The Cultural Metaphor Of Black People's Diet In Toni Morrison's Novels

Toni Morrison is a famous black writer. She is the first African-American woman writer, who is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Each of her works echoes the sound of black culture. Morrison became the first black woman writer to be so honored in the American literary history. She won national fame in the literary world and she quickly became the mainstream of American literature writer in the United States. Her works had become the model in many university literary studies.What Morrison concerned is the various relations between the black community, including family relations, gender relations, the relationship between women. Morrison tries to reproduce the general status of African American history and the black people's survival by exploring these relationships. Most of protagonists in her novels are struggling in the black faith and white values and the contradictions between traditional African-American culture and modern civilization. They are trying to find their own identity and location. In her works, though we can clearly feel the direct and indirect conflict between the blacks and whites, what leaves a deep impression on the readers is the image of diet, which has a metaphorical meaning. In Toni Morrison's works, diet is often used to shape the protagonists'character and their position in society; she often uses the metaphorical meaning of these images to explore the cultural identity of African American, trying to seek a way for the black culture.Although the research and comments about Morrison and her works have been quite extensive and in-depth, there is still a lot of space to further study. This paper tries to find the metaphor meaning behind diet and to discuss the margined and oppressed African-American World and find out how to build a road for the black culture to be survived in American society. Besides, it tries to examine the black culture tradition from the ethic culture confrontation between the black and white.This dissertation is divided into three parts.The first chapter presents the research of Morrison's creative arts. She is a black writer who takes the fate of the blacks as her works'theme. She shows that the black people still live in the shadow of racism in American society; she concerns about the ways relating to black people's existence and actively seeks ways for the black culture. Her literary creation is regarded as spiritual wealth. As a black writer, Morrison thinks that the white culture has seriously suppressed the development of black culture. From her first novel The Bluest Eye beginning, Morrison has been dedicated to black writing, and explored the black community's emotions in the American country full of racial prejudice. She also tries to explore the African American cultural roots. Not only is she familiar with the black folk tales, Greek myths and Christian Bible, but also she benefits from the nurturing of Western classical literature.The second chapter focuses on diet, which is an artistic image with metaphorical significance. From the image of diet, Morrison digs out the deep cultural values of the black people. By reading the scenes that described diet in Toni Morrison's works, we can see the conflict between black culture and white culture; the desire that the black people want to survive and get personal freedom; the struggle between the black people and white slave owners. The natural diet and eating habits in the life of blacks are always associated with pastoral values, and it often connects to the interpersonal relationships. All of them are related to the national culture, and even the national destiny. If the blacks want to be successful in American culture, they must leave their home forever; but the cost is terrible. Once they leave their home, the things that nurtured them are no longer useful for them; life would not be useful for them too. Using the food imagery, Morrison shows in the novel that the values of competition and success are not good for human life. Neither can they nourish human beings, nor they can conform to people's basic needs. The dream has so great attraction that many people in the works all abandon their original heritage to pursue it, but eventually, they walk into a dilemma, which is to return black culture itself, or completely agree with the values to compete successfully. The racial inequality between the black people and the white people is a problem in the United States, and the blacks have never stopped their dream of obtaining their full recognition in the white society. The cruelty of slavery and cultural harm has caused their mind alone, depressed, anxious, metamorphosis, hatred, dead and even distorted their appetite. With the diet, Morrison wants to show that the blacks have been independent and have their own precious national cultural traditions, but under the forces of white culture and racist oppression, their culture was marginalized, and even lost.The third chapter focuses on the reproductive problem that Morrison has been looking for. What she continually seeks is the way for the black race and culture and tries to express the importance for the black people to determine their cultural identity and return to their ethnic and cultural home. Morrison enables us to see that the blind pursuit of white values and standards instead of affirming their own identity and regarding, their black cultural heritage, will result in the distortion of selves. Rather than fully accepting the ways of the white society, Morrison encourages the black people to love their own culture and affirm their identity, because the affirmation of their cultural identity is very important in their way to pursuit their full recognition in American society.