Beauty With Diversity And Integrity

Toni Morrison,as the first African American female Nobel laureate for literature,has distinguished her literary status for her abiding obsession with African American culture as well as her ultimate care for human beings.God Help the Child,as a new work by 84-year-old Morrison,is a continuation and sublimation of her fealty to African American culture and her insistence on humanity.Employing nonlinear strategies and making child molestation as the inducement of plot development,Morrison aims to explore an effective way of building a harmonious America characterized by beauty with diversity and integrity.Considering many studies lingering on the surface of childhood trauma,this thesis tactfully catches the shared value between Chinese idea of beauty with diversity and integrity and the forms and spirit of African American jazz music,and audaciously fuses them together,aiming to burrow into the idea of beauty with diversity and integrity indwelling in the textual style,narrative strategies and political ideal from the perspective of the forms and spirit of jazz music.In concert with research purpose,this thesis adopts the research method consistent with the idea of beauty with diversity and integrity.Based on two main research lines — the forms of jazz music and the spirit of jazz music,the thesis intends to interpret the respective beauty of textual style,narrative strategies,and political ideal as well as the harmonious whole of their interrelations.The thesis is composed of six parts.Introduction first outlines Morrison’s life experiences,which bequeath her the legacy of sensitiveness and insightfulness of racism,African American music,community and the Western culture.Second,this part draws forth the research significance of this thesis by making a literature review of the novel both at home and abroad.Chapter One is the theoretical foundation.In light of interdisciplinary research of this thesis,the priority of this chapter is to comb through the application of African American music in African American literature to lay a historical foundation for the feasibility of research direction of the thesis.Then,by giving an intensive interpretation to the origin and development of jazz music as well as beauty with diversity and integrity in the forms and spirit of jazz music,four core points are set forth: first,the idea of beauty with diversity and integrity refers to a balance between “diversity” and “integrity”;second,the forms of jazz music are embodied in the jam session,call-and-response and riff;third,the spirit of jazz music is reflected in the rebellious spirit,the self-restraint spirit,and the cohesive spirit;fourth,the forms and spirit of jazz music share the core value of beauty with diversity and integrity.Chapter Two starts with examining the external textual style beauty in the forms of jazz music,which illustrates the idea of beauty with diversity and integrity.The first section explores chapters and paragraphs based on jam session,call-and-response and riff.The second section illustrates riffs of language from repetition and syncopation.The textual style beauty in the forms of jazz music not only displays a lavishly visual and aural feast of jazz music,but also paves the way for studying the internal narrative strategies and political theme of the novel.The internal narrative beauty in the forms of jazz music is the focus of Chapter Three.The first section details jam session in narrative time from the perspective of the impromptu alliance of temporal order and the impromptu alliance of temporal duration.The second section displays the call-and-response in narrative communication from the perspective of point of view and speech presentation.The two sections coupled with their subordinate parts,each with its unmistakable identifying features,make a joint effort to create a narrative beauty represented by mosaic plot and jazz-like rhythms.This kind of narrative beauty is also the elucidation of beauty with diversity and integrity.Chapter Four gives an in-depth interpretation of Morrison’s abiding political ideal from the perspective of the rebellious,self-restraint,and cohesive spirit of jazz music.On the basis of scrutiny of the whole novel,this chapter demonstrates Morrison’s ultimate care of human beings and digs out the realization of a harmonious America characterized by beauty with diversity and integrity depends on three indispensable ingredients — social justice,African Americans’ self-realization and united communities.Conclusion is the summary and sublimation of the aforesaid four chapters.It points out the novel not only provides a new way of novel creation by its textual style beauty and narrative beauty,but also is of far-reaching significance to construct a harmonious world by virtue of its political ideal beauty.