The Call For Love

Alice Walker(1944-)is one of the most outstanding contemporary Afro-American female writers.In the 1983,she won the Pulitzer Prize for her masterpiece The Color Purple and she was also the first black female writer who won this Prize in the American literary history.Most of her works are based on the reality,describing the black people especially the black women’s oppression from the patriarchal society and encouraging them to revolt the patriarchy,seek for their rights actively and construct a social relationship that men and women stay in a harmonious condition.The novel By the Light of My Father ’s Smile is another masterpiece of Alice Walker published in 1998.It attracted the great attention in the literary circles soon after its publication.Some literary critics analyze this work from the perspective of womanism,ecofeminism and trauma theory,but there are few studies from the perspective of the magic realism.This paper uses magic realism theory to interpret the novel By the Liht of My Father ’s Smile and analyze the characteristics of magic realism and the social reality reflected in this work.This paper includes five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces Alice Walker and her work By the Light of My Father ’s Smile.The second chapter is literature review,which mainly reviews the current researches on this work at home and abroad.The third chapter is the theoretical part,which mainly summarizes the origin,definition,development and characteristics of the magic realism.The fourth chapter analyzes the text of this novel from the perspective of the magic realism,which analyzes the embodiment of magic realism in the novel,and makes a full interpretation to the novel.The fifth chapter is the conclusion,which concludes the main idea of this paper that love is an everlasting theme and love among friends,relatives can’t be denied.Love and harmony are the final aims of the writer Alice Walker’s and this dream can come true,I believe.Analyzing the novel By the Light of My Father ’s Smile from the perspective of magic realism not only provides a new perspective for us to study this work,but also guides the contemporary people to seek the love and harmony.