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Inner Quests for Survival and Redemption -Margaret Laurence’s The Tomorrow-Tamer-

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2010, (45), pp.79-99
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : December 16, 2009
  • Accepted : February 24, 2010

Yoon, Myung-Ok 1

1한밭대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

The pattern of the inner quests for survival and redemption is one of the typical themes of Margaret Laurence’s novels. The stories in The Tomorrow-Tamer which are set in Ghana, Africa are also heightened by Laurence’s awareness that the questions of survival and redemption still have to be answered less on political grounds than on more personal levels. The themes that run through her stories are closely connected with freedom, independence, and the relationships of equality and communication which Laurence attempts to imbue into her characters, regardless of whether they are white or black, European or African. For Laurence, freedom and survival in her fiction is not only physical but also spiritual, with human dignity and the ability to give and receive love. These themes relate both to the social/external world and to the spiritual/inner one. In The Tomorrow-Tamer, therefore, she extends the analysis of the clash of cultures she began in This Side Jordan and attempts symbolically to span diverse histories and cultures in an effort to break down psychological, intellectual, and social barriers to discern essential human correspondences, with humane and artistic sensibilities.

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