A Study Of Margaret Walker And Her Jubilee

Margaret Walker (1915-1998) is a modern African-American poet and novelist. Her representative novel Jubilee was deemed to be a realistic classic of the black. In 1966, the time it was first published it became a hit instantly and mounted the list of American best-sellers because of its one-million-copy sales volume. It has been translated into several other languages. American literature critics believed that Jubilee could match with Gone with Wind. Currently in China there is little research on Walker, even much less on Jubilee, so this research paper aims to introduce this excellent novel to Chinese reader again since it was translated into Chinese in 1984 and draw the attention of national critics to the great writer. In addition to giving a comprehensive introduction of Margaret Walker by answering the question who Walker is and introducing the characteristics of her writing style and significance of her works, this paper probes into the cultural amalgamation, and explores the root of Vyry's mild attitude toward the white. By creating Vyry, Walker expressed her hope of solving the racial problems by means of peaceful communication.The distinctive characteristic of Jubilee is its authenticity. Her story was based on the narration of her grandmother about her life experience. The prototype of Vyry was Walker's great-grandmother. In order to keep a truthful record of black history, Walker consulted large amount of historical resources, and visited the places where the characters of the novel had lived. Therefore, Jubilee is of great historical significance. This research paper also studied how Walker reconstructed the American black history from the perspective of a female black, set up positive black images, and brought forth a solution to the race conflict. This paper includes five parts:The first part contains the introduction of the writer, and a review about present research on her in China and in America. So far only one brief paper has been found on the CNKI(Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure), discussing the theme of mother's love of Jubilee. In recent years, American literature critics started to pay attention to her again. They analyzed the black elements, black music, and theme of freedom of the work. The second part of the paper analyzes the writing style of Walker. While emphasizing its authenticity and realistic style, this paper examines its thick religious atmosphere, vivid and clear narration, and poetic language and stresses the humanistic spirit of Walker and the influence of white cultures on the heroine.The third part of the paper compares Jubilee with several other slavery novels of Walker's time. The similarity between Jubilee and Uncle Tom's Cabin lies in their Christian humanism. The greatest difference between them is that Stowe described slavery from the standpoint of a bystander, while Walker did this from the perspective of an insider. Comparing with Tony Morrison's Beloved, Jubilee emphasized the truthful description of black history, depicting the influence of slavery on black people's life, while Morrison emphasized the psychological influence of slavery on the females in the realm of spirit, truthfully reflecting the twisting of black women's mind. In comparison with The Sound and the Fury, Walker put emphasis on the reconstruction of the life of the black, while Faulkner's focus was on the breakdown of the white families, and Falkner only put the black people on the background. What's more, Walker didn't adopt any postmodern narrative techniques like Falkner or Morrison, so Walker's narration is orderly, clear, and easy to read.The fourth part the paper discusses the reconstruction of the black history. By depicting the life and culture of black people, Walker created positive images of black, defending that black people are equal human like the white. In character analysis, this paper starts with Vyry's mulatto identity, and then studies how Christianity and white culture influenced Vyry and contributed to her mild attitude to the white. This kind of friendliness hardly appeared in any other black novels. Walker portrayed the positive image of Vyry to break through the stereotype of the existing female black images like the tragic mulatto, the conjure-woman, witch, the sex object, the bitch goddess, or the harlot. Vyry was an incarnation of motherhood and morality. Walker compared Vyry with the so-called pious white Christian lady, Missy Salina to show that Vyry was the one who inherited the essence of Christianity, love and forgiveness.The fifth part the paper is conclusion. Margaret Walker is a Christian humanist. Influenced by Richard Write, she recognized Marxism in the field of economy. As mixed-blooded black, Walker and Vyry assimilated both the black culture and the white one. So they believed black people and white people all belong to the family of man and the best solution to race conflict was communication, Christianity and humanism instead of violence. Walker could be called a coordinator between the black and white. She has made an indelible contribution to the struggle for equality for the black people.