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''Paradise'' is a 1997 novel by Toni Morrison, and her first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. According to the author, it completes a "trilogy" that begins with ''Beloved'' and includes ''Jazz''. The book was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection for January 1998. Morrison wanted to call the novel ''War'' but was overridden by her editor.〔(''This side of 'Paradise': Toni Morrison defends herself from criticism of the novel ''Paradise'' ), Anna Mulrine, ''U.S. News & World Report'' 19 January 1998, posted at Swarthmore U website (accessed 29 February 2008).]〕 ==Plot== Beginning and ending with a massacre—with a famous first sentence ("They shoot the white girl first. . . ")--the novel tells the story of the tension between the men of Ruby, Oklahoma, (an all-black town〔see also (''Oklahoma's All-Black Town Map )〕 founded in 1950) and a group of women who lived in a former convent seventeen miles away. After an opening chapter "Ruby", named after the town, the other chapters are named after some of the female characters, but they are not simply about the women. Each chapter includes flashbacks to crucial events from the town's history in addition to the backstory of the titular character. The women in the Convent are Connie (Consolata), Mavis, Gigi (Grace), Seneca, and Pallas (Divine). These women all receive chapters. The townswomen who receive chapters are Pat (Patricia), Lone, and Save-Marie. The focus on the women characters highlights the ways the novel portrays the gender differences between the patriarchal rigidity of the townsmen and the clandestine connections between the townswomen and the women at the Convent. The narration serves as an alternative voice to the actions in which the townsmen provide. Though the novel has chapters named after specific women, it focuses on the people in the town and different hardships they have faced. The story also shows a divide between the younger generation and the older, about change and the refusal to understand for the sake of the past. The novel is complex and layered, flashing back and forth between times and places. It paints a picture of the "Old Fathers," who had first established the town of Haven, and the "New Fathers," their children, who established Ruby in an effort to escape what they perceive as the ills of society. Seeking to isolate themselves in a kind of new garden of Eden, the novel uncovers the various ways that the new perfect society destroys itself. Seeing the Convent outside its borders as a threat to its existence, the townsmen of Ruby destroy it and what they do not understand. Morrison has said in an interview on PBS that she started with race ("They shoot the white girl. . . ") and then erased it by never revealing who the white girl is. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Paradise (novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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