A Mercy- A Rendezvous with Histories and Memories

Abstract

Toni Morrison’s speaks about the untold tales of slavery in America. It is the story of Florence and Jacob Vaark. Morrison speaks about the causes of racism, dissecting its early roots. It is a touching testimony of the Black American motherhood and speaks about freedom, mercy and kindness. This novella expresses the experience of mercies felt by the characters. Morrison breaks the syntactic rules of the masters’ discourse. Here Morrison inscribes the forgotten histories though the erased memories. Her humbling language reinforces the fact that her characters’ strength lies in their memories and in voicing those memories. Rather than the Eurocentric concepts of linearity and subjective self-centered narrative tropes, Morrison concentrates more on an open ended circular narration where we come across a common good for all, where community matters more than the individual. This beautiful prose-poem, blends history (personal as well as political), psychological anxieties, and biblical re-readings.