Deconstruction And Reconstruction:A Deconstructionist Analysis Of Beloved

Toni Morrison,an African-American writer,was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 and she was also the first black woman novelist who won the Nobel Prize.Beloved was considered to be her best work and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.This novel describes a long and silent,but brutal and bloody period in black history,which is an essential part of American reality.It achieves such extraordinary success and attracts many readers.The novel reveals the cruelty and devastation of slavery on women and the black physically and spiritually.Many critics regard this book as a milestone in the black literary history,and have studied it from various respects such as feminism,new historicism,psychoanalytic,and so forth;However,there are very few from the perspective of deconstruction.This thesis intends to analyze this novel in the light of deconstruction.Based on close textual reading,this thesis intends to interpret the dissolution of three pairs of binary opposition in this novel.By subverting the image of traditional males,the author criticizes males' escape view.Beloved challenges the traditional values of maternal love,reconstructs the image of mother and gives a good interpretation of maternal love through subversion.In Beloved,Toni Morrison subverts the stereotypes of the black and the white.Instead of being oppressed,the black actively resist.Not all the white are oppressors Next,through the analysis of the uncertainty of the character,master discourse and images,Morrison challenges the traditional hierarchical order and emphasizes the indeterminacy of the text.Morrison rewrites the history for black slaves who are voiceless.Finally,based on the previous chapters,the author reconstructs profound meanings.The images whom author presents to the readers are oppressed and vulnerable people.However,the author seeks the power behind this vulnerability.People can bravely face the past,find faith in pain and reconstruct subject consciousness.By analyzing the binary opposition and uncertainty in Beloved,this thesis attempts to deepen the readers' understanding of the novel,and provides a new point of view for future research.