An Ecological Approach To Tar Baby

Ecocriticism appears in Britain and America in the late 1970s, and then sweeps the whole world in the 1990s. This is a literary and cultural criticism movement advance with times, which has the relationship with human economic and social sustainable development. It is closely related with the current ecological crisis which the human society is facing. According to ecocriticism theory, the whole world was extended to an entire biosphere. Therefore, the development of ecocriticism reflects sense of mission of nature and society by scholars. As a theory of literary criticism, even though it is young, it goes gradually from edge to center, so reinterpretation of the classical works from an ecological perspective is one of the main tasks of ecocriticism.Toni Morrison is a very important black woman writer in the United States; she is the first black woman writer who won the Nobel Prize in 1993. Her works show a vivid picture of African American's life and go deep into their inner world. Tar Baby is one of Toni Morrison's important works. In Tar Baby, Morrison uses fable to show the conflicts and contradictions in life under the social and natural environment in order to achieve dramatic effect. The open ending of the novel provides a lot of possibilities:How to make Morrison's dream of establishing a harmonious society come true? This is the question that Toni Morrison wants her readers, especially the Afro-Americans, to think over. Since the publication of Tar Baby in 1981, it arouses extensive attention. Many people have made a lot of analyses from archetypal criticism and post-colonialism analysis. With the development of Ecocriticism, which provides a new perspective to interpret classic novels, the author of the thesis will analyze the main reasons of imbalance in natural ecology and social ecology in Morrison's Tar Baby from an ecocriticism perspective, the thesis calls on the ecological consciousness of mankind and constructs a harmonious society where people can live in harmony with each other and with nature.The thesis is divided into five parts.Chapter One makes a brief introduction of Toni Morrison's writing background; introduces the research of Tar Baby domestic and abroad, makes brief introduction the critical theory-ecocriticism.Chapter Two analyzes methodology of ecocrticism and its developing process and social meaning, then give brief introduction of deep ecology, ecofeminism and social ecology.Chapter Three uses deep ecology theory to analyze many natural images which in Tar Baby Morrison uses, suggesting that human beings explore the nature relentlessly, which exposes white male-dominated of human commit a crime on nature under the modern civilization, showing the ecocriticism concerns on the nature. As a black woman, Morrison knows that the blacks traditionally worship nature; Morrison creates different characters that truly love nature and harmoniously coexist with other creatures, their ecological consciousness accords with the theory of ecocentrism.Chapter Four, by using social ecology theory to criticize gender discrimination, hierarchies system, racial discrimination, colonialism and cultural hegemony, these systems have bred during the process of exploiting and oppressing of the natural world. Morrison focuses on relationship between human and nature, men and women, whites and blacks harmony. Therefore she criticizes the male-centered, ethnocentrism and colonialism. She advocates a variety of human society, ethnic and class diversity, cultural diversity and opposes every forms of control and autocratic. Through analyzing the social conflicts and contradictions in Tar Baby, discloses Morrison's primary exploration of harmonious society.Chapter Five is the conclusion:man's greed to the nature and hierarchical system is the root of the ecological problem, which points out the motive and the significance of the thesis.