Shadow of Shame

Shadow of Shame

An Interpretation of Toni Morrison's 1920

It is a basic human desire to be proud of our heritage. We'd like to proudly proclaim where we hail from, and who our "people" are. For some, however, heritage is something that must be overcome, rather than celebrated. Such is the case for central characters Helene and Nel in Toni Morrison's 1920, an excerpt from her novel Sula.

Morrison weaves a tale of a mother and daughter who travel south to New Orleans in hopes that they will arrive before Helene's critically ill grandmother, Cecile, passes away. On the long trip south, Nel finds that as the landscape outside the train window changes, the seemingly proud, strong layers that she has viewed as the embodiment of her mother, Helene, are gradually stripped away, like the bark of a dying oak tree. What is left behind is merely a weak inner core. Unfortunately,