THE THEME OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN IDENTITY AND FREEDOM IN TONI MORRISON'S SONG OF

Folklore plays an important role in the life and culture of African-Americans. The novel "Song of Solomon" is based on various stories, myths and legends, particularly the Biblical "Song of Song", the myth of the flying African and the folk tale. The main message of the novel is to be close to the roots. The importance is the role of ethnic self-awareness in the formation and completeness of the personality. The article presents the ideology of the novel “Song of Solomon” through an analysis of its plot, characters, message and artistic expressions, in which the central idea is the connection of individual and ethnic identities. The author's message is presented in which the issue of preserving ethnic identity is central. The idea of ​​freedom is symbolized in the novel through a person's flight to his ethnic origins. Morrison equates the ideas of freedom and identity, and discusses the idea of ​​eternity. In today's rapidly changing world, when scientific and technological progress and globalization processes have a direct impact on the psychology and lifestyle of modern man, preserving identity can be considered one of the tasks facing humanity. Personal identity, which is also in demand along with ethnic identity, has become one of the vulnerable problems of the modern world, the solution of which depends on the issue of the existence of peoples with different cultures. Naturally, this problem is of greater concern to small countries, which find it more difficult to resist the pressure of globalization. The novel was also studied from the point of view of the methodology of magical realism, revealing features characteristic of this direction. The use of symbols is a feature of magical realism, which seems to help Toni Morrison convey the idea of ​​​​the work to the reader.