The Ethical Dilemma And Redemption Of Black Families In The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison is one of the most outstanding African American women writers in the 20th century as well as the only black female winner of Nobel Prize for Literature.In her works,Morrison adheres to her African American identity all the time and,as such particular identity and perspective,she delicately describes the different fates and the humiliating lives of African Americans.Her writing style is succinct and the plot vivid with elements of magic realism.Regarding the blacks and their spiritual performance and the historical fates as themes in her works,she gives an incisive and vivid description of the hard and helpless life of Afro-Americans in the white dominant society.Throughout Morrison's creative career,the concern over and exploration into family ethics are the main focuses.Her maiden novel The Bluest Eye is no exception—a full-length novel reflecting the human distortion of African Americans by American white hegemony.It narrates that the Breedloves and the Geraldines are in the ethical dilemma of alienated conjugal love and lacking parental love.Unable to bear the duties of family ethical identities,they end up in a tragedy.Even though the Bluest Eye is a tragic novel,it still delivers hope;Morrison implies a path to redemption of black family ethics through the healthy growth of Claudia,the narrator of the novel.With relevant theories of ethical literary criticism and post-colonialism,the thesis analyzes the dilemma of marital ethics and inter-generational ethics in the Breedloves and the Geraldines.And it is believed that the primary cause of two families' ethical dilemma consists in the fact that the white dominant culture makes African Americans gradually lose their own national culture and tradition.Only by inheriting the black traditional culture can African Americans get out of their family ethical dilemma.