The Interpretation Of Toni Morrison’s Early Novels From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Toni Morrison (1931-) is an extremely important writers in the modern literary history of the United States,who is a black women, but also a master of the literary world of the world.Both of her black and women’s double special status, Morrison has been commitment to portraying African American’s life with a sincere black heart since she started to write in the fourth decade, not only detail the history of African American,the realities of misery and suffering, but also reveals the African American spirit, spiritual dilemma, and actively explore the way out, and offer the African-American compatriot’s intellectual responsibility.After consulting a large number of domestic and foreign documents and papers about studying Morrison, I found there were few of papers in studying the novels written before Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature from perspective of ethical Literary.Therefore, this paper attempts to analysis and interpretate the six novels written before Morrison won the Nobel Prize,such as "The Bluest Eye","Sula","Song of Solomon","Tar Baby","Darling", and "Jazz" and so on,from the perspective of ethical Literary mainly and Post-colonial theory supplemently.And I believed that Morrison explored an ethical demands of the road for the African-American compatriots from four aspects such as man and nature, man and society, people and the others,man and self and so on.This article consists of three parts:The first part is the introduction.At first, the article outlined Morison’s biography, the creation and the literature achievements. Then, it introduced the present situation of domestic and foreign about Morison’s studies.Finally, it briefly explained the ethical literary criticism which theory will be used in this article and the feasibility of the theory.The second part is the body,four chapters:The first chapter,through studying the natural images contained in the works of Morrison,I found that Morrison’s ethical demand in the relationship between man and nature was poetic coexistence, requiring the person and nature to live in harmony.Chapter II analysis of Morrison’s ethical ideas and the pursuit in the relationship between the human and social.The relationship between man and society are embodied in inside and outside two parts in Morrison’s novels.The outside relationship includes the relationships between the blacks and American slave society, black and white society.Inside part is the relationship between the black and black communities.The three aspects reveal that the blacks should not only remember the history but also face up to the reality of the dilemma,be neither humble nor pushy; combine the personal independence and the traditional power of the black community’s "patchwork quilt", the paper will the paper will use three to carry on the elaboration analysis.Chapter III discussed Morrison’s "good" ethical propositions in the relationship between people and others.Morrison, concerned the black family relationships (including parents and children, between husband and wife), the relationship between the Ethiopian compatriots, sisters feeling, highlighted the friendship between the courteous to Fucizixiao, the couple live in families and black compatriots mutual aid, equality, independence, sisterhood of these different forms of "good" respected. But above all these "good" can we truly’ achieve a healthy and harmonious relationship between man and others.Chapter fourth explored Morrison’s ethical demands in the relationship between man and self,which is the most intrinsic and most difficult to studied. In American society, the white is the mainstream.Morrison hope that the black people do not lose the true black, and not only integrate into the American society and accept the excellent elements of the mainstream culture, but also inherit and carry forward the excellent traditional culture of the black, and constantly improve the black self.The third part is the conclusion of this paper. This chapter makes the brief summary to the first four chapters, and thereby we draw such conclusions as follows:Morrison depicts the tragic history of ancient African Americans and exposes the physical and psychological trauma to African American, caused by slavery and racial discrimination, the direct result of slavery; In acdition. she concerned and descripred the problems of one individual and black communities in the new era and under new social background and interpretate her comprehensive and specific moral beliefs and ethical pursuit:African Americans should bear in mind the black history, address the existing problems, and unite the black compatriots with fraternity and mutual assistance, thus to achieve the aim that African Americans would melt into and stand erectly in the world of the whites with the image of determined and independent ones. At this point, the value and contribution of Morrison Construction of Humanistic Spirit is self-evident.