Toni Morrison And The Exploration Of The African American Way Of Existence

Toni Morrison(1931—), the recipient in 1993 of the Nobel Prize forliterature, is the most distinguished Afro-American woman writer of themodern world. Among her works, Morrison's novels are the most well-known.As a black woman with strong ethnic consciousness, Toni Morrison insistsall the time that all good art has always been political, however, allart must be beautiful too. All of her woks are deal with the Black livesand Black history. Especially from the feminine perspective, she drawsthe public concentrations to the life of the Black and their fate underSlavery and racialism. Morrison use literature as an exploring instrumentand try to find out how can the Afro-American evaluate themselvescorrectly and maintain the Blcak's nationality; how can they resist thecultral hegemony and carry forward the Black culture tradition; how canthey confront their past and recover from the historical trauma to createa stable future. Morrison's work is always both political andbeautiful. You may heard the beautiful rhyme caused by the special toneand music of the Black people; you may also experience the suspensivenessbecause of Morrison's employment of magic realism, multi-pespectivenarration, and fragmented plot arrangement. At the same time, you may feelthe strong appeal caused by the blending of technic of stream ofconsciousness, symbolism and a lyric tone. This thesis is intend toanalyze why and how Morrison use novels as a tool to probe the suvivalstrategy for the Afro-American, since Morrison hold that both politicaland artistic funtions are importan in the art.On the basis of detailed motif analysis of her five novels wrritenbefore the Nobel Prize was awarded to Morrison, the thesis is aimed atexploring the suvival strategy put forward by Morrison, digging out therelation between her living background and her opinions, and evaluatingthe signification of Morrison's suvival strategy. This thesis has threechapters. The first chapter: The political and artistic funtions ofliterature, shows the relation between Morrison and Amricanliterature, and explains why Morrison choosed literatrueas a probetool. Chaper two: The literal probing of suvival strategy for theAfro-American. This chapter studies the suvival ways pointed out byMorrison, that is to establish one's own subjectivity, topersue the Black cultral tradition, to achieve a cultral integration and to reconstructthe Black history. Chapter three: The changed identity and unchangedprobing. Chapter three mainly discusses the elastic identity strategyin Morrison's probing process.The thesis grasps Morrison's novels wholly, and studies the suvivalstrategy pointed out by Morrison through her works thoroughly. In thecontext of the globalization, this study is significant. It can afford anew way to deal with the relationship between different country withdifferent cultures and different traditions.