Home is Morrison’s tenth novel。 The novel uses a third-person omniscient perspective in the first chapter and a first-person perspective in the next ones。 It tells the story of two black heroes--brother Frank and young sister Cee--who experienced a series of terrible things respectively at different stages of life and Frank’s journey home, a year after being discharged from an integrated Army into a segregated homeland。 Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front, finds himself back in racist America with more than physical scars。 Despite that his home may seem alien to him, he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town where they come from。 As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again。 A deeply moving novel about an apparently defeated man finding his manhood—and his home

 The thesis consists of 5 parts。 Part one is a general introduction of the thesis, the novel Home, and its author Toni Morrison。 Part two briefly introduces the studies and comments on Home in China and abroad。 Part three serves as the key part of the thesis which is mainly about the artistic features in Home----a great deal of detail descriptions, fragmented writing, and rhetorical device。 Part four is supposed to introduce some writing skills according to the artistic features in Home。 And part five will summarize the whole study。

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In the west, the criticisms on Toni Morrison’s works began from the late 1970s。 In 1977, the first comment on Toni Morrison’s work was published in First world。 After Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature, comments on her works became deeper and wider。 Home has received lots of positive reviews while it’s received some negative reviews as well。 In a starred review, Publishers Weekly described Morrison’s novel as beautiful, brutal, as is Morrison’s perfect prose。 However, one writing in the New York Times, Leah Hager Cohen criticized that in her novel the symbolism lacks subtlety, but concluded that, “This work’s accomplishment lies in its considerable capacity to make us feel that we are each not only resident but co-owner of, and collectively accountable for, this land we call home。” (3)In the 20th century, artistic features and writing skills were often studied for the analysis of the works of Toni Morrison。 Writing for the Washington Post, Ron Charles wrote, “This scarily quiet tale packs all the thundering themes Morrison has explored before。 She’s never been more concise, though, and that restraint demonstrates the full range of her power。”(6) Erich Schwartzel, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, noted flashes of “beautiful, tactile writing” (4), but characterized Home as “an easy narrative that。。。never finds a resplendence to place it alongside Morrison’s better, more realized work。”(4) More or less, these reviews speak highly of Morrison’s artistic features in Home, especially her creating a richly textured and deep-felt story within mere 145 pages。 The significance of the analysis on the artistic features exists in the comprehension of Home and Morrison’s other works with similar themes。 Meanwhile, it can also guide readers to use proper artistic techniques in writing a novel。 

In China, the studies on Toni Morrison’s works started from around 1993 in which she won the Nobel Prize as the first black woman writer in America。 In 1999, Gender, Race and Culture—Toni Morrison and 20th Century African Literature in America written by Wang Shouren and Wu Xinyun published。 It became the first Chinese book to study systematically the works of Toni Morrison in depth。 Afterwards, detailed introduction about the author and her works was made in many books, such as A Survey of American Literature written by Chang Yaoxin, A Study of the Identity Pursuit of African Americans in Toni Morrison’s Fiction by Hu Jun and so on。 The collection of critical essays titled Critical Essays on Toni Morrison’s Fiction reveals that Chinese critics have made a great deal of efforts in promoting the study of Morrison in China。 Many scholars have been studying Toni Morrison’s works and they usually adopt the perspectives of feminism, narratology, culture, etc。 Very few critics make an analysis of her writing skills, especially the artistic features in Home。