Oppression is a common theme in Toni Morrison's novel, Home. Whether the oppression be of a certain people based on their race or gender, their situation in life, or their relationships with others, Morrison does a good job of getting that particular point across. In one way or another, all cultures face some sort of oppression, and through this novel readers will see how the African American community has been oppressed by other people and learn of their experiences that came out of that, particularly through Frank and Cee's perspective.
In the beginning of the novel, the reader first sees oppression through the eyes of the main character, Frank Money, as a child. Money might not realize it at the time, but he definitely does later in life as he grows up, how oppressed and separate from the world he is after his experiences in the war. In the first few pages, Frank and his sister, Cee, are watching the unceremonious burial of an African American. Even then at that young age, Frank was protecting his sister. "When she saw that black foot with its creamy pink and mud-streaked sole being whacked into the grave, her whole body began to shake." (15)
Frank tries to protect Cee, and in doing that makes her vulnerable and more dependent on others, even though she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, as readers will find out later in the novel. Frank's protection oppresses Cee. Certain relationships in the novel between main characters offer a view of how destructive and oppressive they can be. Cee finds herself in a bind when she was working with the doctor and being operated on in an inhumane way, and was saved by her brother. Being a women in that time, and an African woman at that, brought with it all sorts of hardships and forms of oppression entirely different from the things Frank had to deal with, but it was nonetheless a difficulty they shared. Frank had his own problems to deal with pertaining to the war.
Ultimately, what Toni Morrison's novel does is show what African Americans as a whole went through during the time after the Korean War, and in Frank's case, what they went through during it. Home is a historical novel that depicts oppression at its height. Cee was, in a way, oppressed by her gender and how she started off in the world. That is, she was born into a family with virtually no means to support themselves. That in itself is a form of oppression. Frank, on the other hand, was oppressed by his memories of war.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. Home. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012. eBook.
