1. Fight for the future life of the blacks themselves-that is, discuss the significance and value of the blacks' struggle for equal rights and the ideal life in the future;
2. Learn to integrate into society and live seriously-that is, about black people's life beliefs, attitudes and lifestyles;
3, a good life-mainly discuss what kind of life is a good life, and how to strive for and enjoy a good life in the future.
Through the development of sisterhood, the women in Paradise realized the engagement between women, and showed the healing power of women themselves without the participation of men. Sisterhood is an intimate relationship that exists between two or more unrelated women and supports and comforts each other. To some extent, sisterhood is the spiritual and material double guarantee for women's survival and development in a world dominated by male power. It condenses scattered individuals into collective strength and forms a huge driving force.
Racism is not only about white people's ideas about themselves and their place in the world, but also about black people's experiences in a racist society. In Paradise, African Americans' imitation of white people's pursuit of extreme racism has a profound historical background. The concept of white racism did not disappear with the abolition of slavery. As a minority, black Americans have been living in a mainstream white society full of hostility and discrimination. In the 1960s, African-Americans tried to find a sense of security and belonging among themselves in a self-isolated way because they could not find their proper place in the established white order, and put forward the political proposition of "black and white separation". The towns of Haven and Ruby, full of racial and cultural conflicts, were a microcosm of American society at that time.
In the novel, the ancestors of the residents of Ruby Town were slaves in Mississippi and Louisiana. In order to find the paradise that black people dream of, 1890, they embarked on a long journey westward under the leadership of Deakin and Stuart's grandfather Zachariah Morgan. On the way, he was rejected and discriminated by whites and light-skinned blacks, and went through hardships to establish a safe haven. By 1949, many white people who moved westward lived in Haven, and Haven, the ideal "paradise" for black people, began to decline. Deakin and Stuart were worried that the blacks in the town would forget the painful history of the past, so they led 15 black families to the depths of Oklahoma.
On the way, Dickon and Stuart's sister Ruby was seriously ill, but was rejected by the white hospital in the town. By the time they transferred my sister to the Second Hospital, she was unconscious and died in the corridor of the hospital. When the nurse tried to contact the veterinarian to examine the dead Ruby, they were very angry, so they took their sister home and buried her in a beautiful place on Stuart's ranch. Ruby's unfortunate experience is deeply embedded in the racial memory of black people, leaving indelible scars on their hearts. In their eyes, outsiders (especially whites) are equal to enemies. The town is named after Ruby, which reflects the racial memory of blacks: it is not only a symbol of racial hatred against blacks, but also a manifestation of cohesive racial strength. Ruby has become a scapegoat for racial discrimination because of her special identity with African characteristics, and her image conforms to the inherent characteristics of the scapegoat prototype.
The policy of apartheid pursued by whites has made blacks suffer humiliation and pain for hundreds of years. The African-Americans in Paradise satirized the racist behavior of white people, subverted the racist thought of white supremacy, thought that black people's skin was beautiful, and they were proud of their black nature and fought to defend the pure blood of black people. "They were born in an ancient hatred. At the beginning of that kind of hatred, one black man despised another black man, and that black man raised the hatred to a new height. Their selfishness, between arrogance, error and ruthlessness, ruined two hundred years of disasters and victories.
Ruby town is different from other residential areas in that it is isolated from the world. Not only are whites unpopular in Ruby, but even light-skinned blacks will be excluded and discriminated against. Black Roger Best was the first person in town to break the bloodline rule. He married a woman with light skin and brown hair, so no one in Ruby admitted his existence. His family was not only excluded from the "House of the Sacred Room", but also implicated in Ruby Town. His wife Delia was envied by the black people in the town, because she looked like a poor man in the south and gave birth to a daughter who looked useless. Although during the migration process, blacks used her skin color to let her go to white shops to buy daily necessities, she was regarded as a "left-behind slut" and was in danger of "weakening her race". Therefore, when Delia gave birth, people refused to take her to the hospital and died unfortunately. Delia's death is in sharp contrast to Ruby's death. The indifference of blacks to Delia's life and death is exactly the same as the racial discrimination of American whites against blacks. Delia and Roger's daughter Patricia and granddaughter Billie Delia also fell into the abyss of pain because of the skin color problem.
Patricia teaches black history at school and studies the genealogical history of the Ruby family in her spare time. In order to change the experience of discrimination, she married Billy Cato, a black man who looks like "the deepest eight-story stone in a coal mine". What made her sad was not only the death of her husband, but also the isolation and criticism of her daughter Billie Delia because she inherited her light skin color. Billie Delia was accused of being a wild and indulgent "crazy girl" because she took off her shorts when she was riding in the street at the age of 3. Patricia knows very well that if her daughter is a dark-skinned girl, people will only think that she is an ignorant child and has done something stupid unintentionally, and will never use this as an excuse to destroy her virginity and reputation. But from then on, women warned their children not to go near Billie Delia, and men showed disdain or looked away from her. Although Billy Dee Leah was a virgin when she was 18 years old, no one believed that her virginity still existed. Billie Delia paid a heavy price for her fair complexion and youth and ignorance. Patricia once beat her daughter for this, forcing her to run away from home and seek asylum in the monastery. When Patricia finally realized that people in the small town had made her family a scapegoat for racism, she regretted that she had recognized and bound Billie Delia according to Ruby's moral standards, which made her daughter lose the protection of her mother. Patricia burned the Ruby family historical materials she had collected for several years, symbolizing her dissatisfaction and abandonment of the history of black racism.
The concept and self-isolation with strong black racism have brought great harm and crisis not only to individuals, but also to Ruby Town. In the case of excluding light-skinned people and preventing outsiders, people in small towns can only marry in only 15 families. This kind of marriage, which stifles personal feelings and pursues pure black blood, will inevitably lead to the confusion of blood and ethical relations between families. Sweetie's four children are all born disabled, Anet's children are all dead, and Morgan's descendants are not as rich as their predecessors. These are the consequences of long-term internal marriage of black people in Ruby Town. Therefore, the racism and complacency of black people can only lead them to self-destruction and turn their dream paradise into hell. Morrison, with the help of Pastor Miesner, pointed out the harmfulness of racism, whether it is "white supremacy" or "black supremacy": "We live on the earth. The whole earth, separating us and isolating us-this will always be their weapon. Isolated and killed generations. There is no future. " Therefore, the harm of racism can not be ignored. It distorts people's thinking and splits the cohesion of the nation. Morrison insinuated and criticized the theory of bloodline superiority in American racial concept.
Ethnic minorities and religious minorities are often attacked by the majority, and almost no society does not discriminate against ethnic minorities and all unsociable and unique small groups. "The existence of racism has become a thorny issue in American society today. In a multi-racial society like the United States, it is not necessary to eliminate the cultural and traditional differences between different races, but to cultivate people's new racial consciousness of mutual tolerance, understanding and acceptance, and to have a healthy and correct understanding of race and descent. In today's world, the pursuit of racial equality, different races and cultures from exclusion to integration, "integration" and "diversity" coexist. The Marginal Narration of "Black Ontology" Inserted into Mainstream Discourse —— The Writing Strategy of Toni Morrison's Paradise
As an African-American writer, Toni Morrison is faced with the problem of choosing narrative forms. Writers should use "marginal narrative" to counter the marginalization of black people. This "marginal narrative" mainly refers to the "black essence" which is different from mainstream white literature, that is, inserting a "black ontology" into the language and theory of mainstream western countries without black essence at all. Paradise shows the characteristics of black culture from oral form, fragmented memory narrative mode, referential characters and surreal narrative style. Morrison wants to use marginal narration to resist the cultural colonization of the disadvantaged groups by mainstream discourse, so as to arouse the submerged racial memory of the black ethnic group.
In fact, the essence of the "black essence" theory advocated by black literary theorists such as Gates is to try to insert a "black ontology" into the mainstream western languages and theories where there is no black essence at all. "And this black essence appears in the form of mainstream western languages, that is, it is expressed in different black English expressions under the code of consistent surface language symbols." Cole Morrison first attributed his poetic language to his black nature. Some scholars have pointed out that "Morrison's characters emerge from the edge, and they are looking for the way to the center with the complex meaning of literary discourse."
The unique cultural identity and racial gender attribute constitute the rich content and distinctive black cultural characteristics of Toni Morrison's works. Morrison has accepted western culture since childhood and is familiar with western literature and its allusions, but when absorbing western literature, she is good at blending it with blacks and presenting it in a unique way. She imitates the writing techniques from western classical to modern and even post-modern, such as mythical prototype, symbolic suggestion, consciousness sliding and uncertainty. Paradise reproduces many factors of western literature. But "black literature's repetition of western literature always has the characteristics of black people, which is reflected in the specific language use."
First, the oral form left over: the reproduction of the living conditions of black people.
The subculture of black Americans is classified as "oral form of heritage". The oral culture left behind is mainly auditory, applicable, collective and direct. Its main forms are: speeches, myths, legends and stories. Morrison has a soft spot for telling stories. In her speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony, she stressed: "For me, listening to other people's stories is more than just a pastime. I firmly believe that this is one of the main ways for people to acquire knowledge. " In Paradise, she asked people in Ruby Town to understand the past history by "listening to stories": in a room with a burning stove, they "listened to people talking about war stories; Listen to the stories of great immigrants-stories of people who did and didn't do it; Listen to the stories of success and failure of wise men-their fear, courage and confusion; Listen to the deep and eternal love story. " The details of the story told by the twin brothers (Stuart and Deakin) are emphasized in many places in the works:
Bad luck again and again makes them more stubborn and proud, and all kinds of details are engraved in the strong memory of the twin brothers. Untouched stories are told over and over again in the sunset of Sunday prayer meeting and in the dark barn by the big stove. The twin brothers born in 1924 have been listening to stories about the past 40 years for 20 years-they listen, imagine and remember every specific thing, because every detail is a pleasant shock, as exciting as a dream, more impulsive and purposeful than the war they participated in.
Through the way of "story", the novel lets readers know the ups and downs of the town history, the feud between characters and the evolution of contradictions and conflicts. The novel begins with robbing a monastery and shooting a white woman. The subsequent plot did not continue to develop according to this, but led to the history and present situation of Ruby Town. Through the way of "telling stories", I learned that nine black families living in Ruby Town have experienced vicissitudes since their ancestors were sold to the southern United States as slaves in 1755, and they have always maintained the pure black lineage of "eight-story stone" (that is, black and bright coal blocks at the bottom of coal mines), and they are "more stubborn and proud in repeated bad luck".
It is the third generation from "grandfather" Sagaria to twin brothers. Although the Stuart people are smart and capable, because of the different concepts of the old and new generations, they are narrow-minded and short-sighted, and there is a crisis lurking inside the town, full of contradictions and explosive. They blame this situation on the monastery not far away, so the reader sees the opening scene of the novel. The attack on the monastery is not only the beginning of the story, but also almost the end of it. Most of the content of the novel is devoted to recalling and tracing the origin of the story, as well as the contradictions, grievances and love-hate relationships between various characters related to it. This form of "oral history" has ancient African cultural origins.
Morrison inherited the "griots" tradition of African song and dance artists. She said: "Black people have stories, and this story must be heard. Oral literature comes first, then written literature. There used to be Glio. They remember stories and people listen to them. My book has sound, which is very important-you can hear it, and so can I. So I tend to use adverbs less, not because I want to write a script, but because I want to give the audience a clear dialogue with sound. " In fact, this form of "Grio" (storytelling) has two deep functions: first, in contrast with the mainstream discourse of white people, African-Americans have found a rhetorical model suitable for their own moral, social and aesthetic purposes. "
Another function of "Glio" shows that although it is a folk art model formed very early, it carries and accumulates profound black national cultural spirit and embodies national values and morality. Therefore, if "some experiences, meanings and values cannot be expressed from the mainstream culture or fully proved, they are still circulated and practiced on the basis of some previous social and cultural customs or forms-cultural and social-flow. In other words, these stories have an ancient prototype, which is "race in cultural content", and it has become a symbol of a nation's poor living conditions.
The second is the narrative mode of "fragment memory": the metaphorical structure of "Bai Na Bei" in the deconstruction center.
Susan S. Lancer, the representative of American feminist narrative theory, pointed out that "the subjectivity of African Americans, or any subjectivity, can't be expressed in any linear discourse order." Paradise follows the model of "reappearing memory", but the narrative process is discontinuous and presented in the structure of "fragmented memory".
The story is not told in the order of events, and the narrative rhythm is either prolonged, circuitous or stagnant. The beginning and the end of the story are connected, and the time points to 1976, but the main events are buried in a lot of memories, with a history of more than a century. The narrative of the main plot of the novel is interrupted by the influx of many characters' events, and the narrative time is constantly misplaced, changeable and tortuous, which obviously has the characteristics of multi-level and multi-structure of Faulkner's stream of consciousness novels. On the other hand, the author inherits Ava's previous narrative style, abandons the traditional single narrative perspective and replaces it with multiple narrative perspectives, and the novel's loose memento mori combination replaces the compact plot arrangement. There are nine chapters in the book, and each chapter is titled with women's names, such as Mavis, Grace, Sinica, Exogenous, Patricia, Conceretta, Louen, etc. And the whole plot of the work is closely related to these women.
This novel eliminates the unique concept of time in general literature. In order to highlight history, people and events, the display of novel space is strengthened, which shows the writing characteristics of post-modernism literature mosaic and collage, and also coincides with the aesthetic image of "sewing hundreds of quilts" in black women's literature.
"Sewing Bai Na quilts" originated from the activities of African folk women sewing quilts. Three distinctive activities of black women-sewing quilts, making underwear and singing. More importantly, in feminist literary theory, "stitching" has become a metaphor for women's texts to dissolve the "central" structure.
Paradise takes the names of many women as different chapters and combines all the contents into one article, which not only "sews up" the fragments of black life memories, but also embeds the deep thinking of black feminists on reality. According to Rachel du plessy, a feminist critic, there is no hierarchy in pure "female writing"? It wants to break the hierarchy and organize all the materials into multiple centers, so that all the factors can be displayed evenly, without prominent positions or moments. She also said that there is no "subordination" or "hierarchy" in the feminist text "Piece of Words". In this way, the pluralistic structure of heaven has the symbolic metaphor of deconstruction center and authority.
Third, people with "indicative" function: subverting mainstream culture in a double sense.
Characters in black literary works generally have the function of referential symbols. "The function of reference code is to provide a cultural reference frame for a specific text." The reference symbols in Paradise are not fragmented, fragmented and illogical. It is an omni-directional, fuzzy and multi-focus system, which can release rich cultural information to readers. That is to say, the characters in Paradise have the unique "double ideographic" function of black literature, and most novels have meanings from the title to the characters, place names, things and scenes, thus forming a relatively large frame of reference. Especially in the reference of characters, it is rich in information and profound in meaning. Some western scholars pointed out: "The characters and plots in this novel try to use all kinds of myths from the Bible to ancient Greece, comics and even mixed myths." Morrison, who is familiar with western literature, takes the characters in the Bible or ancient Greek mythology as the prototype, but quietly rubs in the "black" component.
(1) Characters in the Black Bible. African-Americans have been searching for their own black culture through various channels. Of course, we need to go back to Africa to find it, but its dual cultural background makes this "search" complicated. Black intellectuals living in the white world advocate that "only by correcting some traditional fallacies can we find the image of black people where people think they belong." In The Color Purple, Walker, a black woman writer, wrote Niti and found that Jesus Christ, who had always been considered white, was black. "White people regard Jesus, who was originally black, as a shameless act of plundering African wealth and possessing the fruits of black labor for free. Morrison is also looking for the black Christ in heaven, and it is a female Christ. Consolata, the soul of the convent in the book, means "comforter". The description of the character's appearance is uncertain, so it is difficult to judge whether she is black or white. The author only mentioned her "green eyes" and "brown" hair, and used the form of question marks. Perhaps this is the narrative strategy of female writers. Yue Se Campbell, a mythologist, thinks that Conceletta is probably implied as a black woman Jesus. He said: "The gods in most cultures are gentle and full of love, and will sacrifice themselves when necessary. Jesus was originally a man, but Christianity endowed him with feminine characteristics and then turned "her" into a man.
In heaven, when blacks were rejected, they began to move and wander. They think they are God's chosen people, and "grandfather" Zechariah is the great ancestor who led them through the difficulties. Through the code-switching and corresponding description of the characters, Morrison evolved the main metaphors and symbols in the Bible into relatively common cross-cultural prototype patterns and symbols.
(2) Greek goddess and black women. Paradise not only looks for the images of black people in the Bible, but also looks for the relationship between them in Greek mythology. The pallas described in the fifth chapter is based on the Greek goddess Athena, but it still emphasizes the black character. As we all know, Athena is the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology and the patron saint of Athens. However, Martyn Bernard pointed out in his book Black Athena: The Origin of Ancient Civilization in Africa (1987): "The Greek black goddess Athena was borrowed from ancient Egypt and Mediterranean islands as early as 2 100 BC to100 BC, and was integrated into ancient Greek culture."
Pallas described in Paradise is the Greek goddess Athena (pallas = Athena in English dictionary). Morrison tries to use this image to metaphor the relationship between western civilization and African civilization, and at the same time endow this image with richer cultural connotation. Pallas's working life is bumpy. Seeing her boyfriend having incest with her mother was a great blow to her spirit. With the help of her sisters, she survived strongly and gave birth to a child in the monastery.
Notably, Morrison called the pregnant girl pallas. One of the reasons is that "mother" occupies an important position in the family in African culture; In addition, Morrison also "stole" weapons from French feminist critics who were deeply influenced by deconstruction. For example, Kristeva believes that the expression of mother's desire is a challenge to masculinity, and that "pregnancy and parenting can break the opposition between self and others, theme and object, and internal and external". In addition, she advocates the integration of mother and sex with the image of "a good enough mother" and describes art as the language of "mother's enjoyment". In this way, women are not only the space of art and writing, but also the space of truth: "The truth that cannot be reproduced is out of reach, subverting the order of male logic, control and false truth".
Morrison attaches great importance to the significance of mother to women. Most of the other women in Paradise are also related to motherhood: Thorne lost her children when she was young because of her husband's love affair with Conceletta; Arnett and his sister-in-law Sveti endured the pain of childbirth. The former/kloc-was pregnant at the age of 0/4, but the man did not intend to get married, and the families of both sides had enemies. When the fetus is active, beat the abdomen hard and poke your lower body with a small brush, which will lead to premature birth of the child. Britney Spears was disabled after giving birth to four children in a row, so she was hurt both physically and mentally. In Christian ideology, mother is regarded as an obvious symbol of female physical happiness, but this happiness has been strictly suppressed, and reproductive function must be subordinate to the law of father's name. Patriarchy oppresses not women themselves, but their status as mothers. It can be seen that pallas, an image based on black people, has multiple subversive effects on the mainstream culture of white people.
Fourthly, the narrative style of surrealism: the deconstruction of the empirical world by black cosmology.
Morrison admits that her works are similar to magical realism in Latin America, but thinks that she is expressing a "reality" different from the definition of western traditional literature. Alice Walker, a black woman writer, once said that she would be honest with mysticism-animism, because she believed that it was not only the best thing for African Americans to remember their African ancestry, but also "something more profound than any political, racial or geographical position". Morrison also holds a "black cosmology", which is similar to the "law of mutual penetration" of primitive thinking, for example, the living and the dead can talk; Humans can interact with animals and plants. Morrison's novels first refused to give a rational explanation of things, and then affirmed the transcendence and magic of things.
The whole novel Beloved (1988) is integrated into the ghost world, and the logical starting point of its creation is to believe that people can "come back to life". Paradise continues the author's previous techniques and shows the unique style of African-Americans. There are many surreal descriptions in Paradise, such as the mysterious man that Zacharias and his son saw before they arrived in Paradise. The mysterious woman Padre, who only sings but doesn't talk, is surreal. Among them, Conceletta's "insight" talent and her process of "stepping into magic" to save people are the most magical parts of the book: Conceletta looks at the body, takes off her glasses without hesitation, and stares at the red trickle that dyed his hair. She stepped in. Seeing the extended highway that he dreamed of crossing, he felt overturned, headache, chest tightness and didn't want to breathe. She mentioned the spirit that felt like fear and stared at the expansion of the light spot. Although she looked at it as if she had been stung by the devil, she was still absorbed as if the lung she needed was her own. Scott opened his eyes and groaned and sat up. Morrison tried to convince the readers that it was easier to accept this magical life-saving method. Louen called it "stepping in" and Conceretta called it "going in to have a look", saying that it was a gift of "insight" and a freedom given by God to those who wanted to develop this skill. "When this kind of' internal vision' ability comes into play, do experiments on others.
The darker the visible world, the more dazzling her' internal vision' skills become. "This narrative way of looking at reality with the unique cosmology of black people not only deconstructs the experience world to a certain extent, challenges the traditional realism, but also coincides with people's expectation psychology of trying to transcend the dirty reality and grasp their own destiny. Commenting on Morrison's works, Barbara Christian, a black feminist critic, said, "Her characters are primitive. They come to you with the strength and beauty of the fountain. The fountain looks wonderful, but it is as solid as the land under their feet. "In fact, this trust in supernatural power is due to the influence of ancient African culture. In fact, it is "another way for black people to see things." This belief in mystery, witchcraft, myth and African religion complements and competes with the contradictory and reasonable form of Judaism and Christianity in western consciousness.
Morrison used marginal narration to resist the cultural colonization of the disadvantaged groups by mainstream discourse, so as to arouse the submerged racial memory of the black group. It shows edward said's conscious efforts to "enter the discourse of Europe and the West, mix with them, and transform them to make them realize the history of marginalization, repression and forgetting." The female writer skillfully used the techniques of modern western literature without losing her black character. The narrative strategy she chose "confirmed what she insisted on in several interviews." In other words, her own voice gained authority by adopting and drawing lessons from African-American black communities. "The whole novel Paradise is divided into nine chapters, and each chapter is named after a female character to highlight the core position of women in the novel. The work does not adopt the traditional linear narrative and single narrative perspective. As Susan S. Lancer, a famous American feminist literary critic, said, the subjectivity of African Americans, or any subjectivity, is impossible to use any linear narrative and single narrative perspective. Morrison's narrative strategy is not to tell the story according to the sequence of events, and the narrative time is misplaced and discontinuous.
From the narrative framework, the novel first describes the main incident of male residents attacking the monastery in Ruby Town, and the storyline has not made much progress since then. The book mainly describes the history and present situation of Ruby Town and Monastery, interspersed with different stories of every woman in the monastery. There is a connection between the interspersed stories and the main stories, and there is also a certain connection between them. It was not until the last chapter that the novel unexpectedly introduced the little lives of girls living in monasteries after they returned to society. In the description of important plots and details, Morrison never reaches the designated position once, but reproduces these plots and details through different people, environments and times. "It's like drawing a picture on a glass plate, breaking the glass, and then splicing the glass into a dazzling modern form." These representations are the supplement and extension of the basic clues. Representation and representation complement each other and confirm each other, revealing the narrative connotation in a scattered but organic way. Morrison said in an interview, "I want to restore the black language to its original strength. It is a rich but not gorgeous language. " When asked about the beauty of her novels, she said, "Language is just language. This language must be carefully scrutinized and looks handy. It can't sweat. It must be hidden, but at the same time it is exciting. It is a kind of love, a kind of passion. " It is with "rich but not gorgeous language" that she gives her works a painful and hopeful tone, and controls the development of the plot and the ups and downs of emotions through sentence length, tone level and tone priority. For example, she described the scenery outside the monastery when nine black people were murdered in a beautiful and lyrical style: "Outside, the morning fog rose waist-high. Then, the sun shines to disperse the morning fog, revealing a large area of Miscanthus, and maybe there are traces of witches. " On the one hand, this poetic writing compares the brutality of these blacks with the tranquility and beauty of Eden, and at the same time hints at the upcoming changes in the town. Another example is that she shows the rut of male residents in Ruby Town with subtle metaphors: they "don't think about how to govern by extending the hand of friendship or love, but outline preventive measures and polishing examples as needed until each example matches the polished groove". Morrison's great contribution to English literature is to "clean up" the black literary language in an all-round way, and "return the original intention to the text instead of repeating the meanings that have been destroyed by vulgarity." It is with this kind of language full of love and passion that Morrison works hard and persistently to find a "paradise" for black women's writing.
Black women have been enslaved for a long time and have been in a state of silence. On the other hand, Morrison tries to find a paradise where she can write the fate of black women from her own unique perspective. Through the clever use of various literary techniques, she pointed out the criminals and crimes that suppressed black women's voices, broke through the unspeakable situation of black women, and called on black women to turn their fragmented voices into shouts in unison.