William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury influence Morrison's preference for circular narrative and the pervasive theme of human bondage, which the surrender at Appomattox failed to obliterate.
James Joyce's "The Dead" and Ulysses, composed in enigmatic glimpses of motive and response, influence Morrison's richly evocative narration, set with jewels of dialogue and conscious thought, both of which lead the characters through a hell of learning how to grasp happiness and security.
Critics find strands of other influential themes and stylistic mannerisms in Beloved, notably the insupportable corruption that demands retribution in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; the burden of the desperate act and its equally desperate denouement in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime; the consuming guilt of Herman Melville's Benito Cereno; Charles Dickens's symbolic character names; Alice Walker's submergence in the yearnings of motherhood in The Color Purple; the lovingly supportive alliance of one black and one white in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn; and the dark reflection on hard scrabble community life, which generates uncharitable rivalry between haves and have-nots, as delineated in Richard Wright's Black Boy and Native Son.
Obviously, Toni Morrison is well schooled in literature, yet the urgency and pathos of her characters and situations are uniquely her own.
