Mahsa Hashemi

Toni Morrison’s novels, The Bluest Eye and Beloved, have been highly recognized for the quite unorthodox, intimate and profound exploration of black experience in narratives that position the individual within the framework of communities that challenge, shape and define such primary concepts as identity, past, memory, trauma and subjectivity. As experimental and innovative narratives dealing with the complexities of human interactions and the impact of such interactions on the individual’s identity formation and development, the two novels provide a complex and challenging ground where Eric Berne’s theory of Transactional Analysis can help understand the characters. This study, therefore, seeks to provide a new reading of the novels in the light of Berne’s theory and his concepts of “Ego States,” “Transactions,” “Cathexis,” and “Shift in Ego States” and aims at delineating the characters’ patterns of behavior, modes of interaction, diverse ego states and the changes in these states that can result in a better understanding of the major characters, their problems, traumas and their methods of dealing with their traumas.