The Carnivalesque Versus the African American Dilemma in Toni Morrison’s Sula

Abstract

Away from European, classical, and Renaissance literature that Mikhail Bakhtin has studied, the aim of this research is to discuss the adequacy and significance of the carnivalesque in the American novel where Toni Morrison's (b.1931) Sula (1973) is a case in point. Because the literary mode of the carnivalesque includes communal activities, divisions, eccentricities, and many types of breaking up the norms to allow a new reality to show up and emerge to the surface. This article uses these attributes in order to investigate a variety of themes in relation to the racial segregation issue in Sula.