TONI MORRISON
Questions about Character who is the protagonist, or might there be more than one? Why and how .so? Which other characters, if any, are main or major characters? Which are minor characters?
. What are the protagonist’s most distinctive traits, and what is most distinc-tive about his or her outlook and values? What motivates the character? What is it about the character that creates internal and/or external conflict? .
• Which textual details and moments reveal most about this character? Which are most surprising or might complicate your interpretation of this character? How is your view of the character affected by what you don’t know about him. or her? What, are the roles of other characters? Which, if any, functions as an antago-nist? Which, if any, serves as a foil? Why and how; so? How would the story as a whole (not just its action or plot) be different if any of these characters dis-appeared? What points might the author be raising or illustrating through each character? . Which of the characters, or which aspects of the characters, does the text encourage us to sympathize with or to admire? to view negatively? Why and how so?
• Does your view of any character change over the course of the story, or do any of the characters themselves change? If so, when, how, and why?
• Does characterization tend to be indirect or direct in the story? What kinds of information do and don’t we get about the characters, and how does the story tend to give us that information?
TONI MORRISON (b. 1931) Recitatifl
born in Lorain, Ohib, a steel town on the shores of Lake Erie, Chloe Anthony Wofford was the first member of her family to attend college, graduating from H6Ward UniVersity in 1953 and earning an MA from Cornell. She taught at both Texas Southern Uni-versity and at Howard before. becoming an editor at Random House, where she worked for nearly twenty years: In such novels as The. Blitest Eye (1969), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987), Paradise (1998), A Mercy (2008), and Home (2012), Morrison traces the problems and possibilities faCed by black .Americans struggling with slavery and its aftermath in the United Statcs. Morrison is also a gifted and influential critic and essayist: Her oft-cited Playing in the Park: Whiteness and the Literary.IMagination’ appeared in 1993, the same year, she beC’ame the first African American author to win the Nobel Priie for Literature.
1. In classical music such as opera; a vocal passage that is sung in a speechlike manner.
