英语本科毕业论文-美国奴隶制度对黑人的摧残--《宠儿》主题评析.doc

本科毕业论文题 目：美国奴隶制度对黑人的摧残-宠儿主题评析 学 院： 外 国 语 学 院专业班级： 英 语 0601班 学 号： 2006344010129 学生姓名： 指导教师姓名： 指导教师职称：讲 师 二O一O 年 六 月 十 五 日 15Title of the ThesisThe Devastation of American Slavery on the People-An Analysis of the Theme of BelovedA Graduation Thesis Submitted byWei MengmengIn Partial Fulfillment of the RequirementsForThe Degree of Bachelor of ArtsIn the Subject of English Language and Literature ToCollege of Foreign LanguagesOfAgricultural University of HebeiSupervisor: Li YaminMay 20, 2010 Candidate: _Supervisor: _Table of ContentsTable of ContentsiAcknowledgementsi摘 要iiAbstractii1. Introduction11.1 The works with the black people11.2 Toni Morrisons life and the plot of Beloved12. Physical Devastation on the Black People22.1 Physical Damage22.1.1 The scars and countless beating on slaves22.1.2The distinct examples of physical victims in Beloved-Baby Suggs and Sethe32.2 Physical Bondage43. Mental Destruction on the Black People53.1 Distored love.63.1.1 The reason why Sethe killed her daughter63.1.2 Sethes too thick love for her daughter73.1.3 The bad effects of Sethedistorted love on her family83.2 Absence of Self-identity93.2.1 Women slaves absence of name, life, even children93.2.2 Paul Dself uncontrolling life103.3 Unavoidable and Painful Memory113.3.1 The influence of unforgetable memory of Sethes113.3.2 The black peoples forever pains124. Conclusion12Notes13Bibliography14AcknowledgementsFristly, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis. During the period of my paper writing, my supervisor, Li Yamin, gave me a lot of encouragement and guidance. He has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without his consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form. Secondly, I would thank to all my teachers during my four yearsstudy , especially professor Liu Ji , who gave me much help in my study and my life .Without these teachersassistant, I can not have todays achievements. Last my thanks would go to my beloved family for their loving considerations and great confidence in me all through these years. I also owe my sincere gratitude to my friends and my fellow classmates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.Wei MengmengMay 10, 2010【摘 要】 当代美国黑人文坛众星云集，其中最亮的一颗巨星就是托妮莫里森。她以黑人文学已经取得的经验和成就为坚实基础，勇于探索，形成了自己的特色。宠儿是莫里森的杰作之一，并在1988年赢得了普利策文学奖。1993年，她因“其富于洞察力和诗情画意的小说把美国现实的重要方面写活了”而获得了诺贝尔文学奖。小说不仅探讨了蓄奴制对奴隶造成的肉体上的，精神上的劫掠，而且也反映出由蓄奴制导致的女主人公塞丝母性的扭曲以及黑人冲突。小说以一个杀婴儿故事为主线，深刻揭露了美国奴隶制的对黑人的摧残。本文从美国奴隶制度对黑人的摧残角度对小说的主题进行了分析。正文共分为两个部分。第一部分分析了奴隶制度对黑人的身体迫害。第二部分分析了奴隶制度对黑人的精神造成的伤害。【关键词】 奴隶制的摧残;精神;肉体【Abstract】 In contemporary African- American literary world there are many shining stars, among whom Toni Morrison is the most significant one. Based on the experience and achievements of the African-American literature, Beloved is one of Morrisons masterpieces, which won the. Pulitzer Prize in 1988. In 1993, she won the Nobel Prize, for her description “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import”, which “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”The novel not only explores the physical, mental, devastation wrought by slavery, but also reflects the sin of slavery which leads to Sethes maternal distortion and black conflicts. The novel takes an infanticide story as its main thread and deeply reveals the devastation left by the American slavery.This thesis analyzes the theme of the novel from the devastation of slavery. It consists two chapters. Chapter one explores the physical devastation of the American slavery on black people. Chapter two analyzes and exposes the mental destruction of the American slavery.【Key Words】 Devastation of Slavery; Body ;Mind1. Introduction1.1 The works with the black peopleAfrican American literature has a long history. It is a unique literature because it is tied up with the unique experience of the black people and phase of their growth. The African Americans have their own history. And it also has undergone a long process of evolution. Oral traditon came frist in the form of songs, ballads, and spirituals, in short, folk literature in its various manifestations. Then in the eighteenth century, African American poets like Jupiter Hammon (1720-1800) and Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1894) appeared on the scene. The African American novel began to make its presence in mid-nineteenth century.One of the themes of African American literature is to reveal the agonies which the blacks have experienced in miserable time and to explore sins of the slavery. In African American literature history, there are a great number of famous literary works that reveal the tragic life and social status of the black people, such as, Mark Twains masterpiece, The Adventure of Hackberry Finn, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Today African American writers, for instance, Alice Walker who is famous for the work The Color People, Alex Haley and Maya Angelou whose works are well received by people are recognized as the most significant and popular writers in the United State.1.2 Toni Morrisons life and the plot of BelovedToni Morrison, who is the most outstanding contemporary African American writers and won the Nobel Prize for literature in1993, is an international celebrity. She won many literary awards. She began writing in the early 1960s and published her first novel, the Bluest Eye in 1970, which secured Morrison a nomination for the National Book Award. In 1977, her book Song of Solomon, won the National Book Critics Award. Since then she has written quiet a few works of important, for instance, Tar Baby (1981), Beloved（1987），Jazz (1992), Paradise (1998) and Love (2003).Among these, Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.Toni Morrison was born in Northern Ohio. When she was young, she has experienced the painful effects of the racial discrimination. After she moved to the north with her parents, she still grew up with the harm from the racialism. In 1980s, though one hundred years had passed after the abolition of slavery, the black people were still suffering from the harm of racial discrimination. Just as Toni Morrison said at an international literary congress in New York in 1986, “Had I lived the life that the state planned for me from the beginning, I would live and died in somebody elses kitchen, on somebody elses land, and never written a word.” Only the blacks know what they have experienced and only the black writers works can reveal the incredible tortures the black people suffered. Writing literary works to reveal the real state of black people became an important task for Toni Morrison. Morrison is famous for her fifth novel Beloved, which based on a true story. In the story the author tells an astonishing story: a slave, Sethe, decided to kill her children so that they would not suffer the life she experienced as a slave. Before caught by the pursuers, she slashed the throat of her two years baby girl, after that she gave birth to her daughter Denver and lived in the house 124. Eighteen years later, beloved as a baby ghost came to revenge, she drive her two brothers away but was drove away by Paul D, her mothers former fellow slave. However, beloved reappeared in human form, she disturbed the life. Sethe was suffering from physical and mental devastation. She was on the brink of collapse. Fortunately, the baby ghost was dried away with the help of Denver and the community of blacks.According the description of the novel Beloved, one of the authors aims is to let the people get to know the black peoples tragic life and to reveal the sins of the American Slavery. The thesis attempts to analyze the theme of the novel the devastation of American slavery on the black people. It includes two parts: the physical devastation and the mental destruction. 2. Physical Devastation on the Black PeopleIn the United States, the slavery has made and deprived sixty million black peoples lives at least; further more it makes the black people survive in the shadow of the slavery from generation to generation. Slavery is considered the most inhumane and horrible system. All the black slaves have suffered the physical devastation from the slavery. Under the slavery, the slaves have no themselves, no names, no possessionthey have nothing; they are the private property of the slave owners who treat the slaves as animals slaves as they like. In beloved, all the ex-slaves have suffered the physical torments which they want to drive away from their memories, but the scars on their bodies force them to recall the bloody life made by the crimes of the slavery.2.1 Physical Damage2.1.1 The scars and countless beating on slavesThe slave has no freedom .The common thing that the owners has done to them is carving some marks on their bodies, not letting them flee away. Slavery is just like crazy monsters that control the slaves. The scars on the bodies leave the slaves nothing but the horrible memory and unspeakable pain in the heart. In Beloved, slave owners could do whatever they like, they never treat slaves as true men, but as animals. Negroes would be whipped, raped, and even killed by their owners. Every body of slaves was damaged badly by slave owner. Toni Morrison has ever said that black people were victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things could take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city. For slave owners, they can do whatever they want to do with the bodies of their “animal”. The bodies can be beaten, raped and sold, even put into death. It seems that beating is one way with which the slave owners to show their superiority over black people. Beating slaves is common phenomenon in society of American Slavery. In slave owners eye, the slaves must obey his order, once he betrayed his order, the basic punishment is to beat slaves bodies. All the slaves in Beloved had been beaten by their owner, not once but countless times. Just because Sethe told Mrs. Garner what two nephews of Schoolteacher had done to her, though Sethe had been pregnant, the owner of her, Schoolteacher as well as his two nephews beat her mercilessly, which left scares on Seths back .2.1.2The distinct examples of physical victims in Beloved-Baby Suggs and SetheWomen are the weakest group in the development of the society. In that time, slave owners torture all the “people” who had black skin, not alone black women. The torments that black women have experiences are beyond of imagination. For instance, Baby Suggs, she had the same fate with Sethe and other black women. She was whipped by his owner and overseers and her body suffered a lot. She gave birth to eight children while eight children had six fathers. Baby Suggs had an intolerable life but she must to face. In order to bring up her child, she worked as a sex-slave of her overseer. But what makes the thing worse was that her child was sold just for lumber. The slave owners ignored the dignity of the slaves completely, not alone the bodies of slaves. They considered the bodies of black women as a toll which could only produce the workforce; they have no feeling, no mercy, no respect to such bodies. The slave owner tortured their bodies. They hurt flesh of black people, they disliked eyes of black people, they felt disgusting for the black skin, they managed to keep the mouth of black people silence, they tied the hands of black people, they had collar around slaves necks, they ignored the lungs and hearts of black people even made the heart stop to beat. To a nutshell, the slave owners do not love slaves any part of bodies. They looked down upon the bodies. So when they excruciated their slaves, they did not have any feeling of guilty. In this novel Sethe was beaten all the time. Schoolteacher and his nephews punished her, though Sethe was pregnant. The reason for the punishment just because Sethe had told Mrs. Garner what Schoolteacher and his nephews had done to her. The two boys then beat the pregnant Sethe and sucked the milk from her breasts, at the request of the schoolteacher, making a permanent scar and causing her to lose feeling in her back, “schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it closed it made a tree. Now, it grows there still” (P17). Sethe referred to the mark on her back as a tree because of the influence of one poor white girl, Amy, who helped Sethe after she had escaped. In the eyes of Amy, the scare on Sethes back was a “chokecherry tree”. When Seth told Paul D she got a tree on her back, Paul D was confused and asked “What tree on your back? Is something growing on your back? I dont see anything growing on your back” (P15). While Paul D first saw the scares on the Sethe back, he was astonished. The tree on Sethes back is the criticism for slave owners behaviors, so though Paul D touched everywhere of the tree, Sethe did not feel that at all. All the scares on the black people are the mark of the slavery left for them; these scares will never disappear until they die. In Beloved, the “tree” has been mentioned many times, for Sethe, she liked the “tree”, but she could not see it. So she showed the tree to others and understood it from them. The physical scares not only bring the physical pain, but horrible memory of the past live. Slavery seems a monster, which has devoured the bodies of slaves and leaves nothing. Slaves are looking forward to protecting their bodies. However, under slavery, they couldnt, for they can not control their bodies. Any struggle is useless.2.2 Physical BondageSlavery claims ownership of all of its property, irrespective of age and gender, including the siblings of the female slaves, who are considered human reproduction machines and the producers of labor forces. The black people have no right to choose anything; the only thing for them to do is just to defer the orders of the slave owners. Their bodies do not belong to themselves but their owners. The only time the bodies of ex-slaves belongs to them was just the moment when they are born, however, after that the bodies begin to experience the horrible environment which full of the influences of the slaveryIn the beloved, “The Sweet Home” is a common phrase that refers a place where every member of it have equal right and can enjoy the life and seek their own happiness, While on the contrary, “The Sweet Home” is a horrible place, every black people who were treated mercilessly. Just as Paul D, the ex-slave of the Sweet Home, told Denver “it wasnt sweet and it sure wasnt home” (P14). For the black people in the Sweet Home, the Sweet Home is not a home at all but a hell of slaves. After Mr. Garner died, Schoolteacher came to the plantation; he taught the slaves that “they were not only Sweet Home men at Sweet Home. One step off that ground and they were trespassers among the human race” (P125), from this, black people just like animals. Under the slavery, the slaves who failed to escape will receive terrible punishment. Such as the five male slaves in the Sweet Home of the novel Beloved, they suffered greatly in his life. They did not have names, their owners called them: Paul D Garner, Paul A Garner, Paul F Garner, Halle Suggs and Sixo. They were deprived of the rights of being a normal man; the owner of them did not allow them to live with women, “They were so young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves.” (P11), though the slave owner called them men, as a matter of fact, they were not considered as human being, not alone the normal men. At the beginning, Halle bought Baby Suggs freedom, so Baby Suggs, who had suffered all kinds of torment from slavery, could leave the Sweet Home. After that Halle got married to Sethe, he wanted to buy the freedom of all of his family members in the same way. However, Halle was deprived the right to take extra work and only could be the labor force of the Sweet Home. Not hoping their children live the lives as they have experienced, Sethe and Halle decided to escape from the plantation. Unfortunately, Sethe was caught by Schoolteacher and had to kill her daughter to let her lead a good life in another world. Other slaves who failed to escape were taken back to Sweet Home again, among whom Paul D was forced to wear a bit just like a horse. To Paul D, the bit just as a chain deprived him of the right of speaking. Marilyn Sander Mobley writes of Pauls “personal stories of enduring a bit in his mouth as the barbaric of silence and oppression”, showing the coldness and constraining power. After the unsuccessful escape, Paul D was sold and put into a cage. In the day, they had to do hard work with their legs chained, in the evening, they slept in the wet, terrible graves. Comparing to other four male slaves of the Sweet Home, Paul D was lucky, he could bear the torture and lived at the last, whats more, he found Sethe. But the other four slaves were not as fortunate as Paul D. Sixo was captured and burned as a result of unsuccessful escape, as his feet were burning, he laughed out loudly and shouted Seven-O! because his Thirty-Mile Woman escaped being caught and was pregnant with his child. Paul A Garner and Paul F Garner died during the escape. Halle, Seths husband, could not put up with the excruciation the nephew