Absurd Existence And Transcendence Of The Soul

Toni Morrison is a well-known American female writer. In1993, she has won Noble Prize. From that time, her works has received great attention from many readers and critics worldwide, also has been highly praised at the same time.With her exceptional talent in literature, she has created seven novels which indicate her unique writing style and ingenious artistic skills. All these works are renowned for extensive contents and distinct subjects that mainly focus on the life of black people, including themes as racial problems、national identity of blacks and feminism. In all her works, Beloved is the one with greatest impact on readers, which has been considered as "tragic history of black people under slavery system". In this work, Morrison has reflected the life of black people under cruel slavery system by the interweavement of memory and experience of those protagonists.This thesis has studied Beloved by the theory of existentialism. According to existentialism, world is absurd, so human life is absurd alike. Thus in the absurd world, man experiences those psychological conditions as anxiety, bad faith, fear of death and alienation of existence. In the process of incessant pursuit and adversity, only by free choice, human can surpass the self and obtain true essence. This thesis has reflected the existence of black people in an absurd world by analyzing those heroes’ bitter experience. At first, confronted with brutal reality, some people choose to indulge in bad faith, escaping from reality. Secondly, in the absurd world, people can not find their true selves. There are some people who are blaming God for unfairness, some are alienated from society and others, also some people are even alienated from the self, not being able to find their authentic essence. At last, confronted with absurdity, some people have gained their true self by various free choices. These are all the manifestation of psychological conditions of man in the absurd world. Thus only by free choice to shape one’s essence and decide one’s future, one can obtain true self and real freedom.