Escape, Reflect, Return-An Exploration Of The Black Males’ Images And Growth In Toni Morrison’s Novels

Toni Morrison is the first contemporary Afro-American female writer to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The theme of her fictions is to represent and explore the history, destiny and spiritual world of black people in American society. The racial discrimination and gender oppression suffered by black women is the focus of her fictions. However, black men in her novels also play a supportive role in modeling images of female protagonists, and they are too important to be ignored. These black men are not only the victims of racism, but also the persecutors of sexism, the tangled identity of the black men indicate that the black males’ images contain rich spiritual energy and full tension in representing the theme and serving as a foil to the females images.This thesis is firstly based on the images of the black men in Toni Morrison’s novels. Her first six novels The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved and Jazz are taken as research texts. It analyses black males’ images and explores their identity and spiritual crisis, together with their growth process. The study has shown that the growth of the black male characters in the novels appears a diachronic increasing phenomenon, which can be roughly divided into three types:the first type of males are those who escape and retreat from their families, of which Cholly Breedlove in The Bluest Eye and BoyBoy in Sula are the examples. The second type of males are those who reflect after their escape, of which Milkman in Song of Solomon and Son in Tar Baby are the representatives. The third type of males, represented by Paul D in Beloved and Joe Trace in Jazz, are returners after reflection who begin to shoulder their responsibilities.Secondly, this thesis analyses reasons for the black males’ images and identity problems from the dimensions of history, culture, race and gender respectively. The following are the reasons:they left their homeland for a long period of time, therefore were eroded by the white-dominated culture, sexual and racial discrimination cause distortion of their values and psychological abnormality. Under such circumstances, they lost themselves and their identities. After the painful reflection, black males began to seek their historical and cultural roots, and eventually chose to return to their families.Finally, with the analysis of historical background and social reality, the thesis provides some ways for the black males to walk out of the crisis. It is necessary for them to trace back to their historical identity and forget the traumatic memory. It is also important to inherit traditional culture of the black people and accept multi-cultures at the same time. In order to achieve gender harmony, black men and women should forgive and cooperate with each other to create a good living paradise, and in this way black males can reconstruct their identities eventually.