A Study Of Beloved From The Perspective Of Trauma

Toni Morrison is one of the most famous black writers and critics in contemporary America.Her fifth novel Beloved was awarded Nobel Prize in 1993,which makes her the first African American writer to win this prize.Her works have reflected the African Americans' miserable past and praised their perseverance,which contributes greatly to the development of black literature.This thesis will discuss how Morrison to represent African Americans' trauma from traumatic themes,characterization and plot writing.This thesis mainly includes introduction,main body and conclusion.The first chapter deals with the traumatic themes including historical trauma and trans-generational trauma.The historical trauma of African Americans mainly comes from the slavery suppression and the loss of self-identity.Although the slavery system has been abolished for hundreds of years,African Americans are still discriminated by the white.Trans-generational trauma refers to the secret trauma in family,which can be passed down to children even though the children are free from the traumatic experiences.This kind of trauma can be verified by the infanticide in the novel.The author also offers some ways to work through African Americans' trauma.The second chapter describes how to represent trauma in characterization writing.First,red color is used to record the trauma of African Americans.The appearance of red color makes African Americans feel terrified.Where there is white people,there is black people's blood.Red makes them remind of the brutal slavery system.Second,those early slaves live in silence all their life.In this thesis,silence is divided into two types.Both of them stand for the traumatic past.Finally,the sufferings of African Americans are also represented by close-up technique.The last chapter analyzes how to represent trauma in plot writing.Firstly,although the slavery system has been abolished,the trauma can not be cured.Just as the open-ending and repetition features of Jazz music.The future of African Americans can not be promised.Secondly,montage technique enables the time and places in the novel to be changed freely just as the rememory of victims.Finally,intertexuality provides readers an opportunity to realize the brutal slavery system.From the writing of traumatic themes,characterization and plot writing,it is easy to realize that Beloved not only discover the inhumane slavery system but also the unbearable trauma of African Americans.Toni Morrison means to make people memorize the bleeding slavery history and learn a lesson from it.