Morrison & Kingsolver: The Overlap of Literary Genius

I recently finished The Poisonwood Bible, after weeks spent flooding its pages with my own ink, reflecting upon its themes and meanings. The novel turned out to be one of my favorites of the books I've been assigned in English class throughout my high school career. While reading it, I was continuously reminded of Beloved by Toni Morrison, another one of the most influential stories I've read in high school and one of my favorite books in general. The parallels between the ideas and storylines of the two novels are undeniable. Both explore the complex family dynamic of a group of individuals faced with hardship and prejudice. Both experiment with structure through variation in time and narrator. Both include the loss of a central character who plays the role of daughter, sister, and metaphor. And I'd argue that both are prime examples of literary genius.

The final chapter of The Poisonwood Bible, entitled "The Eyes in the Trees" most reminded me of the style Toni Morrison uses in Beloved. From the first paragraph, I was already caught between the world of the Prices and the world of Sethe, Beloved, and Paul D, the central characters of Morrison's novel. Kingsolver writes,

"The glide of belly on branch. The mouth thrown open wide, sky blue. I am all that is here. The eyes in the trees never blink. You plead with me your daughter sister sister for release, but I am no little beast and have no reason to judge. No teeth and no reason. If you feel a gnawing at your bones, that is only yourself, hungry."

First of all, the thematic connections between the two authors' stories are apparent. Trees, hunger, teeth, and judgment, all of which are found in the passage above, are just a few of the miscellaneous items that are found throughout both novels.

From a literary perspective, I think there are several strengths of this paragraph that Morrison also employs in her writing. The unclear voice automatically engages the reader, requiring careful reading in order to decipher the identity of the narrator. Morrison also utilizes this strategy, as her chapters shift in voice without initially naming the narrator.

SPOILER ALERT: In the case of the passage above, the voice belongs to muntu, a Congolese concept of the human spirit, both living and dead. Specifically, the chapter from which the excerpt was taken pertains to Ruth May, a central character of the story who dies but continues to express her thoughts.

In addition to fluctuating narrators, both Morrison and Kingsolver incorporate short sentences in their writing to emphasize certain images and concepts. Varied sentence length and structure is a useful tool to manipulate the reader's focus and to separate details and ideas.

The two authors are also unafraid of playing with punctuation. In the paragraph above, Kingsolver writes "daughter sister sister" without any commas to separate the words, perhaps intending to blur the distinction between Ruth May's roles in the story in relation to other characters. Morrison is even more fearless when it comes to breaking the laws of grammar; she writes an entire chapter without periods, so that the sentences flow together in a poetic stream of consciousness.

The following is a passage of Beloved that includes many of the same strategies and themes Kingsolver implemented.

"All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too I am always crouching the man on my face is dead his face is not mine his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked"

Like Kingsolver's passage mentioned earlier, this excerpt from Beloved includes short, pointed sentences and an unconventional grammatical structure. Additionally, it's interesting to note that both passages emphasize the image of eyes.

Beyond these surface-level similarities, the overlap is even more noteworthy. Both Ruth May and Beloved eventually become bodiless spirits, souls without human life but still possessing a voice, a story to share. Undoubtedly, the complexities of the two novels intertwine, but they each have uniquely important messages to deliver. I'll leave it to you to discover those messages for yourselves. Perhaps, along the way, you'll also be struck by the overlap between them.