On The Ethical Selection Of The Heroine In Sula

Toni Morrison is the first black woman writer who wins the Nobel Prize for literature. She pays attention to the living condition of the black people in her novels, especially cares about the miserable life of the black women in pursuit of identity and freedom under the double oppression of racism and sexism. In 1973, Morrison published her novel Sula and it was nominated for the National Book Award two years later. In the novel, Morrison mainly describes Sula’s fight against racial and sexual discrimination and her search for self-value. Based on the analysis of Sula’s ethical selection and her tragic death, the present thesis attempts to decode Morrison’s idea that a harmonious and united black community is of great importance in black women’s liberation and self-realization..The thesis is divided into six parts. Chapter One introduces the background, framework and significance of the thesis. Chapter Two is literature review and theoretical foundation. It firstly introduces Morrison and her novels and presents the domestic and overseas researches on Sula. Then it introduces ethical literary criticism, including background, major principles, some related terms and significance of analyzing the novel Sula. Chapter Three interprets Sula’s irrational ethical selections in three events: Chicken Little’s death, her mother Hannah burning to death and her grandmother Eva being sent to Sunnydale and probes into the dislocation of her ethical view and the irrationality of her will and value. Chapter Four analyzes Sula’s ethical selection from the perspective of love and marriage. It mainly delineates the influencing factors on her view of love and marriage, her abnormal relations with men and her ethical dilemma. Chapter Five discusses Sula’s violation of the ethical taboos and orders and her separation from the black community, which ultimately leads to her tragedy. The last part is the conclusion. It summarizes the whole thesis and demonstrates that the liberation of the black people, especially the self-realization of black women should be based on a harmonious, united and coordinated black community, and that the major cause of Sula’s tragedy is her break with the black community.