Self Destruction And Remolding

Beloved, a masterpiece by Afro-American woman writer Toni Morrison, wins her the Nobel Prize for literature. In this novel, Toni Morrison re-presents history and attacks the haunting slavery with massive flashback, stream of consciousness and fragment-like narrative pattern instead of the narrative method she applied previously. Through the female black slave Sethe's pursuit of herself, Morrison revives the history of 60,000,000 black slaves to an individual's psychological experience, so as to appeal the black nationality to retrieve the lost culture and reconstruct their national consciousness. A great deal of psychological description is a shining point of the novel. The internal monologue and multiple narrates make the story vivid and colorful. It unfolds the psychological world of the protagonists and promulgates the black's physical and mental devastation in which the American slavery resulted.Since its publication, Beloved has aroused a good deal of concern of literary critics from home and abroad, In literary criticism of the work, the articles from the perspective of psychological analysis are mostly based on traditional medicine, in which the main characters are regarded as mental patients, the causes are analyzed, and the treatments are provided. As a classic literary work, the interpretation of Beloved from the medical perspective will definitely cause some deviation and unilateralism, which will reduce its literariness. In view of this, the thesis draws on Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, analyzes the work from its unique literary conception and narrative technique, and unscrambles psychological changes of the main character Sethe, which maps out the black people's painful pursuit and remolding of themselves. In this way, the thesis reveals enormous and wordless suffering brought by American slavery and the shadow that the American slavery retained to the black even after it was abolished, In turn it raises thorough thinking of the heavy psychological experience of black people.The thesis is made up of six parts. In the foreword, the author gives a brief introduction to Beloved's reality background, the outline of the story and its research situation both at home and abroad. It also describes the purpose of writing, research methods and frame. Chapter 1 introduces the theory of psychoanalysis used in the thesis, including doctrine as personality structure, personality motivation, and personality development. Then it analyzes Morrison's motivation and psychology of writing, and at last it briefly describes the unique narrative patterns and methods in Beloved. Chapter 2 discusses in detail the process of Sethe's losing self. Sethe's lost of herself after beloved's death makes it even harsher of the coming into being of the black nation's self-consciousness. Chapter 3 analyzes the causes of the formation of Sethe's defective personality. In essence, the historical trauma and national cultural deficiency result in Sethe's split self, make her hard to get out of the shadow of slavery, and be free in the spirit with the mental scar that can never be healed. Chapter 4 discusses the long and difficult process of Sethe's self remolding. Sethe re-presents her past by confiding to her family. She eventually returns to the black community, and faces up to the memories of the past. The last part of the thesis is a summary. Through the process of Sethe's self destruction to remolding, we can see Morrison's expectation of the return of the black culture and self-consciousness of the black nation. The psychological experience that Beloved brings to readers has gone beyond race and gender. It also has general social and historical significance.