A Study Of Mirror Structure In Toni Morrison's Novels

Toni Morrison is one of the best contemporary American black woman writers. And she is the first African American woman writer awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 for her tremendous contributions in literary field. Her works have broken a new ground during a critical time for black writers, particularly for black women writers, and appealed not only to scholars but to the general public. Most of Morrison's novels make Afro-Americans as the heroes, aiming to reveal their personal growth, confusion on their identity, as well as cultural aspirations, by describing the black people's life.Mirror Stage Theory is the logical starting point of Lacan's theoretic construction, which is about the Self and its nature, as well as formation of self-identity. Throughout Toni Morrison's novels, the black roles are all experiencing the confusion and trauma of"mirror stage", searching constantly for the subject by comparing the self and others, in order to look for identity. This thesis attempts to start from Lacan's basic theory of self-formation, aiming to reveal the reliability of self-formation theory in Lacan's mirror stage, as well as the possibility of this theory's application to explaining Morrison's character creation. The thesis follows the track of characters'self-searching in Morrison's novels, analyzing the profound reasons for their trauma, as a basis for analysis of the special artistic charm of Morrison's works.This thesis is divided into three chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion.Chapter One mainly discusses the constitution model of mirror structure in Morrison's works in which sharp contrast exists between such images as mother, friends, the community, the white, etc. and the black heroes. All of them have formed the mirror image, which plays a role of"frame of reference"throughout the heroes'growing up, thus forming the comparison relations between self and others.Chapter Two mainly analyzes both the correct guidance and negative misleading of the"mirror"on black heroes'self-consciousness, which have resulted in the heroes'significantly different fate, either to confusion and destruction, then to break of the subject; or to salvation and sublimation, thus realization of cultural regression.Chapter Three seeks to explore the specific artistic tension of Morrison's works by analyzing the alienation of the subject and the object, desire and reality, based on the analysis of the construction of mirror structure and the heroes'different fate, aiming to emphasize that one has to, either cognitively or emotionally, rely on others to realize self-formation, thus leading to the eternal irreconcilable growth confusion.