Racial stock and 8-rocks: communal historiography in Toni Morrison's 'Paradise' - Critical Essay

Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 2001 by Rob Davidson

The twins have powerful memories. Between them they remember the details of everything that ever happened--things they witnessed and things they have not.... And they have never forgotten the message or the specifics of any story, especially the controlling one told to them by their grandfather--the man who put the words in the Oven's black mouth. A story that explained why neither the founders of Haven nor their descendants could tolerate anybody but themselves. (13)

The "controlling" story is the Disallowing--the story of how 158 freed black slaves left "Mississippi and two Louisiana parishes" (13) in 1890 and at every stop were turned away by whites, by Native Americans, and by fellow blacks for being "too poor, too bedraggled-looking" (14). Morgan historiography is based on memory and oral history. Apart from family Bibles, few or no documents record town history, which is passed down orally from father to son.

Morrison takes great pains to establish the legitimacy of the "state of emergency" that Ruby believes in; historically, there is cause for it. But Morrison also refuses to idealize this approach; she understands that such militant defensiveness carries the potential for abuse and corruption. Whatever the valid historical reasons for Ruby's defensiveness, they do not justify the quasi-fascistic impulses of men like Steward Morgan--to say nothing of the assault on the Convent.

Ruby's elders have converted the narrative of the Disallowing into political dogma, an ideology that allows them any measure of terror or violence so long as it defends (what they deem) the town's common interests. The ironic final sentence of "Ruby" underscores this point: "God at their side, the men take aim. For Ruby" (18). Linda Hutcheon writes:

Ideology--how a culture represents itself to itself--"doxifies" or naturalizes narrative representation, making it appear as natural or common-sensical ... it presents what is really constructed meaning as something inherent in that which is being represented. (49)

This point calls to mind Patricia Storace's astute observation that the men of Ruby seek "the perpetual overarching authority of the creator at the moment of creation" (66). Understandably, Deacon and Steward Morgan--and the other men of their generation--desperately want to be the authors of their own history. Their history, however, becomes a closed book, not a text to be rewritten--or, for that matter, reinterpreted--with each generation.

The men of Ruby believe unfailingly--dogmatically--in their own constructed history; but the moral basis for this belief has eroded, and the elders now cling to it less for moral reasons (though they freely employ the rhetoric of morality) than for a brute desire to preserve their powerful position at any cost. Musing on the debate over the Oven's motto, Steward Morgan admits that

Personally he didn't give a damn. The point was not why it should or should not be changed, but what Reverend Misner gained by instigating the idea.... He wondered if that generation--Misner's and K.D.'s--would have to be sacrificed to get to the next one. (94)