An Interpretation Of All God's Chillun Got Wings From The Perspective Of Post-colonialism

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill is American's foremost dramatist,a famous writer in expressionism and a founder in American national drama.O'Neill once successively acquired Pulitzer Prize four times.The Nobel Prize in literature was also awarded to him in 1936.All God's Chillun Got Wings is a famous work which was written in 1923.It tells a story about the black Jim and the white Ella's effort for their happy marriage for audiences and readers.O'Neill vividly describes the images of the heroes and environment around.It shows people's tough life under the condition of racial discrimination.Racial discrimination,like an invisible shadow,always revolves around Jim and Ella,which makes the hero and the heroine love and hate each other.Under the influence of racial discrimination,the emotions between the hero and the heroine have always been contradictory state.The thesis uses Homi Bhabha's post-colonialism to analyze the paper and analyzes the features of post-colonialism embodied in the play.Six parts are included in the paper.Firstly it introduces O'Neill and his work All God's Chillun Got Wings in introduction,and then the paper reviews the research and current situation of the play at home and abroad.Through the finished research by domestic and foreign scholars,it is found that it is a relative good way to analyze the play from the perspective of post-colonialism.At last the paper states the thesis statement.Chapter One first gives a brief introduction of background and development of post-colonialism.After having enough understanding for the background and development process,the paper then introduces the representatives of post-colonialism and their main ideas.Lastly the paper mainly introduces three typical characteristics of Homi Bhabha's post-colonialism,mimicry,hybridity and ambivalence.Chapter Two focuses on the concrete reflections of mimicry in the work.This section analyzes Jim's and Jim's families' thirst for the white's status from both external and internal aspects.The imitation for the white by Jim and his family is not a true mimicry.Through the analysis,it is found that there are ridicule and teasing elements for the white culture during the process of mimicry by Jim and his family.The black group represented by Jim is not always in a disadvantaged position,and they are responding to the status and culture of the white in their own way.Chapter Three is devoted to the hybridity features in the play.This chapter combines the unique expressionist features in the play into the work to analyze the hybridity involved in the play.Starting from two aspects of unique arrangement of scenes and characters in the play,the paper analyzes the hybridity features included in All God's Chillum Got Wings.By using hybridity,it blurs the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and gives the black in a disadvantaged position the hope of survival.The interpretation of ambivalence in the play is put in Chapter Four.It shows the ambivalent features in the play by discourse ambivalence and colonial relationship.Through the ambivalent interpretation for discourse and the relationship between two sides in the play,readers can be aware that the black also have the potential rebel strength.They always oppose the white's privilege in their own ways.In all,the paper adopts the theory of Homi Bhabha who is one of the most famous representatives of post-colonialism to analyze the play.Feeling the bitter efforts which the black would like to obtain the white's status,at the same time,readers can also notice their efforts are not in vain.Readers can realize the revolt the black for the white involved in mimicry,hybridity and ambivalence.Maybe it is just a silent accusation which O'Neill intends to express to his era.