Between The Confrontation And Harmony Of The White And The Black

Toni Morrison (1931—), an African- American female novelist, is the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, and she is also the leader of the third wave of Afro-American literature. She has strong national complex to the Afro-American Groups. She devotes herself to the construction and the development of her national culture. In her novels, she ponders unceasingly on the development of national culture, explores how Afro-American people inherit and develop their culture and tradition, and how they use their culture to fulfill themselves. Her works reflect her anxiety of the national culture and of the African-American Groups' present situation.The perspective of cultural ecology in this thesis is to highlight the relations between culture and environmental elements that bear the significance on the life of culture. Through this perspective, this thesis analyzes Morrison's early four works: the Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Tar Baby. Firstly, it analyzes the plight of African-American culture. Then, it discusses how Morrison, though her writing, ponders the construction of African-American culture, and tries to make the culture full of vitality. From the perspective of cultural ecology, if you try to construct a kind of culture, you should construct not only the internal ecosystem of culture, but also the ecological relation between the internal culture and its external environment. The elements of internal ecosystem of culture include cultural identity of people, traditional culture, national psychological quality, and national history and so on. Among them, people's cultural identity is a core that embodies the intrinsic vitality of culture and is the most important element to construct culture. The elements of external environment of culture include politics, economy, system and other culture and so on. The external environment influences the prosperity and decline of culture. Morrison first tries to construct the internal ecosystem of culture. She calls on African Americans to achieve their cultural identity in the Bluest Eye. She criticizes African Americans for setting up absolute ego and insists that they should have contact with traditional culture In Sula. Finally, Morrison constructs the internal ecosystem of culture in Song of Solomon. Through the establishment of qualified carrier of culture, the Afro-American culture possesses the internal vigor. In Tar Baby, she thinks about the possibility of relations between Afro-American culture and its external environment. However, she doesn't present how to specifically establish Afro-American national cultural ecology and how to expand the development space of their own culture under the background of multi-culture.From the perspective of cultural ecology, the author of this thesis believes, only if African American free themselves from their own small world, consider from the global perspective of building up American culture, and unite other nations to form a unified and harmonious American culture, can African American set up a harmonious cultural ecology under the multicultural background. Afro-American culture is an indispensable part of the American national cultural ecology system, and only being one part of it can American black culture gain lasting vitality.