《宠儿》中魔幻现实主义与黑人文化的整合(英文)

2  Features of magical realism in Beloved
Beloved, a masterpiece of Toni Morrison is a good example adopting magical realism. She used magical realism to show that Sethe, the heroine of the story, is held prisoner by forces of the past that make her face unresolved issues. To begin with, in the novel, the rules of grammar appear to have been ignored. There is a lack of punctuation, and readers often come across some unfeasibly long sentences and the smallest amount of dialogue they are likely to find anywhere in a book of this size. Secondly, gothic stories and other elements which seem not normal penetrate in every corner of the work. Those are the two major features of magical realism in the book.
2. 1 Circular structure
When coming across Morrison's novel "Beloved," the reader encounters a circular narration which makes her characters more memorable as they lead fragmented lives. This circular and nonlinear narrative technique has been developed by Toni Morrison completely and can be found in a single scene, between the chapters and even through the whole book.

“Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again [4].
The self-loving attitude that Suggs is trying to promote within her community of broken former slaves is so beautifully expressed even she had already died.
Very few readers will miss the experimental structure of Beloved. It is not a linear tale told from beginning to end. It is a story encompassing levels of past, from the slave-ship to Sweet home, as well as the present. Sometimes the past is told in flashbacks, sometimes in stories, and sometimes it is plainly told, as if it were happening in the present.
2.1.2 Circular structure between the chapters
Beloved is, in essence, written in fragments: pieces shattered and left for the readers to place together. Nearly the connections between every chapter in the novel use a structure that seems to be out of time line. In another word, the order of the time is settled by the need of the author and arranged subjectively. It completely breaks the concept of universal time line without destroying the consistency, logic and reality of the whole story. The plots presents alternatively but still make sense.
The painful truth that Sethe’s killing of her daughter is uncovered subtly and reflected in the pieces of the conversations between the characters, revealing little by little with the pace of the story and development of the plot, as if someone is telling a shameful secret in real life. This central plot appears many times through the fragments, creating uncertainty and mystery. For instance, in the first chapter in Beloved, Morrison mentioned the specter of the baby would not go away and was furious about being cutting off neck. However, the murder behind this horrible crime remained secret. In the chapter three, when Sethe is introducing Denver to Paul D, she mentioned the old days in prison, but avoided explaining the reason for staying the jail. The readers have to wait until the end of the first half of the novel to discover the truth behind the scene. Paul D asks Sethe whether she committed the crime and gets a positive answer from Sethe. This is when the whole story reaches a climax. In a novel that is hypnotic, beautiful, and elusive, Toni Morrison portrays the lives of Sethe, a escaped slave and poor mother, and those around her. 转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net