Research On Space Writing And Ethical Identity In Whitehead’s Novels

Colson Whitehead(1969-)is a representative writer of African American literature in the 21 st century.He has won two Pulitzer Prize for fiction and one National Book Award.The Underground Railroad,The Nickel Boys and Zone One are mature works created by Whitehead in the past decade,deeply reflecting the reality of American racial society,reflecting the ethical landscape of the late black slavery in the 1850 s,the heyday of Jim Crow laws in the 1960 s,and the post-9/11 racial era in the United States.Taking the above three novels as the research object,this paper uses the research methods of spatial criticism and literary ethical criticism to analyze the ethical identity of characters in confined space and flowing space from the level of "spatialization" of content,aiming to clarify the influence of space on the construction of characters’ identities and the relationship between spatial anxiety and identity choice.From the aspect of "spatialization" of expression,the author explores Whitehead’s spatial narrative strategy and his ethical orientation in order to re-examine the ethical choices of African Americans in Whitehead’s novels.The thesis consists of four parts: introduction,text,conclusion and references,among which the text is divided into three chapters.Based on the introduction of Colson Whitehead’s life and literary creation,the introduction explains the topic selection and writing reasons of this paper,the main research methods,domestic and foreign research status and the research significance of this paper.The first chapter takes the plantation,reformatory and isolation area as the entry point respectively,and expounds the ethical identity crisis of the characters in the confined space.In The Underground Railroad,plantation slaves lose their self-identity under the oppression of the triple space,resulting in the alienation of ethical identity.In the racial space,the black slaves who had been tamed by the white discourse system were alienated as tools of labor,and the ethical relationship between the black slaves showed the characteristics of indifference and hostility.They alienated themselves as spectators and competitors of the same race.In the house space,the log cabin was an important place for black slaves to establish the ethical relationship between children and children.Fierce mother and absent father were the standard matches for black slaves,because racial ethics ruled the body and will of black slaves.In the gender space,Hop is a penal colony for marginal female slaves.The female slaves represented by Cora suffer from the dual oppression of white men and black men,and they are the desired objects of men.In The Nickel Boys,the graveyard of the penitentiary hides the SINS and identities of the Nickel boys,while the "White House" is a hidden discipline space set up by the school,whose invisible laws and criminal judgments serve the interests of the penitentiary.The house steward is the promoter of this power operation and the implementor of hierarchical monitoring.In Zone One,zombies are resurrected dead and desperate others who have lost their ethical values and sense of social responsibility in the human period,impacting the current ethical order.The physical partition of space temporarily excludes the zombies,but the identity difference within the wall still exists,and the survivors of the disaster suffer from the trauma of alienation.The confined space in the above three works is an invisible prison that fetters the subject to seek identity under the discipline of power.The ethical identity crisis of the characters cannot be fundamentally solved.Only by breaking the space prohibition can the current ethical environment be changed.The second chapter focuses on the characters’ cognition of ethical identity in the flowing space.First,the spatial transgression of African Americans is a metaphor for their challenge to fixed order and search for free identity.The underground railroad and the bus are floating space carriers with privacy and public,respectively.The former refers to the attempt of slaves to liberate their slavery status,while the latter implies the efforts of African Americans to obtain citizenship.Secondly,the characters in the flowing space transform with the space carrier,which changes the inherent ethical identity and also produces new ethical identity problems.They are faced with the space anxiety of "homeless".In The Underground Railroad,the psychological fear and cognitive confusion generated by Cora during her pathfinding process mirror the loss of individual identity and the unrecognition of African American collective identity.In The Nickel Boys,Elwood’s need for identity is attributed to the failure of identity belonging,and his nightmare reflects the spiritual oppression of white people on black people after the failure of mobility.In Zone One,Spitz of projects the anxiety of the present into the nostalgia of the past.Finally,the way to relieve space anxiety is to draw a body map,make a rational identity choice,and find the space to belong to.Cora in The Underground Railroad changes from a confused passenger to an active driver,getting closer to the North,a symbol of freedom.In The Nickel Boys,strong and optimistic Elwood and smooth butcher Turner are two kinds of representatives of African Americans who seek identity.Turner’s choice to live with Elwood’s identity means the mutual understanding and progress of the black community.Zone One’s Spitz chose to walk into the zombie wave as his space after the wall came down.His former identity as a cleaner has also been transformed into a member of the zombie masses,implying the inevitability of isolation to openness.The third chapter takes The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys as the research object,and analyzes how Whitehead uses the spatial narrative strategy to present his ethical orientation.Space juxtaposition and overlap are important ways for Whitehead to construct narrative space.In terms of spatial juxtaposition,chapter alternations are set in both The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys,showing the characteristics of spatial juxtaposition in structure.The juxtaposition of different time and space makes the identity selection of different characters particularly prominent,and readers can feel the difference of characters’ personalities and identities when interrupted by narrative flow.In terms of space overlap,repeated narrative is Whitehead’s important expression technique to construct space and reflect on ethics.The Bible,as a repeated image,explains the reasons for black identity disadvantage.Cora’s killing behavior is repeated from multiple internal focus perspectives,reflecting the narrator’s ethical reflection on the manslaughter behavior.In addition,the spatial reference of the narrative subject cannot be separated from the switch of narrative perspectives.Whitehead intentionally sets up the suspense of the characters’ fate--the death of Mabel and Elwood,so as to guide the readers to think about the identity implication and exploration process of African Americans.Whitehead uses the narrator to convey his ethical position that while racial persecution continues,African Americans must constantly find a way out based on their own identity,without being swallowed by the abyss.The conclusion summarizes and sublimates on the basis of sorting out the previous text,and holds that "escape--search" is the representative narrative mode of Whitehead’s novels.From confined space to flowing space,Whitehead’s characters go through the process from realizing ethical identity crisis to exploring identity and seeking space belonging in different Spaces,which is also an important motif in the whole African American literature.Whitehead,on the basis of inheriting the tradition of African American literature,focuses on the characters’ exploration of free identity in the flowing space,reveals the cruelty and complexity of the social class and power relations in the United States,so as to convey the criticism of social reality and the consideration of the fate of African Americans.