On Toni Morrison’s Motives In Creating Beloved

Toni Morrison is one of the most famous and distinguished writers incontemporary American literary world. Based on rich nutrition of classical literatureworks, her works are a good inheritance and further development of back literature.Deeply rooted in black culture and history, her works always focus on reflecting theblack’s history, caring their destiny of past, present, and future, and exploring ways ofdevelopment and way–out for them. Her fifth novel Beloved is regarded as her bestwork by many critics, and it won her the Pulitzer Prize in1988, and the Nobel Prizefor literature in1993due to “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”through “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import.” Morrison is theeighth woman and the first black woman who has won the highest honor.Written before the text of the novel, the figure “six million or more” is veryeye-catching. With no doubt, Morrison’s purpose of highlighting this figure is toexpose the unpardonable sin of slavery, which led to countless black people’ssuffering and tragedy. However, for a writer with high sense of historicalresponsibility, exposing the being forgotten, blood-dripping scar is far more to whipand accuse the cruel slavery. Based on the text analysis, this paper is to explore ToniMorrison’s real motives in creating Beloved, and to reappraise the value of it.The thesis is composed of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.The introduction gives a brief introduction about the experience of ToniMorrison, main content of Beloved, and some typical contemporary researches on thenovel from different aspects both domestically and internationally.The first chapter mainly exposes the inhuman living state of the black by diggingout the sufferings and traumas of the main characters in Beloved. First, this papermainly presents that black women represented by Sethe are treated as sex machinesand tools for breeding properties for slave owners, and black men represented by PaulD are also maltreated like animals, all of which reflects that the black people as awhole suffer physical devastation and mental trampling. Then, by quoting two terms“the will to power” and “the will to knowledge” from Foucault’s theory about “powerof discourse”, this thesis introduces how slave owners deprive the black of theirpower of discourse. On one hand, the slave owners apply the “will to power” topreventing the black slaves from speaking up by violence, discipline and punishment. On the other hand, they use their “will to knowledge” to relegate the black to animallevel under the pretense of “scientific racialism”. Finally, this chapter shows that longperiod of physical and mental torture results in the loss of the black’s self-identity.The second chapter describes the awakening of the black’s self-consciousness inthe process of struggling against slavery. To Morrison, the awakening of the black’sself-consciousness is of great importance to fight against the colonial oppression. First,it deals with the continuous awakening of black women’s self-consciousness seen inthree generations of124through analyzing their different ways of fighting againstslavery. Then, by involving several black men’s fighting against slavery together withthe black women, it reveals the awakening of black people’s ethnic consciousness.After that, this chapter expounds the awakening of the black’s root-seekingconsciousness from the aspect of awaking the black’s racial traumatic memory,displaying the great influence of family and community, and reflecting the black’sinheritance of their cultural tradition.Chapter three mainly points out four effective ways for the black to boycott theerosion of racism, revolt the white cultural hegemony, and retain their unique culturalcharacteristics. Above all, the black should root into their ethnic culture. Besides,coexisting with the white people is the second effective way. Then, unity is anotherway for the black to overcome difficulties and obtain happiness. Finally, regaining theblack’s self-identity is also very important. Only through these four effective wayscould the black completely get rid of the plight of slavery, achieve real emancipation,and construct a bright future.Based on the above analysis, it’s very obvious that the motives of Toni Morrisonin creating Beloved lie in exposing the brutality of the slavery and warning blackpeople of memorizing the bleeding and brutal slave history; awaking theirself-consciousness and restoring the confidence of them as a nation in the process ofsearching for roots as well as culture clash; and finally, exploring some effective waysof fighting for the freedom, equal rights, and development for the black. From theperspective of text analysis, this thesis has made a research on the motives ofMorrison in creating Beloved, which is significant in better understanding other worksof Morrison as well as providing a new perspective to appreciate the black literature.