A “Bad Faith” Study Of Sula From The Perspective Of Sartre’S Existentialism

Tony Morrison(1931-2019)is a typical representative of African-American female writer,whose works mainly depict the lives of black women in the era of slavery.Her second novel Sula was written in 1973 and mainly described two black females-Sula and Nel’s living states with refined languages and profound thoughtsThis thesis applies the perspective of Sartre’s existentialism and divides the full thesis into five chapters to study the "bad faith"of the protagonist Sula and Nel in the novel of Sula The first chapter briefly introduces Toni Morrison’s living experiences,works’creating background and Sula,then expounds the research framework and significance of this thesis The second chapter focuses on the research of Toni Morrison’s works at home and abroad,especially the research of Sula.The third chapter is the theoretical part of this thesis,focusing on the philosophical concepts that is related with Sartre’s existentialism,especially Sartre’s concepts of "for-itself","in-itself" and "bad faith".Chapter four and chapter five are the body parts of this thesis and both of the two chapters are constituted by three parts.The first part about the fourth chapter studies the manifestations of Sula’s bad faith;The second part analyzes factors that caused Sula’s bad faith from her external environments and personal character.Due to the influence of her growing environments and her personal factors,Sula constantly shows her transcendent attributes and eventually slips towards extremely transcendent bad faith;The third part studies Sula’s solution to her transcendent bad faith.Sula’s bad faith is caused by her continuous self-negative consciousness and this consciousness prompts her to constantly surpass herself,both of which contribute to her transcendental paranoia that belongs to one of for-itself’s internal conflicts,and the only way to relieve her bad faith is death.The first part about chapter fifth studies Nel’s two different forms of facticity bad faith;The second part studies factors that contributed to Nel’s facticity bad faith caused by her community and family’s influence.Controlled by her community’s traditional values and her mother,she infinitely slides to her own facticity,and eventually falls to extreme facticity bad faith;The third part studies the method to ease Nel’s extremely bad faith.As one of facticity paranoia that belongs to one of for-itself’s internal conflicts,Nel’s facticity bad faith can only be solved by her epiphany.The reason why I take "transcendence" and "facticity" to analyze Sula and Nel’s bad faith is because Sartre’s definition of bad faith which is an escape from the internal conflict of for-itself and the so-called internal conflict within for-itself just refers to its "transcendence" and"facticity".In addition,I select Sula as the research text is because I find that Sula and Nel’s living states are strongly similar to the internal conflicts’ paranoia between for-itself,the paranoia of transcendence and facticity.Through the bad faith study of Sula,this thesis tries to evoke people’s reflection on bad faith:moderately bad faith maybe is common in our life,but we should avoid our extremely bad faith.