Distorted Mind, Abnormal Behavior

Toni Morrison, the first black woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, has established her fame not only in America but also on the global scene. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, plays an important role in the study of Morrison's black personality structure. This novel was published in the early 1970s, and it tells about a story of a little black girl. She desires for a pair of blue eyes which represents a flight from blackness and isolation. But she goes mad under the pressure of race discrimination, gender confrontation, community clash, distorted family and the psychological trauma of self-contempt. Readers will find this novel extremely powerful, as it has revealed the inter-colonialism of the United States which has an immense impact on the psyche of the black minorities.A psychoanalytic study of The Bluest Eye is undertaken in the light of Sigmund Freud's theory of the structures of mind, to explain the culturally and psychologically colonized African Americans and try to dig out the inner elements that result in their self-loathing, self-contempt and the self-destruction.The main body of this thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter One offers a detailed explanation for using Freudian psychoanalysis as the theoretical approach to the research, then overviews the previous psychoanalytic studies on the novel, and lastly expounds the differences between the thesis and the former ones. And it also surveys the theories of Freudian psychoanalysis that are relevant to the thesis. And the embodiment of the theoriesin the novel The Bluest Eye is briefly depicted in this part.Chapter Two is the most significant part which mainly analyses the personality structure of Pecola and Pauline, through which we see the sharp conflicts in their psyche: they are the conflicts between the id and the superego, with the ego consciously or unconsciously adjusting the inner conflicts to the outside reality by means of the defense mechanisms. Pauline's superego is a faithful servant for the white, which demands her to sacrifice all her human emotion and desires for her religious belief and the white value. Therefore, she desperately suppresses her id, hoping to totally abandon it. However, the power of the id is born by nature and is too great to be ridded. She sacrifices her family and her beloved daughter. Pecola influenced by Pauline also cannot deal with the psychical conflicts between the id and the superego and it is finally beyond the adjustment of the ego. Therefore, Pecola's mental imbalance is caused and her destruction is doomed.Chapter Three mainly analyses the symbols in the novel from the perspective of Freudian psychoanalytic literary criticism. The symbols in the novel fall into two categories: the objects and the characters. Marigold symbolizes the beauty of nature and the repression of the social environment. The symbolic meaning of "the bluest eye" implies the answers to the different outcome for Pecola and Claudia. Pauline is a symbol of crippled and irresponsible black women. And Cholly symbolizes incest. By using these character symbols, Morrison makes her attempts obvious.The last part concludes that the three systems of the personality structure are cross-opposing-and-restricting among one another, and the contradictory movement of them shapes people's personality and thus their behavior. Human beings are a contradictory aggregation, and in their psychic factors there are instincts, including all kinds of desire and impulse, as well as rationality and morality. Such a contradiction is inside and belongs to oneself. The differences among these inner factors and the result of their interaction are expressed externally as people's different personality and behavior, such as the cowardliness and self-loathing in Pecola and Pauline. The three systems of the personality structure must adjust to and cooperate with one another so as to achieve a balanced mind from an imbalanced mind and accomplish the success of survival. During the dynamically balancing process, the ego's role of adjustment proves to be very important, when it employs defense mechanisms according to the reality policy and under the guidance of the superego. In addition, the symbols, viewed from the perspective of Freudian psychoanalysis, convey a strong taste of unconsciousness, and reveal that it is appropriate to apply the theories of Freudian psychoanalysis to the study of the novel not only in its characters' personality, but also in its plot and style.