On Morbid Mentality In Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play

Charles Fuller(1939-)is an African American playwright.One of the representative works of Charles Fuller is A Soldier ’s Play,for which Charles Fuller received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.A Soldier’s Play by means of flashbacks reveals social consequences and root of the morbid mentality of the white and the black,and the investigation about the central fictional incident of A Soldier ’s Play carried out step by step shows that conforming to reason and fairness ethics can help to eradicate racial prejudice and discrimination,relieve and erase the morbid mentality of the black and the white,and contribute to the trust and harmony of the black and the white.Based on closing reading of the text,the thesis tries to find out the symptoms of morbid mentality of the black and the white in A Soldier’s Play,explores its social consequences,the root of the morbid mentality,and the approaches to the elimination of the morbid mentality.The thesis consists of six sections:introduction,four chapters of argumentation and conclusion.The introduction gives an outline of Charles Fuller’s literary achievement and his life experience.The outcomes about Charles Fuller and his works,especially A Soldier’s Play,home and abroad,are sorted.This part also elaborates on the values of the study and the research methods to be used.The first section of argumentation is dedicated to the analysis of the symptoms of morbid mentality of the white and the black in A Soldier ’s Play,and points out in A Soldier’s Play the black’s morbid mentality is featured as emotional insecurity and depression.The black admires the white blindly and sells his black folks to continue their favor from the white,which actually is not desired by the white.The other extreme symptoms of emotional insecurity is the obsession with Africanness.Suspicion and scare which are based on skin color instead of reality are two prominent symptoms of the white’s morbid mentality.The second section of argumentation is dedicated to morbid mentality’s social consequences in A Soldier’s Play.The blind admiration of the black resulted in the estrangement and conflicts among the black.They can not trust each other,and tricks,killings,fights happen in the black community.The second social consequence of the morbid mentality is the estrangement and conflicts among the white.Decisions and behaviors of the white who have morbid suspicion and scare toward the black are not acceptable for those white people who do not have the morbid mentality mentioned above.The third social consequence is that the morbid mentality imposes long-lasting mental hurdles for the merging of the black and the white.The third section of argumentation is dedicated to different forms of racism which is related to morbid mentality of the black and the white.A Soldier’s Play portrays three forms of racism related to morbid mentality of the white and the black:oppression of the white,internalized racism and black parental preach and the agents of the white.Oppression of the white in A Soldier s Play can be classified into two kinds:violent oppression and institutional oppression.The forms of racism are closely related to the morbid mentality,and the relationship between the form and the specific symptoms of morbid mentality are analyzed and argued in detail.The fourth section of argumentation is dedicated to approaches to the elimination of racism.A Soldier’s Play by means of flashbacks and investigation implies that fairness ethics and reason would be applied to eliminate racial discrimination and prejudice,and relieve or erase the morbid mentality of the black and the white.The conclusion part gives a brief statement of the main opinions of the study and explores the great influence and value of A Soldier’s Play.To conclude,the thesis discloses racism is the root of morbid mentality of the black and the white and believes that A Soldier’s Play not only criticizes and denies racism,but also demonstrates reason and fairness ethics are two approaches which can be applied to eliminate racial discrimination and prejudice between the black and white,and erase the morbid mentality of the black and the white.