrison
A Mercy
A Mercy
Toni Morrison
Beloved
Beloved
Toni Morrison
God Help The Child
God Help The Child
Toni Morrison
Home
Home
Toni Morrison
Love
Love: A Novel
Toni Morrison
Paradise
Paradise
Toni Morrison
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Toni Morrison
Recitatif
Recitatif
Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
Sula
Sula
Toni Morrison
Sweetness
Sweetness
Toni Morrison
Tar Baby
Tar Baby
Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
The Origin of Others
The Origin of Others
Toni Morrison