Text and Context in the Art of Toni Morrison (cont)

In Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong explaining the “psychodynamics of orality”(31) asserts that not only is sound more interior than sight, but it also integrates and harmonizes vis a vis sight that isolates and perhaps distances.⁶   Besides, oral narration which allows the use of “formulary structures,”⁷  enables the repetition of sound motifs which help the reader to immerse himself/herself in sound if necessary.⁸  This is the significance of oral narration for culturally displaced people like the African-Americans,  which allows them to reconnect with the lost sounds of their culture, or helps them to revive and remember what they have lost. Indirectly, oral narration allows a certain ritual of remembering which is pivotal for cultural identity.⁹