91 pages • 3 hours read
Toni MorrisonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
“It was a genuinely clarifying public notice because it gave Southside residents a way to keep their memories alive and please the city legislators as well. They called it Not Doctor Street, and were inclined to call the charity hospital at its northern end No Mercy Hospital since it was 1931, on the day following Mr. Smith’s leap from its cupola, before the first colored expectant mother was allowed to give birth inside its wards and not on its steps.”
Southside residents confront the indignities of racism every day. For example, because they are Black, Southside residents are not allowed in the segregated Mercy Hospital until 1931, and the only reason the hospital makes an exception that day is because of the unusual events surrounding both Mr. Smith’s suicide and Macon Dead III’s birth. The Black residents call attention to the hypocrisy of the hospital’s name in their unofficial and ironic renaming of the hospital as No Mercy Hospital. Another ironic renaming occurs when Mains Avenue becomes first Doctor Street and then Not Doctor Street. This renaming occurs when the Southside residents appropriate the official language of the posted signs that demand residents stop calling the road Doctor Street. They follow the signs literally, and humorously, and Not Doctor Street is born.
“The nurse gazed at the stout woman as though she had spoken Welsh. Then she closed her mouth, looked again at the cat-eyed boy, and lacing her fingers, spoke her next words very slowly to him.”
This is one of the few times in the novel when White characters speak, and when the White nurse speaks to young Guitar, she does so in a condescending way, slowing down her speech because she assumes he isn’t very smart. However, her language shows that she herself struggles to communicate, while Guitar understands everything, even proving her superior, at least in terms of spelling and manners.
By Toni Morrison
A Mercy
A Mercy
Toni Morrison
Beloved
Beloved
Toni Morrison
God Help The Child
God Help The Child
Toni Morrison
Home
Home
Toni Morrison
Jazz
Jazz
Toni Morrison
Love
Love: A Novel
Toni Morrison
Paradise
Paradise
Toni Morrison
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Toni Morrison
Recitatif
Recitatif
Toni Morrison
Sula
Sula
Toni Morrison
Sweetness
Sweetness
Toni Morrison
Tar Baby
Tar Baby
Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
The Origin of Others
The Origin of Others
Toni Morrison