Indispensables-A Feminist Narratological Reading Of Male Characters In Beloved

Toni Morrison is one of the most important writers in recent history whose fiction and prose have fulfilled an urgent need to make the heretofore invisible and mute presence visible and shaped the ways in which Americans and Africans have understood themselves and have been understood. She won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, which made her the eighth woman and the first black woman for the honor.Beloved, the most frequently discussed and the most controversial novel of Toni Morrison, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. Many critics aroused great interest in it, and even regarded it as the"milestone in American literary history."On character study, most of the essays and analyses place the importance on the female characters that are usually the focus in Toni Morrison's work, and some critics have negative attitude toward male characters and hold the point that Toni Morrison fails to grant the male characters adequate voices in Beloved. Therefore, the concern on the male characters in Beloved is still very rare, not to speak of giving a comprehensive figure of those male characters.So within the framework of feminist narratology theory, the thesis gives a comprehensive analysis of the male characters in Beloved by applying the different methods of feminist narratology. This thesis first gives brief introduction of Toni Morrison, Beloved and feminist narratology, then in the first chapter, the thesis analyzes the male characters by applying narrative voice. In the second chapter, the thesis analyzes the male characters in a new aspect in with the theory of narrative focalization. In the third chapter, with the help of intersectionality methodology, the thesis explores the deep social and historical meaning of the comprehensive male figures. Last is the conclusion in which the thesis gives the point that the voice of black men in Toni Morrison'Beloved is indispensible and vital.