the bluest eye.docVIP

Binary Opposition in The Bluest Eye 学院： 外国语 专业： 英语语言文学 年级： 2012 姓名： 郑双 学号： 2012010275 Abstract The Bluest Eye written by the famous black woman writer Toni Morrison is through different perspectives. And this paper tries to study this novel through the theory of binary opposition. There are three pairs of binary opposition that has been offered in this paper: the loss and persistence of maternal love, the good and evil of paternal love and the loss and persistence of self-identity. Actually it is just like a comparison of the two families of Pecola’s and Claudia’s and make it sure that the tragedy of Pecola is the result of her family, community and as well as the white-dominated culture. Key words: The Bluest Eye; binary opposition; loss and persistence; self-identity Background information Toni Morrison (1931- ), the only black woman writer who won the Nobel Prize for the literature, was the most prominent and illustrious novelist in the second half of the 20th century. She was born in a small steel town named Lorain, in the state of Ohio, in a working class family in 1931. Her name was Chole Anthony Wofford, and she was the second child of four in her family. Her father, a manual labor as he is, was a diligent, perseverant and dignified man. Her mother was a deeply-committed Christian and a member of the choir of the church. The family took great pride in their precious black heritage. In 1949, she was admitted to Howard University, which was the most prestigious university for the blacks, studying English and classical literature. There she changed her name to be Toni Morrison, a short form of her second name, because many people weren’t able to pronounce her name in a correct way. While in Howar