宠儿beloved读书报告全英

1、宠儿beloved读书报告（全英）文法分院读书报 告题 目A shackle against black slaves班级:11商本3姓名:周江美学号:11203023319书名:Beloved作者:Toni Morrison总页码：出版社：出版时间：版次，印数TitleAbstract :Beloved is mai nly talked about a black slavery, she wan ted to escape from the employ .However, she was hun ted by hun ter. And in her arms, there is a c

2、hild. For her daughter, she did not want to her to become a slave again, she killed her daughter. Whereas, the baby was appeared in 18 years. She sought the love of her mother aga in and aga in, she wan ted to reve nge. Fin ally, the family was broke n.Key word:beloved; Oppressi on; Rebelli on; Toni

3、 Morris on10Title1. Brief In troducti on of Toni Morris onToni Morris on , as one of the most outsta nding represe ntatives ofAfrica n-America n female writers , has the highest reputati on. From 1970 whe n she published her debut The Bluest Eye (1970), she continued to publish eight novels, they ar

4、e So ng of Solo mon (1977), Sula (1973), Tar baby (1981) , Beloved (1987), Jazz(1992), Paradise (1999), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008). The nine novels determ inedher position in the literary world and promoted the African-American female literatureto an un precede nted new height. In 1993 whe n Toni M

5、orris on was sixty-two years old, She was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. She is the first one that gets this honoras an Africa n-America n writer, eve n, a female writer. This is a great honor to thewhole Africa n-America n female literature, for the hard times Africa n-America n female lite

6、rature has ever experie need. Black wome n's literary works and their liberati on moveme nts in flue need and promoted each other. Black wome n's literary works turned in to importa nt resources which con struct and develop black women's subjective consciousness and played an indispensab

7、le role in Black wome n's physical and men tal developme nt. Mean while Black wome n's social movements also became the continuous flow of power to Black women's literary works. Just un der such cultural backgro und, Toni Morris on produced her series of works. She selected her subject m

8、atter from the African-American history and real fife, committed to maintain and carry forward black culture andexplored black people's historical fate andspiritual world, especially black wome n.2. The reas on why I choose this bookFirstly, it is a story of Gothic. It extracted a full measure o

9、f suspense and horror.I like such books very much. Secondly, I want to get more information about black slavery. Fin ally, this book is easy to be un dersta nd. So I choose this book.3. Character 'Name AnalysisSethe: Sethe 's、mother names Sethe but is unable to provide Sethe the maternal lov

10、e. Sethe suffers the loss of mother love. That is why she insists on holding Beloved to herself at the expense of the death of the baby girl. She wants to maintain her own mother- hood. Sethe' s vague memory of the origin of her name causes her to suffer a serious identity crisis. For Sethe, to

11、regain the origin of her name means to reclaim her relational identity and her sense of cultural roots.Beloved:The name of Sethe ' ghost daughter Beloved is derived fromBeloved ' headstone. Sethe exchanges her body with the engraver for the name "Beloved ” engraved from the headstone of

12、 her dead daughter. Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have gotten "dearly” too? She had notthought toask him and it bothered her still that it might have been possible that for twenty minu tes a half hour say, she could have had the whole thing every word she heard the p

13、reacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely engraved on her baby'、headstone: dearly Beloved. But what she got settled for, and was the one word that mattered. She thought it would be eno ugh to run among the headst ones with the en graver .That should certa inly he eno ugh. Eno

14、ugh to an swer one more preacher one more aboliti onist and a tow n full of disgust. Sethe wants desperately to n ame her daughter eve n by means of hav ing sex with disgust ing en graver.She n eeds to give her dead daughter an ide ntity toconnect her. Therefore whe n the baby ghost reincarn ates to

15、 he a young woma n she may n ame herself Beloved. And Sethe is able to recog nize her. The word "Beloved ” is take n from Roma ns. The sentence goes like this "Those who were not my people I will call 'my people', and her who was not beloved I will call 'beloved', Beloved i

16、sn' t like an African name. But it does express her mother'、 inner feeling. Beloved is adorned and killed she , in fact enjoys Cod'、 love or more exactly mother'、 naming is of great significance in Beloved.Mr. Garner:Mr. Garner the " benevolent “ masterof Sweet Home whoboasts hi

17、mself of treating slaves as "men" ,also names his slaves alphabetically as Paul A Paul D Paul F and gives the slaves the family name of his own. Paul D is one of a series of Pauls just as Six may he the sixth of a similar series. Even the "benevolent" Mr. Garner negates the slave

18、s identity and controls the power of naming.Paul D is not a true man as Mr. Garner claims. Hedoes not have the fortune to enjoy his man hood. He has to wear an iron bit in his mouth like an animal as a punishment for escaping. In his eyes even the rooster n amed " Mister ” allowed more man hood

19、 tha n he since he speaks to himself" Mister he looked sow free. Better tha n me Mister waallowed to he and stay what he was.But I wasn ' t allowed to hend stay what I was Even ifyou crooked him you 'de crook ing a rooster n amed Mister thi ng was less tha n a "I was someth ing els

20、e and that Chicke n sitti ng in the sun on a tub Paul D is deprived of his and his man hood un der slavery.Baby Suggs:Baby Suggs n ever knows her real n ame. Therefore , she enjoysno freedom no gin , and no "self" under slavery. Mr. Garner calls her Jenny Whitlow since that'at on her b

21、ill of sale which may derive from her former master'、name. After her son alle purchases her freedom by workingonSun days for 5years Suggs decides n ame herself as "Baby Suggs”，though Mr. Garner considers that "Mrs. Baby Suggs ' t noame for a freed Negro" 口 For those slaves who

22、 are dispersed across the country a n ame is an importa nt clue in the identification of theirmissing family members. Baby is how her husband dearly called her, and suggest her husband、 name and it is "all she had left of the 'husband' she claimed". By negating her original name Mr

23、. Garner deprives her of the possibility that her husband might find her , as he c;an inquire after her by the on ly n ame he knows her to possess. After all , Mr. Garner who agrees to let Halle purchase the freedom of his mother Baby Suggs is less in terested in the lives of his slaves tha n selfsa

24、tisfied with his gen erosity,carry ing his dominanceand displaying his gance by directing the naming of his exclaves. Under this in sulated circumsta nces. However Baby Suggs nal n ame to keep conn ected with her husband retains her origin,even if it does not fit the standards of white naming. They

25、are not appropriate words for names. It sounds awkward when Denver calls her "Gra ndma Baby.Stamp Paid:Stamp Paid'、renaming of himself also indicates his efforts tofight against the white hegemony and to obtain a new identity Stamp Paid challenges the white power by renaming himself "L

26、et me tell you how I got my name They called me Joshua I renamed myself ". Stamp Paid renamedhimself after being forced to give his wife to his master' 、son. A grave sacrifice he made duri ng his en slaveme nt has caused him to con sider his emotio nalandmoral debts to he paid off for the r

27、est of his life which acco unts for his renaming himself "Stamp Paid ” A new name suggests a new life. Upon taking the new name and the new identity Stamp Paid dedicates himself to helping deliver the fugitive slaves across the Ohio River. He wants to exte nd his doubtless ness to other people

28、by help ing them pay out and off whatever they owes in misery.Like Baby Suggs Stamp Paid rejects names given to them by whites and establishes a new identity as a free and useful person first by renaming themselves.4. Plot summaryThe gen eral plot of Beloved is as follows: A former slave n amed Seth

29、e is the protago nist of the no vel. Eightee n years ago she escaped from Sweet Home, the plantation where Sethe previously lived in Kentucky with her husband Halle and another four male slaves including Sixo, Paul A, Paul D and Paul F to Ohio, a freestate where her mother-in-law lived. Ahead of her

30、 she sent her three babies, one yet-unnamed girl and two little boys. On her way to Ohio she gave birth to ano therdaughter, Denver. Good days were so short that the slave owner schoolteacher came to catch her before she was aware of this. Sethe decided to make her babies free bykilling them, but sh

31、e was stopped after cutting the throat of the "crawli ng-already"daughter. She received a jail sentence because of destruct ion of property (the child is aslave who belongs to the slave owner and slave owners have rights to pursue slavesacross state borders accord ing to the Fugitive Bill

32、in 1793 and in 1850). By the timeSethe was released, Beloved, the ghost of the dead baby, had come to haunt the house.Un able to en dure the mischievous spirit and out of fear of their mother, the two boysleft home, and before long her mother-i n-law died, only Sethe and Denver were left .This situa

33、ti on did n't cha nge un til Paul D arrived who drove the ghost off the house, and the n he and Sethe became lovers. However, an unknown and stra nge young woma n, who appeared to be the age that the dead baby would have bee n, inaddition she called herself Beloved. In the following days, Sethe

34、took her as the deadbaby, so she was very sorry for her and loved her. On the contrary, Beloved in ducedPaul D and forced him first out of the house and the n out of Sethe's life. Then Beloved tortured Sethe physically and men tally. Denver, an xious about her mother'slife, sought help from

35、the black women in the community. Under the collective forceof the com mun ity Beloved disappeared, and Denver grew up after going through somany things. She found the courage to make life plans. The story ends with a happyending that Paul D returned to Sethe who walked out of the shadow of the mise

36、rablepast.5. My thoughtsLife is previous to every one. However, i n order to make her daughter free, Sethe killed her own daughter. What can be more previous than life? That free! Some one want to live, however, they can not. Maybe they were died whe n theyborn. Or eve n die born, whereas ,some one

37、do not cherish their life. For me, I just made a stupid thin g. I made argue with some one else. I was so an gry, so sad ,that I lost the hope of liv in g, I chose to drop into the river. That everyth ing would be gon e. I will n ever feel any pain , n ever feel depressed. But other people comes by,

38、 they come to call public security, and some teacher come to save mewas embossed, that many of people know I did a stupid thi ng. Un til no w, I was still sorrow. That was my experie nee. Some one want to live. Some one want to die. For Beloved, she wan ted to live, but she can notn chin ese say ing

39、, she was wrong born. She can not be black. She can choose to be a child of white people, the fact is always merciless. I can un dersta nd the feeli ng that her mother kill her, she was to young, she does not un dersta nd anything, but her mother ,who give birth to her, can not believe that she kill

40、ed her own daughter. She wan ted to reve nge, yes ,reve nge. For me, maybe I will do that too. Because I don not know any thi ng about slavery, but I only know I was killed.Sethe ,as a mother, no one can love much deeper than her, she, as a black slavery, lived a life in much even worse than dog, or

41、 cat, she was brave, she wan ted to go away such life, unfortun ately, in the way to free, she give birth to Beloved. She had already experie nce that life, choose live in a terrible life or die, so made a ending to her daughter 'life. We can say she was a cruel mother, we can also say she was a

42、 great mother. At one hand , she killed her daughter. At another hand, she loved her daughter, so she named her daughter, beloved. Sethe had no fault, beloved had on no fault, the fault was American.At the beg inning, En gla nder had inv aded In dia n, and they treated them in a way of livestock. Th

43、ey do not feel ashamed, how ridiculous.In the book, there is a senten ce, "Sixty Millio n and more"This sentenceappears in the title page of Beloved. On one hand it is used to comfort six million dead black slaves, on the other hand to let readers know about the tortures of the blacks suff

44、ered physically and men tally un der the cruel slavery. This huge nu mber shows that the exploitati on of the whites to the blacks firstly starts from their bodies, then to their souls. In the novel, when Sethe advised her mother-in-law to leave the house they were living because of the ghost of the

45、 dead baby, her mother-in-law answered like this: "What'd be the point?" asked Baby Suggs. "Not a house in the country aren ' ptcked to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief."thIt can be seen from this that the death of the blacks in this country is very com mon, e

46、ve n the blacks themselves feel numb about it. This is an obviously bad result of the disciplinary techniques on body from the whites to the blacks. When Foucault talked about this issue, he looked back upon the Classic Age from 17 cen tury to 18th cen tury which is an era of corporal puni shme nt.

47、In that period of time, a method of con troll ing bodies appeared, that is the discipli nary techniques. According to this technique human being's body can be changed, tamed, con trolled, shaped and improved. Discipli ne firstly is a political tech nique of body,. Andthe n it goes to sprit and t

48、hinking, for discipli ne on body is moredirect. The discipline of the whites to the blacks is a kind of brutal, unrestrainedand blata nt exploitati on.6. Con clusi on:The reas on why she created Beloved has bee n told by Toni Morris on in the preface to Beloved. Although slavery has become a past th

49、ing, it is still the ultimate reason of the problems the American blacks are facing now. So it is necessary to look back to the history of that period and make the blacks nowadays get strength and inspirationthrough rememorizinghistory and find subject consciousness,in depe ndent personality and fre

50、e identity through rewriting history.Above all the author applies Foucault's power theory on discipline to an alyze how the whites control the blacks completely. The whitesdiscipline the blacks'body by using the "punishment technique" and "regulation technique". By these

51、two kinds of tech niq ues the whites not only con trol each black pers on's body but also the operation of the whole population. Next, the whites discipline the blacks' soul, which in cludes the con trol over speech and educati on on thought. Therefore the whites could tran sform the blacks

52、into the qualified subject they n eeded most. "Power is a relatio nship of force in esse nee." So, power has two factors, force and counterforce, that is to say, where there is oppression, there is rebellion. There are three types of rebelli on.Firstly the gentle style of rebellion is repr

53、esented by the first generation such asBaby Suggs and Stemp Paid. Un der oppressi on of the slavery, some black slaves gradually became aware of the evil of slavery and the terrible loss of subjective con scious ness. They wan ted to make some physical cha nges which is the first step of salvati on.

54、 However due to the Ion e-time oppressi on by slavery they felt that this situati on was not possible to cha nge completely. They were afraid of the powerful slavery, so they did n't resort to viole nee and just resisted in a gen tle style. This style iso nly to relieve but not solve problems fr

55、om the beg inning, so it is doomed to be a failure.Secondly the violent style of rebellion is represented by the secondgen erati onsuch as Sethe and Sixo. They had a strong subjective con scious ness and clearly knewwhat they wan ted most-to liberate themselves, to get freedom and in depe ndent personality and identi