Community in Toni Morrison's Fiction

English Abstract Toni Morrison deals with the topic of community to a greater or lesser extent in all of her books. Being influenced by her own upbringing, she has always been aware of the role community plays in one's life and its influence on an individual. Community can both save you and forsake you. The nature of black community has been changing, according to Morrison, and so has her view of it. Her writing career reflects these alternations, revealing a significant change in her perspective. Looking at her first novel, The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, her third novel written seven years later, Song of Solomon, and her seventh novel, Paradise, written in 1998, this thesis traces the way her position alters throughout the years. Being opposed to both radical separatism and blind assimilation, Morrison first proposed return to traditional African values as the possible cure for the black community destroyed by the forces of capitalist society. Later in her career, however, Morrison changes her ideology and suggests as a remedy a community that does not exclude the unworthy, but is open, caring, and inclusive. By evolving from individualism to individuality, communities that will include everyone can be created.