On Ethical Environment In A Mercy From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Toni Morrison,a famous African-American female writer,is a representative person in the American literary world and even in the world’s literary.She is the first black female writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature in history.Her unique perspective of writing and attractive narrations is also favored by readers and critics.Toni Morrison’s works achieve breakthroughs and transcendences while using racial and gender identity,making the black cultural tradition return to the public’s perspective.A Mercy is another glorious masterpiece written by Toni Morrison in 2008 with love and humane care.The background of the novel is set in the early days of the North American Colony.The novel tells about people with different skin colors live in a disordered ethical environment under the persecution of slavery and attempt to reconstruct a healthy ethical environment through different approaches.As a theory of literary criticism,ethical literary criticism provides a new theoretical perspective for the study of ethnic literature.The ethical literary criticism interprets literary works at the site of historical ethics,and emphasizes the social responsibility of literature and criticism.Ethical environment is the core term of ethical literary criticism,which is the historical space in which literary works exist.It reflects the social environment at that time in a concentrated way.Taking the works of African-American female writers for example,their works reflect black women face ethical environment such as separation of flesh and blood,alienation of relationships,and self-dissipation under the dual discrimination of race and gender,which also shows mental pain and emotional sufferings that racial discrimination brings to the black women.This thesis tries to analyze ethical environment in A Mercy from the perspective of ethical literary criticism through combination of text and theory.This thesis is divided into five parts: the first part is introduction,which briefly introduces Toni Morrison and her works as well as previous researches on A Mercy at home and abroad,and points out the innovation and research value of this article.The second chapter mainly introduces ethical literary criticism’s content,development history as well as its nowadays situation.Meanwhile,it gives a detailed introduction of terminology of ethical environment and uses the heroin’s ethical environment as an example to explain its connotation to the reader.Based on the ethical literary criticism,the third chapter analyzes the emergence and manifestations of the confusing ethical environment that the main characters have experienced in A Mercy and discusses the reason why people of different skin colors face confusing ethical environment.The fourth chapter focuses on the analysis of how people with different skin colors reconstruct ethical order and ethical identities so as to get rid of the harm caused by the confusing ethical environment.The last chapter is the conclusion part.Based on the discussion of the ethical environment faced by main characters in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy,this article reveals the rich ethical connotation contained in the novel.Toni Morrison is advocating an ethical environment that values families,builds harmonious interpersonal relationships and adheres to self-ethical identities.This ethical environment has a positive impact on minority groups of America,which makes them strengthen cohesion among their families and groups and thus better integrate into American society.Toni Morrison tries to warn people to spend more time accompanying the family,communicate with each other,understand and love each other in social groups,so as to build a harmonious interpersonal relationship.Besides the living conditions of the black community,Toni Morrison also has paid attention to the pain and struggles of other skin colors and races,which shows Toni Morrison’s deep humanistic sentiment and strong responsibility of solving new social problems.