Research Means Alice Walker Novel

This paper aims to analyse the text of Alice Walker’s novel. By exploring and analyzing the image signification and the text signification in Alice Walker’s three novels, based on Meridian, The Color Purple, By the Light of My Father’s, we can reveal the relationship between Alice Walker and western classical text, and the relationship between Alice Walker and Afro-American writers and their texts, furthermore, we can have a more profound understanding of the rich connotation in the text, and re-examine the value of Alice Walker in American black literature history.This paper is divided into five chapters.Chapter one, the first chapter researches the meaning of Alice Walker’s novel with the theory of signification. This chapter is divided into two sections:the first section introduces the theory of Signification; the second section elaborates why we use the theory of Signification to study on Alice Walker’s novels.Chapter two, the second chapter mainly analyses the image signification in Alice Walker novels. There are a large number of images significations in Alice Walker’s novels; this chapter mainly discusses the Lesbian Image, the Circumcision Image and the Quilt Image.Chapter three, Chapter four and Chapter five mainly focus on the Signification of Text. Chapter three compares Alice Walker’s Meridian with Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Their Eyes Were Watching God is the first text to show the growth of Afro-American female’s self-consciousness in American literature history. Alice Walker has inherited Hurston’s theme in Meridian, and activates the old theme and reveals how Afro-American female find themselves in new era.Chapter four compares Alice Walker’s The Color Purple with the Bible. The Bible is a text which is full of patriarchy. It is very hard to find women’voices, but at the beginning, there is a paradise called Eden in the Bible, human pursues the Eden, because it symbolizes the happiness. Alice Walker has established an Eden Pattern in The Color Purple. By establishing the Eden, Alice Walker finds the women’voices, and deconstructs the patriarchy.Chapter five compares Walker’s By the Light of My Father s Smile with Daniel.Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe is a classic text of the post-colonial theory, the protagonist Robinson is a typical colonist figure. Walker acts out a namesake Afro-American protagonist called Robinson in By the Light of My Father’s Smile. But there is a notable difference between the two Robinson, the Robinson in By the Light of My Father’s Smile is a loser, even he doesn’t know who he is. The analysis shows that Walker pushes the research of identity problem forward by pointing out that Afro-American maybe miss their identity under racial background. Afro-American should inherit African tradition culture, and find themselves in their own culture.