In Toni Morrison's 1997 novel Paradise, the town of Ruby, Oklahoma is an all-black town that has been established to separate themselves from the tyranny of the white man in Civil Rights-Era America. In order to escape the shackles of exploitation, the community that established (and maintains) Ruby ends up creating a world that is completely free of whites. However, in the process, a whole new realm of discrimination and victimizing occurs, in the form of cutting down on 'contamination,' remaining inside the family lines while creating new generations, and maintaining a strict religious, moral and social standard that everyone must maintain.
One of the most intriguing passages in Paradise is in a conversation between Pat Best, a teacher researching the history of the town, and Richard Misner, a young reverend who is part of Ruby's patriarchal system. This conversation provides the book with a direct and honest idea of what utopia might entail, and whether it is worth defending from the inclusion of others. When Pat Best chastises Misner for being Afrocentric, contending that he simply wants to erase the fact of slavery from their past, Misner mentions the idea of home, and whether or not it is a "little thing" (213). The following is Misner's response to Pat's insistence that it is not:
"I'm not saying it is. But can't you even imagine what it must feel like to have a true home? I don't mean heaven. I mean a real earthly home. Not some fortress you bought and built up and have to keep everybody locked in or out. A real home. Not some place you went to and invaded and slaughtered people to get" (Morrison 213).
This passage heavily explores the mindset of a hurt, injured African-American people who simply wish to have that idea of 'home' for themselves. The way in which he describes this home is, perhaps, most important to this exploration of safety and utopia for African-Americans in Paradise. Misner states that Ruby itself, his home, is "not" a small thing - by this, Best had meant "a little thing" to mean that a home could not be just exclusive for one kind of people, namely African-Americans of a particular skin color. Minser agrees with her, to an extent, by agreeing with her that 'home' should be inclusive.
However, Minser's (and the town's) desire to have this utopian freedom, free from the shackles of their past in slavery, is revealed when he says, "but can't you even imagine what it must feel like to have a true home?" By asking 'cant you even imagine,' Morrison has Minser note that this idea that he is espousing is a rare one for African-Americans; they are no longer able to accurately picture a real home that allows them the freedom that whites are given - without the ugly history to attempt to overcome. Minser also implies that, even in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, they will never truly have this 'real home,' by relegating it to the realm of imagination.
Minser's monologue implies that America is not the true home they could ever hope for - there is simply too much bad history (and too much ugly present) to make it a viable home for them. By counting the ways in which they have been marginalized as antithetical to a 'real home' - "Not some fortress you bought and built up and have to keep everybody locked in or outNot some place you went to and invaded and slaughtered people to get" (213). Minser is also mentioning the Convent in the former statement, noting that neither Ruby nor the Convent works as a home; a utopia must be a place of peace and inclusion, not a tract of land one stakes and must defend from intruders (e.g. the white man, the men of Ruby) (Marcos 113). According to Morrison, the culture of American still needed to change dramatically, despite the voting, education and accommodations advancements that were made in the Civil Rights Movement (Schur 285).
In conclusion, this passage in Paradise notes the inherent failure of Ruby and the Convent to provide a Utopia for African-Americans in the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Minser distrusts the ability of the Civil Rights Movement to erase the history of slavery from America, thus trapping black people in a home that was not made by them. At the same time, both Ruby and the Convent are poor substitutes for Utopias, as 'real homes' are not fortresses that must be defended from others who wish to invade it. These two places are failed experiments in creating Utopia, as they are merely attempts to hide from an ugly past and the consequences of their own oppression. In Minser's mind, he defends Ruby as the closest thing that the can get to a Utopia, even though it cannot truly be accomplished. Minser simply believes that Africa is their 'real home,' or should be; it is no longer available to them.
Works Cited
Marcos, Ana M. Fraile. "The Religious Overtones of Ethnic Identity - Building in Toni
Morrison's Paradise." Atlantis vol., 24, no. 2, 2008, pp. 95-116. Print.
Morrison, Toni. Paradise. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. Print.
Schur, Richard L. "'Paradise' in the Post-Civil Rights Era: Toni Morrison and Critical Race
Theory. Contemporary Literature vol. 45, no., 2, Summer 2004, pp. 276-299. Print.
