A Study On Marginal Man In The Bluest Eye

Tony Morrison is a famous black female writer in the United States and the first black female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.As the first work of Toni Morrison,The Bluest Eye has reaped wide attention and discussion since its publication.The book casts a perspective on the black family at the margins of society,shaping the marginal images of the three different levels of the Breedlove family.These vivid characters are the epitome of the marginal groups under the mainstream ideology of society.This thesis attempts to use Marginal Man theory to analyze the images of the marginal people in the moral,cultural,and spiritual aspects by using Cholly,Pauline,and Pecola as examples.The causes and manifestations of the three kinds of marginal men are illustrated to explore the development and psychological crisis of marginal humanity in harsh environments.The novel depicts the different aspects of marginal man images of these three black family members under the white mainstream culture.As a marginal man of morality,this black father,Cholly is abandoned from childhood.The lack of moral benchmarks in his youth causes a gap in his concept of right and wrong.The insult from the white world causes his extreme inferiority complex.Later,the indifference of the black society and his family exacerbates the demise of his moral consciousness and the distortion of the concept of good and evil,which eventually leads to his sexual assault of his daughter and the abuse of his wife.In the end,the incompetent victim is completely reduced to the perpetrator of moral corruption.As the marginal woman of cultures,the black mother Pauline extremely rejects her black name and resolutely abandons her black family.Moreover,she takes the initiative to cut off the connection with the black culture and desperately admires and respects the white culture.However,because of racial discrimination,Pauline has never been recognized by the mainstream culture of white people.Even if Pauline caters to the white cultural standards and accepts the white aesthetics,her existence value is only the identity of the maid as an accessory.As the marginal girl of spirit,the eleven-year-old black girl Pecola suffers from a normal aphasia to a marginalized madman and goes into the marginalization of the spiritual world.The neglect of a broken family environment,the discrimination of school situation and the indifference of the social environment have caused the collapse of the spirit of Pecola and the division of her personality.Therefore,she madly pursues the so-called blue eyes blindly,eventually losing her rational thoughts and going to the spiritual level of madness.Through the classification of the three types and characteristics of marginal man,this thesis reveals Morrison's exploration of vulnerable marginal black people's humanity,and conveys Morrison's sympathy and concern for the fate of vulnerable marginal black people.At the same time,it points out the practical significance of the research on marginal people.