t also addresses a question that has always intrigued Morrison: 'Why paradise necessitates exclusion'" (Mulrine 71). Understandably, by referring to such a hostile, narrow-minded community as a paradise, it forces the reader to evaluate the mistakes of a racially segregated world from an unorthodox perspective.
             Separatism underlies the motives and events that propel the plot, but it is never more evident than in their reasoning to create this exclusive community. Although the novel is quite sporadic in the unfolding of its events, the timeline of the novel begins in late 1800's when nine ex-slaves and their families set out from Mississippi and Louisiana for the territory of Oklahoma. These slaves have been subject to years of hatred and prejudice in these historically brutal states. Once they arrive in Oklahoma, they are startled to find that the light-skinned blacks already there turn them away, telling the newcomers they are too black. "This permanently affects the group's identity: Future generations remember the rejection, with almost biblical inflation, as 'The Disallowing'" (Bent 145).
             Being turned away by the only people of the time they felt would accept them, these families had nowhere to turn. "Having been rejected, they called on their God to show them to their own Paradise, a 'Haven' of hallowed ground from which they could reject the rest of the world in return" (Shockley 718). Morrison injects a strong symbolism to paradise by the choice to name the town Haven. Although it is later relocated and renamed Ruby, the close resemblance to Heaven is a clear indicator of an
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