On The Theme Of Trauma In Toni Morrison's Paradise

Toni Morrison(1931-)is the first African American black female writer who won the Nobel Prize in literature in the world.Her literary works always explore the history of the blacks and their spiritual world,revealing the traumatic history of the blacks for over one hundred years.One of the themes Morrison pays close attention to is the blacks' trauma.In Paradise,what the blacks have suffered and the process of their self-salvation are similar to the process of recovery in trauma theory.What's more,the blacks of different colors make a difference in their own self-salvation.Therefore,this thesis,taking the blacks who have suffered unfair treatments as the objects of the study,attempts to analyze the different attitudes of the blacks of different colors in the face of trauma and explore the reasons of psychological trauma and the various ways of their self-salvation.This thesis consists of introduction,body and conclusion.The introduction gives a brief account of Morrison's life and her works,and summarizes the domestic and foreign researches on Morrison.It also illustrates research significance and the main structure of this thesis.The body is divided into four chapters.Chapter One briefly introduces the development of trauma theory and its application in literature.Chapter Two discusses the collective trauma of dark-skinned blacks and the individual trauma of light-skinned blacks.Chapter Three analyses the reasons that cause trauma from the perspective of trauma transmission and trauma images.Chapter Four explores the recovery from trauma and analyses the different ways to heal the trauma of the characters in Ruby and the Convent according to the process of recovery,and further discloses that only by a correct understanding of history and accepting dissidents,can trauma be healed.Conclusion points out that the people in Ruby town fail to complete the recovery while the people at the Convent succeed in completing the recovery.It comes to a conclusion that the reconstruction of self-identity must trace back to history.The theory of trauma plays an important role both in the reconstruction of history and the recovery of trauma.Using the theory of trauma to analyze Paradise can provide not only a new approach for readers to decode the novel,but also references for the social group that have suffered trauma.