Featured Reading Guide
Toni Morrison
On the day that Jacob, an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, agrees to accept a slave in lieu of payment of a debt from a plantation owner, little Florens life changes. With her intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress Florens has never blended into the background and now at the age of eight she is taken from her family to begin a new life. She ends up part of Jacob s household, along with his wife Rebekka, Lina their Native American servant and the strange and melancholy Sorrow who was rescued from a shipwreck. Together these women face the trials of their harsh…
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Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of many novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), Paradise and Love. She has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction.
topAbout the Book
On the day that Jacob, an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, agrees to accept a slave in lieu of payment of a debt from a plantation owner, little Florens life changes. With her intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress Florens has never blended into the background and now at the age of eight she is taken from her family to begin a new life. She ends up part of Jacob s household, along with his wife Rebekka, Lina their Native American servant and the strange and melancholy Sorrow who was rescued from a shipwreck. Together these women face the trials of their harsh environment as Jacob attempts to carve out a place for himself in the brutal landscape of the north of America in the seventeenth century.
topStarting Points for Discussion
- ‘We never shape the world she says. The world shapes us.’ How do these words of Lina’s (page 71) underpin many of the themes within A Mercy?
- A mercy can be described as an act of compassion towards one that is powerless. Explore the notion of power in the act of mercy described by the title and then look at the way powerlessness shapes the women’s lives.
- ‘They once thought they were a kind of family because together they had carved companionship out of isolation.’ What does family mean to this band of isolated and orphaned people? Why does this family not survive?
- The book is created out of the voices of many different characters. How do you feel this device adds to the power of the novel? Did you find the voices convincing? Do you think this multi-voiced narrative gives greater depth and meaning to the novel?
- Motherhood is a significant theme in the novel. Look at each of the main female characters. How are their lives shaped by motherhood?
- The precarious and isolated life lived on the farm is further beseiged by the presence of disease. How does disease strengthen and weaken the bonds between the occupants of the farm?
- A Mercy is a very short novel. Explore the language Morrison uses in the novel. How does it create atmosphere and power? Look at the characters, by giving them each a voice what is Morrison gifting them?
- A Mercy is a novel set in the early days of American history and at the beginning of the slave trade. Do you feel that the novel is exploring issues that are still of import today?
Other Books by Toni Morrison
A Mercy
On the day that Jacob, an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, agrees to accept…
Beloved
It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentuckhy, an era is ending as slavery…
Jazz
It is winter, barely three days into 1926, seven years after Armistice; we are…
Suggested Further Reading
- Beloved ~ Toni Morrison
- Moll Flanders ~ Daniel Defoe
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ~ Anne Bronte
- Oroonoko ~ Aphra Behn