A Biblical Archetypal Reading In Toni Morrison’s Love

Toni Morrison is considered as the most prestigious black female novelist. So far, she has composed ten novels that won her worldwide fame. By special narrative skills and unique language, Toni Morrison proclaims the marginalized social status of African-Americans in a society dominated by the whites, reflects the conflicts between the whites and black, and points out the deficiency and construction of black females’ subjectivity. Her double identities as a black and a female make it possible to depict and show the black culture in her works; at the same time, she pays special attention to all kinds of problems that black females encounter in their life. She is exposed to the western culture in university, and this makes the Christian thoughts and doctrines have a profound and lasting influence on her ideology in the process of composing her works. To some extent, it can be found the traces and fragments of Bible in all her novels.Toni Morrison’s works are deeply rooted in three cultures----the black culture, American culture, and female culture, they also reflect the Christian thoughts vividly, especially the core of Christianity----sin, love and salvation. This thesis attempts to explore the archetypes of character, structure and theme through text analysis, in this way, reveal the Bible’s influence on Toni Morrison’s works and probe into the religious thoughts in her novels and her understanding of the holy book.The thesis is divided into three parts.The first part is the introduction part. It gives a brief introduction of Toni Morrison, the novel Love and Frye’s biblical archetypal theory, it also points out the feasibility to interpret the novel from this viewpoint.The second part, Chapter One, Two, and Three, is the body part of the thesis. They analyze respectively the archetypes of character----archetype of Eve, archetype of Jesus Christ, and archetype of Sheep; archetype of U-shaped structure; and the archetypes of themes----archetype of sin, love and redemption. The three chapters are analyzed independently; at the same time, they are linked with each other. By analyzing the corresponding text, the author of the thesis tries to give an interpretation on Toni Morrison’s aim in composing the novel and her biblical understanding of Bible.The third part serves as the conclusion. The thesis attempts to draw a conclusion that Toni Morrison shows her inheritance of the traditional Christianity by the creation in the novel Love, it also further stresses that Toni Morrison has realized that the black people suffer great trauma due to their marginalized social status and their own limitation. Thus ways should be found to tackle it, that is, hard work and the religious love and redemption. And these can also be effective in dealing with problems between races, sexes and even countries.