Regaining The Spiritual Freedom

Beloved is the masterpiece of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. By telling a story about the slaves'escape from the slavery and their journey to spiritual freedom, it documents the destruction and resilient survival of the Afro-American people—60 million or more, according to Morrison's approximation of how many died in the Middle Passage. The novel illustrates the painful past the freed Afro-Americans bear and their struggle to regain their spiritual freedom. Morrison aims to inspire people to ponder over the connotation of freedom.Since its publication, Beloved has received extensive critical acclaim. Critics have explored the work from different perspectives, but few of them have paid attention to it from the archetypal criticism perspective. In fact, biblical archetypes suffuse the novel in its characters, images, structure and theme. This thesis tends to probe into this classical work from the perspective of biblical archetypal criticism on the novel's characters, images, structure and theme. Through a close study of the work, a conclusion is drawn that Morrison shows us the Afro-Americans'painful past and expresses her great concern for the freed ex-slaves. Although the former slaves have been physically freed for many years, they are still spiritually enslaved by their painful past. By portraying a cluster of biblical archetypes, Morrison purports to find a way for the former slaves to embrace their spiritual freedom. The black community must confront their painful past bravely and properly to get their individual and communal redemption.The thesis consists of three parts. Part one is the introduction. The author first briefly introduces Toni Morrison's life experience and the influence it impacts upon her works. Second, the author analyzes the critical reviews on Toni Morrison and Beloved. Third, the author explains the research motivations, methodology and questions that are employed in this thesis. Last is the organization of this thesis.Part two is the biblical archetypal interpretation of Beloved which is divided into four chapters. Chapter One is the theoretical premises of Beloved which are based upon Northrop Frye's theoretical analysis of archetypes in literature, concerning of archetypal characters, images, structures and theme. The author of this thesis also demonstrates the feasibilities of approaching this novel from the perspective of archetypal criticism. Chapter Two attempts to probe into the main biblical archetypal characters embedded in the novel. Sethe is associated with the Scapegoat archetype; Beloved and Amy correspond with the archetypal character Jesus Christ, the Savior. Chapter Three focuses on the biblical archetypal images in the novel which include images of water, vegetation and animals. Chapter Four concentrates on the U-Shaped archetypal structure and the biblical archetypal theme"redemption".Part three, the last part of this thesis, is the conclusion, which is a summary of the key points discussed previously while revealing Toni Morrison's intention of employing archetypes in Beloved and stressing the significance of doing so.The successful use of biblical archetypes contributes considerably to Toni Morrison'Beloved. It is fitting to say that exploring the archetypes in Beloved will be effective and helpful to appreciate this classical work.