One of the themes in Paradise by Toni Morrison relates to the title of the novel, a novel about different perspectives of what constitutes safety and safe harbor. For one group of people, safety and safe harbor (or paradise) is what for another group of people constitutes a threat to their way of life and existence. In Morrison's Paradise, the only apparent resolution to this dilemma of conflicting points of view upon what constitutes safety is egregious violence.
One theme that Morrison is presenting, a theme that may in itself be as controversial as the points of view presented within her novel, is that paradise has to be fought for--safe harbor can only be won through fighting opponents, as there will always be opponents to one's version of, one's view of paradise--first to gain paradise and then to protect and keep paradise. Another theme is that the attainment of paradise, of one's safe harbor (for which one must paradoxically submit one's self to the unsafety of unending violent fighting) requires at least a periodic suspension of logic and reason and at least a periodic confidence in mysticism and illogicality.
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