Green Ecology and Healing

This chapter considers green as the preeminent color of ecological thought, environmental discourse and conservation movements. Most importantly, green is the color of chlorophyll, which produces the oxygen necessary to sustain life on earth. Attention will be paid to those characters in Morrison’s fiction who find respite, that is, breathing space, in the green world. What emerges in Morrison’s fiction are moments of enchantment with the plant world that provide a contrast to the unrelenting and ubiquitous social networks of racism in which the community is enmeshed. Even in Beloved, Morrison’s treatise on the brutality of chattel slavery, characters experience notable moments of enchantment with the vegetal world. Likewise, in Song of Solomon and Home, characters achieve a measure of health and healing through interactions with botanicals: forest trees, backyard flora, and plant seeds.