Incest And Its Significance In African American Novels-Taking Invisible Man And The Bluest Eye As Examples

From ancient mythology to modern novels and plays,incest has been one of the most enduring motifs in the history of literature worldwide.Incest has been endowed with different meanings and interpretations in different epochs and cultures.With the explosive development of African-American literature,more and more African-American writers have begun to deal with this motif since the 1950 s.Tentative effort is made by Ralph Ellison with the Trueblood episode in his masterpiece,Invisible Man,and then incest becomes a recurrent motif in the works of a number of renowned African-American writers,in particular African-American women writers.Toni Morrison's first novel,The Bluest Eye,is a representative of such.Incest plot takes up only one chapter in Invisible Man and is a brief part in The Bluest Eye,but it plays a powerful role in interpreting and informing the whole part of the two novels.This thesis aims to explore incest and its significance in African-American literature focusing on the two novels in point.This thesis concentrates on all the people involved in the incest incidents,namely the victims,the incestuous fathers,and the blacks and whites who react to the incidents,to explore the reasons of the incidents,interracial and intraracial relations.This thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is a brief introduction to two authors and academic researches of their works at home and abroad.The second chapter reviews incest narrative in the history of literature worldwide and then analyzes two incest scenes in the two novels.Attention will be paid to the silenced daughters in two incest scenes and the deep-rooted reasons of their silence will be explored.The third chapter explores reasons for the incest incident in the two novels by focusing on the incestuous fathers.The fourth chapter discusses the interracial and intraracial relations according to the reaction of the black and white people.The last chapter will conclude the whole thesis.Incest narrative in African-American writing intertwines with racism.And by revising incest,African-American writers explore racial oppression that leads to its occurrence.By writing about the taboo,African-American writers unveil the underlying devastating influence of racism on African Americans,especially the unprivileged and marginalized black girls.