美国文学读书报告-作业.doc

专业课程：美国文学 乐山师范学院英语专业09级本科1-5班 课程主讲：许晓琴教授 外国语学院美国文学课程读书报告Beloved宠儿、The thought of from my perspective、Basic InformationName of the book: Publishing house: Random House Books for Young ReadersPublishing time : 1987ISBN: 978-037541156Reading date: Winter vacation, 2012、Introduction to the authorToni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia1 Wofford on February 18, 1931), is a Nobel Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters; among the best known are her novels ,which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Toni Morrison on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.In my eyes :Toni Morrison is a woman who holds a strong sense of responsibility for the black people .She also has a strong sense of the society and the history which become her abundant writing materials .She is a female who is full of optimistic altitude towards life .I do admire such a woman who is full of thought .She use her eyes to see something we can barely see ,she use her inner heart to feel what we can hardly feel .Thanks for her expanding my understanding about the culture and history of the black people 、Summary of the novelThis story set in 1873 just after the American Civil War (18611865), it is based on the story of the African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. A posse arrived to retrieve her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured.Beloveds main character, Sethe, kills her daughter and tries to kill her other three children when a posse arrives in Ohio to return them to Sweet Home, the plantation in Kentucky from which Sethe had recently fled. The daughter, Beloved, returns years later to haunt the house in which she was killed, Sethes home at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati. The story opens with an introduction to the ghost: 124 was spiteful. Full of a babys venom.、 Toni Morrison tells the story from many different aspects .The social situation of the black people is a common racial problem that the author want to highlight .The female rights are also one of the important part of this work .Morrison uses her specific skills to describe the complicated relationship between the white people and the black people ,the relationship between the mother and daughter .It also presents us a vivid picture of the dark side of the society .whats more ,the religion also plays a very important role in the whole book.The author describe the religion specifically .she wants to let us know the function of the religion,which gives the black people a comfort from the spirit and inner heart . The sadism of some slave-owners, the devices used to torture, and the desperate measures some slaves took to protect themselves and their loved ones come fully alive here, the horrors growing as the reader gradually discovers the real source of Sethes torment. By forcing the reader to make the connections, instead of spelling out details in a traditional narrative, Morrison strengthens the impact of the novel and its brutal revelations. Symbols of water, rain, snow, and ice connect the disparate scenes, and the use of shadows and the ghostly character of Beloved keep the reader on tenterhooks until the action is eventually resolved. A powerful, atmospheric, and shocking novel, Beloved is also a searing indictment of slavery and the damage it has done to the fabric of life, damage that cannot be repaired until it is fully recognized through novels such as this. n Mary Whipple . The writing is craftful and the imagery masterful. The depiction of slavery and its malevolent effects on everyone is poignant and convincing without ever being maudlin or preachy. What could have been a sad tearjerker is much too real, too convincing, calloused over with the hardness that the characters are forced to develop when everything they love, from their spouses to their children are beaten, raped, taken away, or killed at the whim of the whiteman.But while I can appreciate the story, the structure, and the way it was written, I found it extremely tedious to read. It hangs on the thinnest of narrative thread, and whenever a plot threatens to develop, the scene ends and we find out what happened later as an aside. Most of the 275 pages are dense interior monologues, frequently repetitious, that sometimes degenerates into what seemed like random text. The characters are drawn with detail, each distinctive and real. I feel I could recognize them on the street if one walked past. But they are as closed to us as they are to themselves. While they evoke my sympathy, they never gain my empathy. We study them, we hear them, we even feel them, but we never are them. As an epic prose/poem, Beloved