An Archetypal Criticism Of Toni Morrison's A Mercy

Toni Morrison(1931-)is the only African American female writer who won the Nobel Prize in literature.Her works mainly concentrate on the black's sufferings,struggles and endeavors,especially the female's.In 2008,Morrison published her ninth fiction: A Mercy.Since its publication,A Mercy has caught numerous critics' attention and was selected as one of the Best Ten Books of 2008 by The New York Times.In this fiction,Morrison sets the historical background of the novel for the first time in the early North American colonization era when the slavery was in its infancy.In the uneven sections,Florens,a black slave,narrates her life experiences on Jacob's farm;in the even sections,the other ethnic characters interweave memories of their lives.Those memories record the vicissitude of Jacob's farm.Morrison goes beyond the races,presenting the farm first as a paradise constructed,then a paradise deconstructed and a paradise to be regained.The thesis analyzes the paradise displaced,the paradise lost and the paradise to be regained in A Mercy from the perspective of archetypal criticism.The body of the thesis consists of three parts.The first part argues from social hierarchy and race that Jacob's farm is first presented as a displaced paradise,where different ethnic groups are dependent on each other.Though he is a white master,Jacob works hard together with his slaves and white indentured labors.Lina,an American native slave,not only develops a good friendship with Rebekka,her Mistress,but also establishes a surrogate mother-daughter relationship with Florens,a black slave.The second part analyzes the deconstruction of the paradise by the sins of avarice and racial violence.Driven by a thirst for more wealth,Jacob isolates gradually from his family and indirectly causes the death of all his children.He also ends up with tragic death.After the death of her husband and all children,Rebekka becomes disheartened.She maltreats her slaves and intends to sell them.The third part contends Morrison's expectation of different ethnic groups making joint endeavors to reconstruct a paradise from Florens' awakening journey,Sorrow's rebirth and Lina's return to the Indianness.