The Whoop Of Black Women In The Novel A Mercy

This thesis applies the theory of figures and ground from cognitive poetics toanalyze Morrison’s latest novel A Mercy to discuss what she conceives the uniqueideas and great facility in getting up character，narration and image that is in order toaffording a short cut to the theme in this novel.This thesis is mainly divided into five parts. It makes an overview of the author,her writing and the theory of figure and ground, and also puts forward the structureframe of this paper in the first part. It considers the themes and ideas in novel as thefigures foregrounded by the author. As following the focus points in the text and usingthe specific perception of knowledge, readers reach more profound understanding ofthe theme. It mainly sets focuses on the image highlights in the novel A Mercy in thesecond part. Foregrounding within the text can be achieved by a variety of devices,such as repetition, the use of creative metaphor, innovative descriptions, and so on. Itgrasps these images accorded with the feature of repetition and metaphor tounderstand the internal cognitive motivation in the text and also profoundly reflect theimplication of these images in novel: shoes, water, deer and trees. In the third part ofthis thesis, it mainly talks about the foregrounding of the marginal man. The authoruses the multiple narrative technique and abnormally describing characters to narratethe black women in the novel, arriving at the aim of drawing a great deal of attentionfrom readers. By these methods, the readers can have more fully and a deeperunderstanding about the oppression under slavery and patriarchy which the blackwomen suffer. It comprehensively and profoundly expresses an abhorrence of slaveryand patriarchy, and also embodies the importance of the black folk custom for theblack women to find themselves. In the fourth part of the paper, it analyses the twoevents which play an important role in the development of the novel plot and find outthat the duration of narration is stretched; the frequency of narration is high. Moreover,the major figures in these two events are metaphorical. So the readers should paymore attention to these figures shaped by the author and could have more insight about the theme of this novel. In the last part, it sums up these devices within the textto separate figures and grounds. As the features of foregrounding, the figure hasalways been the focus of readers. So the figures analyzed in this paper, it’s not onlyexpress the theme of this novel, but also the Excellent writing skills of author as well.