英语本科毕业论文-文化认同的悲剧.doc

此文档收集于网络，如有侵权，请联系网站删除 本科毕业论文 文化认同的悲剧学生姓名： 学生学号： 200320207016 院（系）： 外国语学院 年级专业： 2003级英语本科5班 指导教师： 二七年五月精品文档The Tragedy of Cultural IdentificationLiu QianUnder the Supervision ofYuan BinSchool of Foreign Languages and CulturesPanzhihua UniversityMay 2007ContentsAbstract.Key Words摘要.关键词.Introduction.1I. The Rejection of the Mainstream Culture.3II. The Tragedy of Pecola as the Result of the Identification of the Blacks.5 A. The Rejection of the Black Community.5 B. The Rejection of Her Parents.6Conclusion.10Acknowledgements.12Bibliography.13AbstractThe clash between the black culture and the mainstream culture in the United States as well as the marginalized existence of the black culture is always the focus of Afro-American fiction writers. In their works they depict the twisted black culture and the loss of it, and attempt to call for cherishing their native culture. Toni Morrison is, undoubtedly, one of them, and more importantly she goes beyond that and explores the tragedy of identification. Through the depiction of a black little girl in the novel The Bluest Eyes, who crazily searches for a pair of blue eyes, Tony Morrison reveals the devastating influence and hurts of the concept of value of the mainstream culture, specially the standard of the aesthetic appreciation blue eyes, golden hair, and white skill on the black people，especially black women and children. In addition, she shows the loss of their cultural/ethic identities, spiritual breakdown and self-denial during the process of the identification. Based on textual analysis of the novel, the thesis aims at exploring the tragedy of Pecola as the result of the identification of the blacks in the mainstream culture, and further reveals that her tragedy is actually the tragedy of the blacks when they fully identify themselves with the mainstream culture.Key WordsPecola; identification; tragedy; mainstream culture; clash摘要美国黑人文化和白人主流文化中的冲突，以及黑人文化的边缘性一直是非裔美国作家所关注的焦点。在其作品中，他们描述了黑人文化的扭曲和迷失，力图唤起黑人对民族文化的珍视。托尼莫里森无疑是这类作家中的先驱，而且更为重要的是她超越了一般的非裔美国作家的创作而探寻了黑人在文化认同中的悲剧。在最蓝的眼睛这部小说中，通过一个黑人小女孩佩科拉寻求一双蓝眼睛的故事，莫里森揭示出美国白人主流文化的价值观，尤其是社会流行的审美标准蓝眼睛，金发，白皮肤对黑人（特别是黑人女性和小孩）的影响与戕害，展现了在对主流文化的认同中黑人的迷失，分裂与自我否定。本文试图在对这篇小说的文本分析的基础上，剖析佩科拉悲剧的根源在于黑人群体对主流文化的认同，进而揭示出她的悲剧就是整个黑人群体的悲剧。关键词佩科拉；认同；悲剧；主流文化；冲突IntroductionToni Morrison is, undoubtedly, a special and unique fiction writer in world literature. As a woman and an Afro-American, she goes beyond the simplistic dichotomies of the black male literary tradition in which the world is divided into black/white, good/evil, virgin/whore, self/other, male/female paradigms, and provides her readers with a new perspective to reexamine black tradition and black culture in modern society. Moreover, she keeps aloof from other major Afro-American writers and makes a thorough exploration of the marginalized worldblack women. In fact, when Morrison begins writing in the 1960s and 1970s, there is just a paucity of books about the black woman, and there is no fiction representing her experience: “this person, this female, this black did not exist center-self.”(Furman 6) Black womens text, in America, Morrison notes, projects a wide gaze. “Its not narrow, its very probing and it does not flinch,” and she is writing to “repossess, rename, renown.” (Furman 6)The Bluest Eye is her first fiction and is the best that exemplifies her attitude and her moral consciousness. Through the story of Pecola, the marginalized little black girl, Morrison demonstrates the psychological disintegration of Pecola whose blackness is an affront to a society in which blue eyes are valued above all others, and the dislocation and loss of black culture with the corrosion of white mainstream culture, and more importantly, the tragedy of identification.In fact, as Toni Morrison becomes one of Americas most celebrated contemporary authors, The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, has gained increasing attention from literary critics. Most of story is narrated by a young black girl, Claudia MacTeer, who is part of a poor but loving black family in Lorain, Ohio, in the 1940s. However, the primary focus of the novel is on Pecola Breedlove, another young black girl who lives in very different circumstances from Claudia and her sister. Not only is her mother Pauline distant and aloof, but her father Cholly Breedlove is also unreliable for any comfort or support, and instead he drinks excessively and later rapes Pecola. Because Pecola, just as her mother, yearns to be seen as beautiful, she longs for the blue eyes of the most admired child in the 1940s: Shirley Temple. After visiting Soaphead Church, a spiritualist who claims he can make Pecolas eyes blue, Pecola believes that she has the bluest eyes in the world and now everyone will love her. Obviously, Pecola is the truest kind of victim. Unlike Claudia, who possesses the love of her family, Pecola is powerless to reject the unachievable values esteemed by those around her and finally descends into insanity. The Bluest Eye portrays the tragedy that results when African Americans have no resources to fight the standards presented to them by the white culture and when they lose cultural/ethic identity during the process of identification in the mainstream societyI. The Rejection of the Mainstream CultureAccording to Toni Morrison, Pecola is just the victim, who is only 12 year-old and always lives in the shadow of her parents cruelty, neighbors indifference and friends ridicule. Therefore, she longs for a change, and favor of others. The opening paragraph of the novel deals with a white American ideal of the family unitcohesive, happy, with love enough to spare to pets. It is a fairy tale world, a dream world, childlike in extremeit is desirable, but for the blacks, it is unattainable. After the orderliness of the first paragraph, the same passage is reproduced as the 2nd paragraph but without punctuation marks, and as the 3rd paragraph without both punctuation and word division. Thus 3 possible family situations are presented: first Geraldines (a counterfeit of the idealized white family), further down the MacTeers, and the bottom the Breedloves. The mother-father-Dick-Jane concept (the idealized white family) is finally transmuted to the Mrs. Breedlove-Cholly-Sammy-Pecola situation. The transmutation is Morrisons indirect criticism of the white majority for the black familys situation and for what is taught to the black child in school, as evidenced by the primer paragraph, that in no way relates to the child s reality. In this sense, Morrisons readers are revealed that the blacks are attacked emotionally from childhood, living in two impossible worlds: the fairy tale world of lies when they are in contact with the white world and the equally incredible, grim world of black life. In W.E.B. Du Bois words, the blacks are born with a veil and gifted with second-sight in this American world. They look at their selves through the eyes of the whites, and measure their soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. From this profoundly stirring beginning, Morrison advances to an equally moving examination of the fate of the blacks, especially Pecolas lifeher unloving childhood, her repudiation by nearly everyone she encounters, and finally the complete disintegration of self. In fact, her tragedy is doomed at the very beginning since “they (the Breedloves)believed they were uglytheir ugliness was unique,” and they cannot do anything but “accepted it without questiontook the ugliness in them hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it,” and Pecola “hid behind hers. Concealed, veiled, eclipsedpeeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask.”(Morrison 34-35) Therefore, they accept the white concept of beauty and value, forget their tradition and value，then shrink, and finally get lost and disintegrated. Pecolas desire for a pair of blue eyes results from her awareness of her ugliness. “Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness.” She “each night, without fail, prayed for blue eyes,” (Morrison 40) since she believes if her eyes are different, beautiful and blue, she herself will be different. Symbolically, the mirror is the embodiment of social judgment. The mirror has represented a kind of confused social judgment and criterion, but what she sees in the mirror is the denial of the mainstream society and the distortion as well as her split personality and psychology. In fact, Pecola needs self-recognition to build healthy psyche and complete identity, but unfortunately, she cannot find her self in the mirror, and instead she finds only the loss of self and a sense of rootlessness. Therefore, Pecolas self-denial in the mirror is the result of her repudiation by the white mainstream culture. Her choice of blue eyes symbolically suggests that she accepts the white mainstream culture, and watches the world from the perspective of the blue eyes (the whites). It is the racism of the mainstream culture that twists Pecolas soul and leads her to self-denial and self-distaste. The influence of the mainstream culture is so deeply rooted in her consciousness that she cannot escape, and cannot wipe away those pretty faces and those pretty blue eyes. In this sense, the price she pays for her identification is doomed. She is ignored and despised at school by teachers and classmates alike. She is the only member of her class who sits alone at a double desk. The storekeeper who sells Mary Jane candies to Pecola avoids touching her hand when she pays, and barely disguises his contempt for her: “She looks up at him and sees the vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge. The total absence of human recognitionthe glazed separateness. It has an edge; somewhere in the bottom lid is the distaste. The distaste must be for her, for her uglinessand it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distance in white eyes”. (Morrison 42) Obviously, she is completely rejected by the mainstream society. However, the rejection is not the only root of her tragedy, or not even the leading factor which contributes to his tragic self-denial and disintegration.II. The Tragedy of Pecola as the Result ofthe Identification of the BlacksIndeed, the whites are not the only ones responsible for Pecolas sufferings and disintegration. Infected by the white mainstream culture, her families and the blacks in her community all believe she is ugly, which strengthens Pecola sense of ugliness and self-denial, and contributes to her marginalized existence. Therefore, responsibility must be shared by the blacks who assuage their own insults from the society by oppressing those like Pecola who are vulnerable. A. The Rejection of the Black CommunityLittle black boys jeer and taunt her with “Black e mo. Black e mo. Yadaddsleepsnekked”, defensively ignoring the color of their own skins. But, according to Toni Morrison, “it was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth. They seem to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds.” (Morrison 55) When the high-yellow Maureen Peal declares to Pecola and the MacTeer sisters “I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos” (Morrison 58), she is dangerously affirming interracial acceptance of the worlds denigration of blackness. “Respectable,” “milk-brown” women like Geraldine are disgusted at Pecolas torn dress and uncombed hair, and are confronted with the blackness they have spent lifetime rejecting. For Morrison, these women are antithetical to the black culture she respects. They attend to the “careful development of thrift, patience, high morals and good manners” (Morrison 52) as these are defined by the white society. And they fear “the dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions” (Morrison 52) because these qualities are defined by the black society. They are shamed by the “laugh that is too loud, the enunciation a little too round; the gesture a little too generous. They hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free; when they wear lipstick, they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry about the edges of their hair.” (Morrison 52) As one of the women, Geraldine executes the tyranny of standardized beauty that enthralls some in the black community and terrorizes too many others. In Geraldines eyes, Pecola is just a “nasty little black bitch.” Geraldine sets her teeth against any recognition of some part of who she is in Pecola. Church, the god-like preacher in the community, is another one responsible for the victimization and marginalization of Pecola. He has been reared in a family proud of its academic accomplishments and its mixed bloodand in fact, they believe the former is based on the latter. He learns from his ancestors to separate himself in body, mind, and spirit from all that suggested Africa, and in school he is industrious, orderly, and energetic with the confidence born of a conviction of superiority. Unfortunately from the school comes a man with distorted and twisted soul and way of life. He cuts himself from the black community and tries to merge into the mainstream society, but remains an outsider all the time. When Pecola comes to him and seeks for help, he denies his incapability and asks Pecola to poison a dog he hates, and declares that the struggling of the dog suggests that she gets the blue eyes. After she is raped by her father, she gets birth to a dead infant. And at that time, there is nobody who cares about her. On the contrary, all of them laugh at her. So, she believes if she has a pear of blue eye, she will have love, respect, friendship and everything. Then she falls into the crazy condition, and feels she gets a pair of unequalled blue eye, and talks in whispers with it everyday. Thus, his self-dislocation partly contributes to Pecolas tragedy.B. The Rejection of Her ParentsEven her parents, Cholly and Pauline Breedlove, relate to Pecola in this way. She is ironically named since they breed not love but violence and misery. Cholly and Pauline eventually destroy their daughter, whose victimization is a bold symbol of their own despair and frustrations. In the pathos of their defeated lives, Morrison demonstrates the process by which self-hatred becomes scapegoating. Paulines lame foot makes her pitiable and invisible until she marries Cholly. But pleasure in marriage lasts only until she moves to Ohio and confronts northern standards of physical beauty and style. She is despised by snooty black women. In the movie theaters she seeks relief from these shortcomings through daydreaming of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, and she turns in the end to Soaphead Church because she is “wholly convinced that if black people were more like white people they would be better off.” (Morrison 76) Eventually Pauline gives up her own family and takes refuge in the Fisher home where she works and where she has what she could not have at home“power, praise, and luxury.” By the time Pecola finds herself awkwardly standing in the Fishers kitchen, responsible for the spilled remains of a freshly baked pie at her feet, Pauline is incapable of showing a mothers love and forgiveness. Her best response is knocking Pecola to the floor and running to console the crying Fisher child. Though the old good days still come to her mind sometimes, her dream of the mainstream life and her hatred of her own black life gradually draw her far away from her early purity and the black culture. Thus “into her son she beat a loud desire to run away, and into her daughter she beat a fear of growing up, fear of other people, fear of life.”(Morrison 102) In fact, the early life of Pauline in the south is content and happy. She is naive, simple and lives a life with family protection and love. Before Pecola is born, Pauline is determined to cane about and cherish her no matter what the child is like. (Morrison 89) But her determination is crushed very quickly in the gynecological and obstetrical hospital, where doctors regard her as giving birth to the child as an animal, quick and without pain. Especially, when she arrives the north, she is far away from the old good days, and has abandoned the black culture. Thereupon, she starts in the darkness of movie theaters to pursue false and instinct feeling of happiness. However, on the screen the black image is always the fool, the female servant who is stupid, funny, and sly. Unfortunately, the publicized black image actually strengthens the superior feeling of the whites and the inferiority of the blacks, which leads to his complete identification of the white culture. Then, she begins to spend lot of money on dressing and hairdos, and imitates the way movies stars behave, but only to find that she is in an even more awkward situation in which she encounters more critical eyes and laughter. Accordingly, with desire and frustration, she gradually abandons her family which, to her, seems to be a battle field full of violence and hurts, and transfers her