On The Dissimilation And Reconstruction Of Male Images In Tony Morrison’s Novels

As a Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Morrison is considered to be one of the greatest contemporary novelists and the first African-American writer to be so honored. African American people constitute the heroes or heroines of her novels. She wrote many remarkable novels such as The Bluest Eyes(1970), Sula(1974), Song of Solomon(1977), Tar Baby(1981), Beloved(1987), Jazz(1992) and so on. Based on the special angle of view, Toni Morrison describes many stories and figures to arouse our reflection about history.Since 1980s, critics have paid more attention to Toni Morrison’s writings. Their studies have been based mostly on cultural criticism, racialism, feminism, narrative strategy reflected in Toni Morrison’s novels. However, referring to most of the available literature concerned, the author believes that the male images in Morrison’s novels have not been given enough attention to by researchers so far. Therefore, this paper aims to make a comprehensive analysis of the male images in Toni Morrison’s novels in the perspective of Feminism and cultural criticism in particular. It is the author’s intention to fill in the missing part by taking the African American males’ characters in Morrison’s major novels as the object of research and explore their different features and evolutionary track manifested in the creative process of Toni Morrison.This thesis focuses its analysis on Morrison’s five important novels--The Bluest Eyes, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby and Beloved. There are four parts apart from introduction and conclusion. In the first chapter the thesis discusses the construction of the African American male in Toni Morrison’s novels, with its focus lying on the feminist creation background, the imbalance of gender and "the others" in Toni Morrison’s writings. In the second chapter it demonstrates the dissimilation of the African American male in Toni Morrison’s literary works. In the third chapter it explores the causes of dissimilation of the African American male from the perspective of class, culture and family. In the fourth chapter it discusses the reestablishing the subject of African American male from three aspects, walking out of the historical memory and cherishing themselves; rooting in the traditional culture of the African American people; absorbing different cultures and making them coexist.