As we all know, Toni Morrison was born in Ohio, whose father is a blue-collar worker and mother is a white mother family maid。 Her parents originally were Southern Alabama sharecroppers, in order to get rid of poverty they moved into a small town。 Her father maintained a family's life by doing odd jobs。 When Morrison was twelve, she began to learn and work at the same time in order to support her family。 In 1949 she was admitted to Howard University which was opened specifically for blacks, studying English and classical literature。 After graduating from college, she went into studying Faulkner and Wolfe's novel for a master's degree。 Since then, she has taught at Texas Southern University and Howard University。 In 1966, she served as a senior editor at Random House Nile Deng, who had Muhammad。 Her editor of the "black book"- African-American Encyclopedia describes three hundred years of history, known as the African-American History。 From the 1970s, she worked in New York State University, Yale University and Bard College to teach African-American literature。 And she has written 30 high-quality book review articles for the "New York Times Book Review Weekly", since 1987 as a professor at Princeton University, teaching literature creation。 Morrison can be said to be a scholar-novelist。 Song of Solomon has the only one black male protagonist in the works。 The works addresses the black race, gender, and cultural aspects of a show full of African-American folklore, song and soul of magical realism。 Blacks realize their survival value to recover the dignity and independence of themselves; they must maintain their values and cultural systems, in order to have a real life。 It is worth noting that Song of Solomon also contains the feature of initiation story。 The growth of Pilate is the most excellent point in this novel。 Morrison adopts lots of words to describe her career, from innocence to maturity; she is the soul of this novel。 文献综述

1。2 Initiation story and the study significance

     In American literature, writers began to care about the problem of youth’s growth in the middle of the 19th century。 Nathaniel Hawthorne is the first writer who centers on the novel of youth。 The Scarlet Letter, his most important work, is a novel on sin and initiation。 In the late half of the 19th century, industrialization and urbanization in America throw the youth in this period into the circumstances of social reform, providing lively and fresh material concern for the problem of youth’s growth。 They also mark the maturity of American novel of initiation。 (Marcus 221)

     The German philosopher Wilhelm Dither in his monograph Experience and Poem--- the earliest of initiation story detailed description, becomes the highest frequency definition which is referred by later study of initiation story。 The general idea is that: “the growth novel in the exploration of inpidual growth, based on each stage of growth process not only has its own value but also the development of the next phase。 Conflict and conflict in life is a necessary turning point for the development of the protagonist to mature and harmonious。"(Ruiz 51)

     American critic Marcos in his article "What is the initiation story” makes the following definition: initiation story shows that the young hero has gone through some painful experience after the event, or changed the original view of the world and their personality, or both。 By this change he gets rid of childhood innocence。 And eventually he is led to a real and complex adult world。 In the initiation story, the ceremony itself is optional, but there must be evidence that the change in the hero will have a permanent impact (Marcos 56)。来`自+优-尔^论:文,网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766-

     In his research on American growth novels, Professor Rue Yipping pointed out: “the growth novel is a novel which is the growth process of the characters, or is a novel about the growth experience of the characters。 It reflects the changing process of the characters' thoughts and psychology from innocence to maturity through the narration of one or several people's experiences。"(Marcus 90)